Magnus calls it “Eat Bright”. His company Food Nation has won the Best of Arabia in their category for 3 years running.

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Alternative Doctor

Magnus Mumby. Chef and Food Philosopher

When I first stepped into a kitchen as a young chef, the world of food looked very different. There were no shortcuts, no ready mixes, no packets waiting to be torn open. Everything was made from scratch. Stocks simmered for hours, sauces were built layer upon layer, bread was kneaded by hand, and every plate told the story of real ingredients treated with respect. I still remember the fish that came in from the boats, cod fish as big as me, glistening and firm.

Beef and lamb arrived with a balance of marbling that was both lean and rich, animals raised on pasture, their flesh full of flavor. Even the eggs were vibrant, their yolks golden and deep.

Over four decades I have watched that world vanish. Bit by bit, the integrity of ingredients has been eroded, sacrificed to the power of the dollar and the obsession with gross profit margins. Industrial agriculture, processing, and marketing combined to create what I call the agri-pocalypse. At first it was subtle, an extra shortcut here, a packet there. But soon entire supply chains shifted. The very raw materials we chefs depended upon were altered beyond recognition. Foods that once carried vitality became hollow.

The cost has not only been culinary but human. Today, our food system produces abundance, yet much of that abundance makes us sick. The diabesity crisis, this entangled rise of obesity and type 2 diabetes, is not the result of scarcity but of over-engineered convenience. The foods are a double body blow of calorie-dense but nutrient-poor, designed for profit not health. At the same time, we face a mental health crisis unlike any in living memory. More than ninety percent of our serotonin is produced in the gut, and the gut’s microbiome thrives only on fiber-rich, diverse, whole foods. Strip away that diversity, flood the body with processed starches and seed oils, and the mind itself begins to unravel.

This is the world I found myself confronting when I founded Food Nation. I could not stand by as children were fed the very foods that I knew were damaging their health. Having seen, firsthand, what real food once was, and having trained in kitchens where every dish began with honest ingredients, I knew there was another way. Clean eating had to be scaled. It could no longer remain the privilege of those with time and money. If diabesity and mental health decline were industrial in scope, then the cure also had to be industrial: a new model of clean eating delivered at scale.

Food Nation became that experiment, and over time, that reality. Today, more than fifty thousand students eat meals with us every day. For more than a decade, we have served tens of millions of meals, each one designed to nourish rather than to fill. We called our initiative “Eat Bright,” because I wanted food to be seen as vibrantly as it tasted. Vegetables were unpeeled to preserve fiber. Sauces were built with ‘hidden goodness’ vegetables to deliver extra nutrients and phytochemicals. Plates were designed with variety in mind, each color a nutrient, each meal a lesson in what food can and should be.

Tasty salad boxes. Way to get kids to eat healthy!

But my journey wasn’t only about the food, it was about changing habits and culture. We invited parents to “Top Table” events, brought cookery classes back into schools, created ingredient showcases, and collaborated with farmers. The goal was never to dictate a diet but more to restore a relationship. Children need to see food not as fuel to be rushed through but as something to explore, enjoy, and respect. Parents began to remember the pleasure of cooking, of sitting together at a table, of knowing where meals came from.

Over the years, I have grown ever more convinced that diets do not work. I have seen the rise and fall of every trend – keto, carnivore, paleo, juice cleanses, intermittent fasting. They create temporary change at best, despair at worst. Once the diet ends, the body reverts, because diets are external impositions, not internal transformations. The only lasting cure is a lifestyle change, and that begins not in a clinic or a packet, but in the kitchen.

I speak with the conviction of a chef who remembers when all food was cooked from scratch. Cooking is the act of reclaiming control. Every time you chop an onion, sear a piece of fish, or simmer a pot of lentils, you take back responsibility from an industry that wants you to believe health comes from a packet, a pill, or a powder. It does not. It comes from the daily act of cooking and eating whole foods.

