Adam Kosloff

Chronic illness is sapping our nation’s vitality. If you include obesity, 60% of Americans have a chronic illness today. Every American has a family member or friend with one or more chronic illnesses. The Medicare and Medicaid budgets are now 5 times larger than our military budget. At least 1 in 5 children are diabetic or pre diabetic. Cancer, Alzheimers, dementia, and autoimmune disorders are on the rise, while heart disease persists as the leading cause of death in Americans. In the past I’ve pointed to many factors that might be driving this surge in chronic disease: toxic pollution of our soil, air, and water, pesticide residues and “forever chemicals” like PFAS in our food, the childhood vaccine schedule, and electromagnetic pollution. All of these possible causes deserve further study. But here I want to point to one more key factor: the rise of processed foods and the replacement of saturated fat in our diets with highly processed seed oils. Saturated fat found in animal foods was demonized for decades, the result of flawed science and massive PR campaigns by companies purveying seed oils, food additives, and high fructose corn syrup. Corporations like Procter & Gamble corrupted the American Heart Association, universities, and government agencies. Today, finally, people are waking up to the fact that we were lied to. If you want to understand this classic example of corporate capture, government malfeasance, and the corruption of science, read the NYT bestseller The Big Fat Surprise, by Nina Teicholz. This exhaustively cited book exposes a health scandal that has contributed enormously to this nation’s chronic disease epidemic. Ironically, Nina was a vegetarian for over 20 years prior to writing this book. Thanks in part to this book, and the tireless work of alternative health practitioners and researchers over the last 50 years, doctors, dieticians, nutritionists, and the general public are waking up to this issue despite the continued effort by big business and the USDA to keep the lid on it. To this day, the USDA recommends keeping saturated fats to only 10% of caloric intake. Meanwhile people continue to become ill and die because of this lie. The same lie has been one of the biggest contributing factors to wiping out small family farms and ranches. The dramatic drop in fat consumption over the last 60 years has driven families off the land into the towns and cities. This ripple effect rolled through small feedlots and packing houses with the same damage. Once productive land for our land and communities was sold and covered with subdivisions and septic tanks. Three generations of the farm and ranch communities have been driven off the land. We are only one generation away from all agriculture being controlled by megacorporations, foreign interests, and institutional investors. We need to get off of processed foods and get back on real food and get strong again! #Kennedy24