DAY 106, THIS ALKALINE YEAR

TED Prizewinner Lacks Knowledge of Human Biochemistry

Until I looked at one of his first TV shows—featuring a beef-and-ale stew--I was delighted to read that Jamie Oliver won the imaginative TED Prize, given to meaningful speakers each year at a nonprofit group’s conference.  The $100,000 prize  carried with it the right to make a “wish” that could change the world, and his wish was for an overhaul of America’s poor decisions about eating, which he rightly noted are shortening life spans and increasing health care costs.

         I watched his TED speech and applauded his suggestions for ways to combat obesity at home, school and Main Street. Some of these included teaching cooking skills in schools, encouraging supermarkets to include food education, and a return to more care in cooking at home.

         However, one of the poorest decisions this so-called celebrity chef  (He stars in a new reality show called “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution) could have made was to feature a meat-and-ale stew on one of his first U.S. TV shows.   Meat is one of the most acidic eating choices anybody can make, seconded only by alcoholic beverages.  In addition, with the filthy conditions under which most beef is raised in this and other countries, and the genetically-engineered corn with which cattle are stuffed, meat is OUT on any sensible diet.

         As Robert Young, PhD, has patiently explained many times, when our diet is primarily acidic, as are standard American meals, our bodies lay on fat in order to encapsulate the acids so they won’t damage our tissues and organs.  This can be demonstrated, shown, proven.  What will it take to get well-intentioned people such as Oliver to understand simple, biochemical facts?

         And from an ecological point of view, as John Robbins points out, with 25 percent of the world’s mammalian species threatened with extinction and livestock grazing being the leading cause of species in the U.S. and abroad being threatened or eliminated, cattle are a wasteful species, uneconomical in the long run.

         All that said, I commend Mr. Oliver on wanting to prevent obesity among American and other children and adults.  A better understanding of nutritional chemistry and biochemistry would serve him well in his  mission.