The forces that oppose this are powerful. Big Food, Big Pharma, even the remnants of Big Tobacco, are all aligned in ways that should alarm us. They profit from both ends of the spectrum: first from processed foods that compromise our health, then from the medicines that manage the resulting conditions. Their weapon is convenience. But I have learned that convenience is a shortcut, and a very valuable lesson. “A shortcut is the fastest way to a place you do not want to be”.

The only real resistance is to slow down. To take time to cook, time to sit, time to share meals with those you love. This is not nostalgia, it is survival. Real food heals. It strengthens bodies, steadies moods, sharpens focus, and knits families together. It is not instant, but it is permanent, and progressive once you start.

Smoothies are offered ready to blend. This is how to get kids to eat veggies!

Food Nation proves this is possible at scale. If a catering company can nourish fifty thousand children every day with clean food, then families can certainly reclaim their own kitchens. I know because I’ve seen it: the impact on students, the gratitude of parents, the way teachers speak about the difference in energy, attention, and happiness when children are well-fed.

The agri-pocalypse has stripped us not just of nutrients but of trust. My life’s work has been to rebuild that trust, one meal at a time, first as a chef in kitchens where everything was made from scratch, and now as the founder of a company feeding a generation. The message is simple: Hippocrates had the answer nearly 2500yrs ago, let food be thy medicine. We gave the keys to our health to corporations chasing profit. It is time to take them back, with our hands, our knives, and our kitchens.

Because against diabesity, against depression, against the hollow promises of industrial convenience, the most radical thing you can do is the simplest: cook real food, every day, and never stop. Let the revolution begin!

Magnus Mumby 14th Sept 2025

Food Nation also educates the kids, with instructive posters in the canteen, such as this one…

For years I have been writing about my 3 principles of anti-cancer health:

Rule #1. Any good health measure is an anti-cancer measure!

Rule #2. Any good health measure is an anti-cancer measure!

Rule #3. Any good health measure is an anti-cancer measure!

No kidding: this is writ LARGE in my famous anti-cancer book CANCER RESEARCH SECRETS. Truth is, it’s simply not possible to separate cancer tendencies from general health issues.

In fact I have 3 easy-to-remember pillars of health: 

1. Diet and nutrition

2. Chemical unburdening

3. Emotional detox

4. (these days I would add EMFs)

As usual, the medical profession as a whole eventually catches up with what I am telling you about! And so it is again. They have decided that “comorbidities” (other health conditions) have a profound influence on cancer vulnerability! So what I have known for decades is gradually creeping into the orthodox medical canon (as it must).

CANCER DOES NOT JUST HAPPEN! It does not drop out of the sky into your poor innocent body! Cancer is a signal that your general health is a wreck! As I have written often, cancer is not a death sentence. BUT IT IS A WAKE-UP CALL. You better listen, or else!

Face it, cancer is not a challenge that any of us want to face. It’s scary. Treatment is questionable, to say the least. Indeed, I have suspected that most people die of cancer treatment, not the disease! 

[Ooops, am I allowed to say that? Oh yes, RFK is in there, fighting for the truth! Haha!]

The statistics are pretty grim. One in every two men and nearly that many women will get cancer at some stage in their life. 50/50 chance! Meaning you or a loved will almost certainly contract the disease. In effect, it means that we are all fighting cancer. An unpleasant thought.

BUT WE ARE NOT HELPLESS. General health is a gift and open to you to claim. If you already have heart disease, diabetes, you’re obese, gut issues, fatty liver or indeed if you are taking meds for any reason, then you have left things a bit late! But still, you can put that into reverse. If you don’t do that you’re back to 50/50 (the toss of a coin in effect) that the Big C will come visiting you.

