diet - Suicide By Fork, Death By Pills

Suicide By Fork, Death By Pills - Is There A Better Way?

by John Alquist

Americans spend more money on fast food than higher education, personal computers, software, or new cars.

90% of America's food money is used to buy factory-fresh, processed foods.

90% of American kids ages 3 to 9 eat at fast food places at least once per month.

61% of Americans are obese. Only 20% exercise. There are 167,993 diet book titles. They're all useless since diets don't work long term.

14% of Americans eat mostly fast food. For the 18 to 24 age segment, that's 22% eating mostly fast food.

All of this results in an epidemic of lethal obesity, ushering in cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and arthritis prematurely.

But it gets worse. Not only do Americans have a huge appetite for poor food choices, many believe the big lie of allopathic medicine and Big Pharma-—namely, there’s a safe, effective pill and/or operation for every ill (real or imaginary).

There are supersized pharmaceutical firms in the US, affectionally called “Big Pharma.”

Like many other old line American giant companies, they are starting to suffer from “icon toppling,” being dethroned gradually in the marketplace.

During the last three years, these firms have cut 70,000 jobs. Six of 10 of their top selling drugs are experiencing stagnant or declining sales.

Equities markets have been unkind to Big Pharma. Five firms—Pfizer, Merck, Bristol Myers, Squibb, and Schering-Plough--have lost $34 billion in market value, down 54% in only three years.

Is Big Pharma following in the footsteps of Ford and General Motors?

For the health and safety of the public, let’s hope so.

Drugs are dangerous and over-prescribed, often given as the patient obeys TV commercials to "ask your doctor" and demand this or that drug. 70% of the time doctors approve these requests, often very reluctantly.

Big Pharma has had a number of embarrassing

recalls and some costly lawsuits claiming huge damages from use of its products.

Most of top-selling Big Pharma brands will experience patent expiration by 2011, with few new blockbuster drugs coming along to keep the cash flowing.

But all is not negative in Big Pharma land. The Food and Drug Administration, created during the Depression to make sure that our foods and drugs are safe, coddles Big Pharma and the large agribusiness firms, making sure above all that company profits are safe and sure.

Here’s one crazy example of an FDA run amuck. The FDA has warned cherry growers not to make health claims even though a study funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture determined that cherries have a low glycemic index, are fat free, sodium free, and high in vitamins C, B6, E and folic acid—and rate high on the ORAC antioxidant scale.

The FDA position was that if such health claims are to be made, then the cherry growers must get apply for permission to have cherries sold as an FDA approved drug. Insane!!!

The U.S. Supreme Court, in an earlier case, Thompson v. Western States Medical Center, rebuked the FDA’s “highly paternalistic” approach to keeping information from people for their own good.

The Court found that “bans against truthful, non-misleading speech...usually rest solely on the offensive assumption that the public will respond ‘irrationally’ to the truth.”

“The First Amendment directs us to be skeptical of regulations that seek to keep people in the dark for what the government perceives to be in their own good,” said the Court.

Ouch, Big Pharma. Do you make pain killers strong enough for judicial rebukes like this?

Big Pharma is getting tough competition from generic makers and entreprenurial biotech drug firms--not to mention the rapidly growing alternative medicine business.

One Wall Street analyst recently

suggested that the Big 8 merge down to the Big 4, as happened with major American oil companies to enhance profits. Just a few years ago, there were more than 10 major oil companies. Now, thanks to mergers, there are four huge oils firms.

What should you do to survive the dangerous fast food firms, "food" companies manufacturing chemically-laden processed rubbish disguised as food, the conventional medicine and Big Pharma hustle as well as FDA nonsense?

Follow these suggestions:

1. Eat mostly organic food. Do not eat fast food or processed food.

2. Exercise vigorously at least five times per week.

3. Take a strong multivitamin daily.

4. Use high quality nutritional supplements to help change or improve any health issues you may have.

5. If your doctor is not cooperative in these matters, fire him or her and find a doctor knowledgeable and enthused about natural means of healing.

6. Never accept a doctor’s prescription without intelligent resistance and skepticism. Check out the drug yourself online. Talk to a pharmacist. And learn what natural, alternative remedies may do as well as, or better than, what’s being prescribed.

7. Do not let a doctor and/or a school talk you into prescribing psychotropic drugs for your children to calm them down to control ADD or any other bogus, pop-culture “disease". Get you kids off of caffeine and sugar and discipline them in love.

Forget suicide by fork. Don’t take pills for every ill. There is a better way-—stay well, naturally.

John J. Alquist owns and operates Alquist Enterprises. He offers business consulting, professional speaking, and business writing services. To visit John online, go to http://www.tell-it-well.com or email him at john@tell-it-weel.com

Suicide By Fork, Death By Pills - Is There A Better Way?

by John Alquist

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