The other day I was watching CNN on television and Dr. Sanjay Gupta was hosting his television show and giving advice on healthy living. I really like that guy. He’s very understated, and smart as hell. He’s a brain surgeon for crying out loud. Really though, I think it’s intellectual charisma; when he speaks he just seems so wise. Unfortunately, I knew full well that I couldn’t trust most of what he was saying, especially where diet was concerned. My convictions were strongly upheld when his show’s sponsors were revealed. The first commercial came on and it was for Honey Nut Cheerios. The next one was for a new pharmaceutical drug that promised to help prevent heart disease. Unfortunately, one of the many dangerous side effects of this drug included that it could quite possibly kill you.
It’s not Sanjay’s fault. He’s sort of helpless here. He cannot tell you the truth about how to achieve optimal health through the healthiest diet, even if he wanted to. The paying sponsors, the people that allow CNN to exist would never allow that. General Mills, the pharmaceutical company and a host of other gigantic and powerful companies will ensure that the information that this influential man doles out is compromised, corrupted and in the interest of selling their products – it has nothing to do with optimizing your health. In fact, these products and this information will cause mostly the opposite effect.
It took me years of reading many books and research papers – some that were exceedingly scientific and clinical – to get to the point where I could discern unadulterated bullshit from the truth where our diet and health are concerned. I know that most of the public are not aware of the real science and truth behind how to be lean, strong and healthy. That’s a shame, because this enlightenment also allows us to avoid the endless array of dangerous pharmaceuticals increasingly pushed on us.
Watching television, I also heard Oprah Winfrey talking about her experience with gaining back a lot of the weight she had lost. She blamed herself. Specifically, she blamed her low will-power in not being able to get her daily “cardio” exercise done. She spoke to her audience talked of getting back into shape by “just doing her cardio work, like it or not.” Now, like Sanjey, Oprah Winfrey is a wise, charismatic individual who millions of people look to for advice. Unfortunately, where exercise is concerned, even Oprah is lost. To reinforce these tired, ineffective old ideas of discipline, denial, and hard work regarding the simple act of “moving your body” is to further confuse the public on a massive scale.
It’s not only these two well respected media celebrities who are adding to the confusion and failure. There are many others. Diet and fitness information in America is a strange, convoluted mixture of carnival hucksterism, religious-like fervor, opinion and marketing – all driven entirely by money. Conversely, the truth that has been proven to solve our problems is purely scientific. Hidden by the massive cloud of profit-driven confusion, unfortunately these wonderful truths are known by only the few and not the many.