Now there is a new study to put even more figures around this issue and maybe it will help you be mindful of the risks of doing “nothing”. [Of course nobody is doing nothing. The majority of citizens are daily dosing themselves with death in what they eat and drink—not you of course, dear reader! But they believe, or are told, that exercize and nutrition are irrelevant to their health]

It is clear that there is a strong correlation between existing health conditions (so-called comorbidities) and the likelihood of cancer, meaning specific risks for specific types of cancer. The study came from the prospective Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) screening trial.

For purposes of the current study, comorbidities were classified into five specific combinations: cardiovascular conditions (coronary heart disease or heart attack, stroke, and hypertension); gastrointestinal conditions (ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, diverticulitis or diverticulosis, etc. and gallbladder stones or inflammation); respiratory conditions (chronic bronchitis or emphysema); liver conditions (hepatitis or cirrhosis); and metabolic conditions (obesity and type 2 diabetes).

Among nearly 130,000 participants without a history of cancer, the risk of any incident cancer was significantly higher for adults with a history of respiratory  and cardiovascular conditions. Not so with gastrointestinal, liver, and metabolic disease.  However, it was a complex multiple risk assessment meaning, for example, there was a very definite link between a history of liver conditions and risk of liver cancer, but otherwise liver conditions were associated with a significantly REDUCED risk of endometrial cancer (womb lining).

Meanwhile, metabolic conditions (obesity and type 2 diabetes) were associated with an increased risk of liver, endometrial, kidney, biliary, thyroid, rectal, colon, pancreas, and hematopoietic cancers (leukemias), with a DECREASED risk of melanoma, lung, head and neck, and prostate cancers.

“The strong positive associations together with the high global prevalence of obesity and type 2 diabetes further underscores the public health importance of efforts to curtail these conditions,” was the obvious conclusion.

Additionally, cardiovascular conditions were associated with an increased risk of four cancers: prostate, biliary, upper gastrointestinal, and kidney. Plus a DECREASED RISK of breast cancer. 

Gastrointestinal conditions were also associated with an increased risk of four cancers: thyroid, breast, kidney, and ovarian and AGAIN, a decreased risk of prostate cancer, while respiratory conditions were associated with an INCREASED risk of lung and pancreatic cancers, and a REDUCED risk of prostate cancer.

Quite a complicated picture, as you will see. But little comfort. If you are a man and at risk of demise from lung cancer, it is hardly reassuring to think “Well, at least I won’t get prostate cancer!” Doesn’t really work, does it?

In fact only one position “works”, which is to do your very best to remain in good health overall.

And let’s not be coy; I’m talking also about death here.

For individual cancer types, metabolic conditions mean you are more likely to die following a diagnosis of endometrial cancer, upper gastrointestinal cancer, and leukemias, and prostate cancer, while cardiovascular conditions were associated with a higher hazard of death following a diagnosis of leukemia-type cancers and lung cancer.

[I have used the word leukemias here, to simplify. There are of course several leukemias but there are other “cancers” of blood, bone marrow, lymph, and lymphatic system, such as Hodgkin’s, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and multiple myeloma. 

Having assembled all this good data, the authors of the study appear to have then turned daft and hypothesized that the reason for the higher-risk connections is that not enough of the right “treatment” (suboptimal was their word) was used to combat the cancers, because of concern over the patient’s overall health!

What? Death by cancer is NOT a deficiency of chemo or radiation, we all know that. It’s lack of health!

But then, thank goodness, they slip in that these results create a strong concern for “individualized primary prevention among individuals.” That is correct and is the ONLY way to do battle with the Big C. It’s back to my dictum: any good health measure is an anti-cancer measure.

And nothing I have written here overrides my main teaching, which is that YOU are responsible for your own health and cancer risk. To leave it to the medical profession has the same outcome as suicide!

To your good health,Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

Source Reference: 

Lavery JA, et al “Comorbidity in midlife and cancer outcomes” JAMA Netw Open 2025; DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.3469.

Secondary Source

Koroukian SM, et al “Moving closer to personalized cancer prevention strategies by assessing comorbidity and multimorbidity” JAMA Netw Open 2025; DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.3476.

In the 19th century, oysters were plentiful and cheap; and were sold on almost every street corner in London. The lower class used oysters as a substitute for expensive beef in stews and soups. One of the most popular Victorian dishes with the lower class was oyster pie!

Did you know entire human civilizations have thrived off this small, tasty bivalve? Massive piles of oyster shells (e.g., middens) have been found on every large landmass on Earth, and evidence of oyster consumption has been dated to almost two hundred million years ago.¹

Claire Panosian Dunavan, professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a past-president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, loves oysters too. Oysters Rockefeller, yes. Steamed oysters with ginger and scallions. And best of all: raw, briny oysters with a dash of Tabasco, lemon juice, or a delicate mignonette.

But she’s giving them up!

I haven’t been “bitten” by an oyster since 1986 (one “got” me and I ended up throwing up for 2 days!) But some people have been “got” by oysters. In the late 1980s there was  a  study linking oyster intake, intestinal symptoms, and Vibrio stool cultures in roughly 500 doctors and scientists visiting New Orleans. Yes, those who ate oysters—both raw and cooked—suffered more diarrhea than those who abstained. But so what? More than half of the subjects who were found to have non-cholera Vibrio bacteria in their stool never became ill.

Then, in 1995, the FDA approved the first-ever Hepatitis A vaccine. “What a boon,” says professor Dunavan. “Especially for people who loved filter-feeding bivalves like oysters, mussels, scallops, and clams, as well as many others at risk for Hepatitis A’s harshest blows (think citrine conjunctivae, hemorrhage, encephalopathy), which were all too common in my early-career days.”²

But she’s worried about Vibrios, a nasty bacterial strain. I had my dose in 2006 when I volunteered to help in Sri Lanka, after the tsunami. Conditions were appalling. I got cholera bad! (Vibrio cholerae). I nearly died but kept myself alive drinking the plane dry of chardonnay on the 23-hour flight back home! I think it worked partly as a bactericidal but death from cholera happens within hours, due to rapid dehydration due to diarrhea. Since wine is 88% water, I attribute my survival to that! Haha!

Cholera has been with us since ancient times, of course. Over the centuries, millions have died (and still do in poorer unhygienic countries) . Medical history was made when physician  John Snow figured out that the London cholera epidemic of 1854 was being caused by the water pump in Broad Street (Golden Square). He had the pump shut off (they removed the handle!) and the epidemic, which killed over 600 people, came rapidly to an end.³

It was an important step in epidemiology. Incidentally, the actual pump is still there today, in the Soho district, as a memorial.

Anyway, back to oysters! Or rather back to the cousins of cholera. Vibrios are motile, comma-shaped bacteria that live in brackish coastal water and sometimes contaminate oysters. Although Vibrio cholerae is the clan’s most infamous species, one of the deadliest bacteria on Earth today is Vibrio fulnificus. It can kill you in less than a day! And it happens to be here in the USA.

It is easily picked up by walking along the sea shore. If you happen to have a tiny skin crack or cut in your foot look out! V. fulnificus can penetrate through a miniscule skin breach and the results of an infection can be disastrous. The mortality rate is at least 18%.

If you are sick with liver disease or other afflictions, you are especially vulnerable. At the very least you could end up with profound sepsis and necrotic, blistering wounds for which you could need skin grafts.

Yet, if your overall health is compromised, did your doctor warn you not to eat raw seafood? Of course not.

Now we have a new kid on the block: Vibrio parahaemolyticus. Although less lethal than V. vulnificus, this species also causes gastroenteritis, wound infections, and sepsis mediated by a heat-stable toxin found in human pathogenic strains. It is found in oysters and clams, etc. as far north as British Columbia. 

A recent report from Australia about oyster-related V. parahaemolyticus infections in 268 people with a median age of 52: in this outbreak, many sufferers were on drugs that reduce gastric acid — a timely reminder that hypochlorhydria (which increases with age even in unmedicated people) predisposes us not just to infections due to Vibrios but other gastrointestinal pathogens as well.

Climate Change

In the eastern United States, the incidence of V. vulnificus infection has increased more than 8-fold from 1988 to 2018, with case numbers projected to double by 2100. In recent years, similar trends have been noted with respect to V. parahaemolyticus and cholera.1

The spread of Vibrio pathogens has been blamed on warmer ocean waters; at least by lazy thinkers. I’m not a fan of global warming, although “climate change” cannot be denied.

But just blaming warming oceans is to overlook a very important extra factor in play: sewage!

Fecal contamination of the oceans (and vomit) is dramatically on the rise, due to increased populations as a whole, plus faulty septic systems or wastewater treatment plants, as well as boaters and beach-goers dumping directly into the water.

My own favorite oystery (is that a word?) in France was closed down for months last year, due to fecal contamination (Arcachon).

One can expect these problems to get worse, as human populations continue to grow relentlessly.

Can anything be done? The industry puts its hopes (me too!) in rapid post-harvest cooling and other modern strategies, such as depuration, thermal processing, freezing, irradiation, high-hydrostatic pressure, and high-salinity relaying. We will just have to see.

Professor Dunavan has announced she’s giving up raw oysters. Me? I’ll continue to take my chance, as here in a French market stall…

Finally: a note about cholera vaccine. If you had one you will remember the very “heavy arm” after-effect! In years past one had to have a certificate of cholera vaccination before being allowed on a plane. But protection only lasts about 6 months. In the 1970s the WHO stopped recommending it.

To be honest, I had completely forgotten about it when I went to Sri Lanka, an omission that might have cost me my life.

Prof. Keith

References:

1. https://simplyoysters.com/oyster-history
2. https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/parasites-and-plagues/114376
3. [Case Studies in Public Health. 2018 Mar 30:77–99. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-804571-8.00017-2]

It turns out there’s another catch too: it only works for you if you drink 1-3 cups in the morning. CUPS: not a 32 oz. flagon!

Why would morning time be important? Nobody knows – but it’s speculated that, since that’s the time of day when we experience the maximum levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines, it has to do with coffee’s anti-inflammatory properties. Also, the caffeine might disrupt our normal circadian rhythms, if taken later in the day and over a longer period.

This useful insight comes from an observational study based on the famous National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Workers found that, compared with non-coffee drinkers, those who mostly drank coffee in the morning had a lower risk of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality when followed over a median 9.8 years.¹

In contrast, people who kept drinking coffee later in the day, the all-day type, had no reduction in all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality regardless of how much they consumed.

So… not a case of more is better. In the afternoons we start to turn to a parasympathetic state, which is soothing and relaxing. We don’t want that disrupted by caffeine!

Incidentally, neither coffee drinking pattern appeared to be tied to more or less cancer-specific mortality.

There was one slight but amusing problem with the science statistics: these were not randomized trials, because nobody wanted to be in the placebo group! Haha!

Lu Qi, MD, PhD, epidemiologist of Tulane University in New Orleans and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, and colleagues in European Heart Journal performed their study using the 1999-2018 cycles of NHANES, a nationally representative cohort that includes health exams and lab tests. There were 40,725 adult participants identified who had completed 24-hour dietary recalls.

Reported coffee habits were fed into a cluster analysis that split participants into morning type (36%) and all-day types (16%) of coffee drinkers, the remainder considered non-coffee drinkers. These coffee drinking patterns were validated in 1,463 adults from the Women’s and Men’s Lifestyle Validation Study who had complete data on 7-day dietary records.

Compared with non-coffee drinkers, the morning and all-day types were older, more likely to be white, had higher family income, and a higher prevalence of diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol. Among coffee drinkers, the morning-type pattern was associated with more tea and caffeinated soda drinking but lower overall quantities of coffee than the all-day pattern.

The authors tried to adjust their mortality analyses to account for between-group differences in caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee intake amounts, sleep hours, and other confounders.

It is, of course, possible that coffee drinkers differ from non-drinkers in a number of aspects. I’ve always had the suspicion that coffee drinkers are often smokers. That would skew the results, for sure.

How Much Is Too Much?

According to the Mayo Clinic, up to 400 milligrams (mg) of caffeine a day (4 cups) appears to be safe for most healthy adults. I disagree and think that 200 mg is a safer limit. That’s roughly the amount of caffeine in 2 – 3 small cups of brewed coffee, 6 cans of cola or three “energy shot” drinks, such as Red Bull. Keep in mind that the actual caffeine content in beverages varies widely, especially among energy drinks.

A word of warning: Caffeine in powder or liquid form can quickly provide toxic levels of caffeine. Just one teaspoon of powdered caffeine is equivalent to about 28 cups of coffee! Such high levels of caffeine can cause serious health problems and possibly death.

So don’t be tempted to brew your own “red-eye” drink!

The De-Caffeinated Option

Doubtless it’s healthier for some people. If you are nervous, irritable, jumpy or get headaches with caffeine, you may want to try de-caffed. I prefer that option these days.

You may get withdrawal symptoms if you go suddenly cold turkey, so cut down gradually over 7 – 10 days.

But you need to know that the process of de-caffeinating coffee uses obnoxious chemicals, such as ethyl acetate or methylene chloride. Moreover, removing the caffeine often results in less flavor.

The so-called Swiss Water process for decaffeination does not use chemicals and does not spoil the flavor. CO2 or carbon dioxide is another chemical-free method of decaffeination. Because this method leaves the carbohydrates and proteins intact, there is less change in taste as a result of the decaffeination process. [Brittanica]

Other Benefits of Coffee/Caffeine

• Cardiovascular health:

Coffee may lower the risk of heart disease, stroke, and atrial fibrillation. 

• Liver disease:

Regular coffee intake may reduce the risk of liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. 

• Type 2 diabetes:

Coffee may improve insulin sensitivity and reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.² 

Parkinson’s disease:

Caffeine in coffee may protect brain cells that produce dopamine, reducing the risk of Parkinson’s.³

Cognitive Function and Mood: 

• Increased alertness and focus:

Caffeine in coffee stimulates the central nervous system, improving cognitive function and alertness.⁴

• Reduced risk of Dementia⁵

Coffee Substitutes

This is really advice for shoppers, not medical expertise! But if you can’t hack coffee in any form, there are one or two alternatives to explore.

I have had some success with Pero, NoCaff and Barleycup (ground roast barley and chicory). Typically there is plenty of flavor; it’s just not the familiar taste, of course! Others include Cafix and Postum.

But then, why bother, if you are not getting the scientifically validated benefits of coffee? Might as well drink water!

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

References:

1. Source Reference: Wang X, et al “Coffee drinking timing and mortality in US adults” Eur Heart J 2025; DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehae871.
2. Nutr Rev. 2018 Jun 1;76(6):395-417.  doi: 10.1093/nutrit/nuy014
3. Caffeine exposure and the risk of Parkinson’s disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies. J Alzheimers Dis. 2010;20 Suppl 1:S221-38. (Source: https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/food-features/coffee/#)
4. Lara DR. Caffeine, mental health, and psychiatric disorders. [J Alzheimers Dis. 2010;20 Suppl 1:S239-48. (Source: https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/food-features/coffee/#)
5. Eskelinen MH, Kivipelto M. Caffeine as a protective factor in dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. J Alzheimers Dis. 2010;20 Suppl 1:S167-74. (Source: https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/food-features/coffee/#)

Today an article came across my desk, harking back to a newsletter I wrote a couple weeks ago, about universal inadequate nutrition, due to modern farming methods raping the land, depleting the soil and putting profits over quality and true food values.
As part of the report, I quoted Lancet Global Health, that around 5 billion people on earth are deficient in iodine; that’s out of a population of 8 billion. That’s pretty scary.¹

You know, experts and pundits are talking about famine in decades to come. I think micronutrient depletion and deficiencies could become the real problem! We can’t live without iodine, zinc, manganese, etc. And of course the definition of a vitamin is something we cannot live without. Where is the necessary excess of these nutrients going to come from? Certainly don’t hold your breath waiting for governments—they are being advized by fools (or just not listening to good advice).

Now food manufacturers are part of the problem too (surprise?… not) Iodine deficiency was a major public health concern in times past. It wasn’t just about thyroid issues but growth and development in children. Many children grew up with dwarf stature. Marked iodine deficiency also leads to such severe mental impairment, it gave us the word cretin.

We now call that congenital hypothyroidism (congenital: present at birth, not inherited).

This condition receded when scientists woke up to it and began having table salt treated with added iodine. It solved a lot of the problems.

But deficiency is back, for a whole HOST of reasons! Today, people are getting less iodine because of changes in diet and food manufacturing. Researchers have increasingly been reporting low levels of iodine in pregnant women and other people, raising concerns about an impact on their newborns. And there is also a small, but growing, number of reports of iodine deficiency in kids.

Has Joe Mercola Lost It?

For nearly 2 decades Dr. Joe Mercola has been a great “influencer” in alternative health. But lately I have sat by and watched major changes in his output. He seems to want to take up with strange characters. I mentioned a while back the woman with a drinks problem who has now persuaded Joe that, for the rest of us, any amount of alcohol in the diet is deadly. Yet almost the same week, another report came out, confirming the health benefits of modest drinking, which are legion!²

In fact the study showed that people who drank roughly 12 – 35 glasses of wine a month (as gauged accurately by urinary tartaric acid levels) were much healthier than those who drank at the 3 – 12 glasses a month level.

And I’ve watch him telling us we need to eat MORE carbs, not less. 250 grams, even up to 450 grams, which I and colleagues find ludicrous. 120 grams is plenty and much more in keeping with our ancestral diet.

Then, before I have even finished this newsletter on iodine deficiency, Joe has declared the iodine is toxic, we are all getting far too much and we need to “detox”. This is in conjunction with Dr. Alan Christianson (an NMD), “widely regarded as a premier expert on thyroid issues.” Hmmm, if you look at his website and blogs, certainly he thinks he is.³

The co-guest Ashley Armstrong, a farmer, claims that “iodine accumulation is a big problem.”

Well, she and Christianson are adrift, that’s all I can say. He wants to blame iodine for the rise in Hashimoto’s (an autoimmune disease of the thyroid). But produces no compelling cause and effect association.

Put against the background that there are now literally hundreds of burgeoning autoimmune diseases, it seems perverse to say that the thyroid is different and has a unique cause for its increase.

I (along with others) blame rise in autoimmune diseases on the modern manufactured “ultra-processed” foods; pesticides; food allergies; chemical toxins of all kinds in the environment; GMOs; toxic seed oils; and stealth pathogens. All of these result in the immune system going cuckoo and attacking the person’s own body, which is what an auto-immune disease is.

Given the desirable presence of adequate iodine in all our systems, most especially the immune system, it’s important to get this right. So do you ignore me, or Joe?

I continue to lay the evidence in front of you.

Why Would We Be Lacking Iodine These Days?

At the beginning of the 20th century, goiter was very common in children in certain inland parts of the U.S., especially in what was called the “goiter belt” that stretched from Appalachia and the Great Lakes to the northwest U.S. These people were far from the sea and didn’t get enough iodine, which comes best from fish eggs and seaweed. Some of the kids were unusually short, deaf, intellectually stunted, and had other symptoms of a syndrome we now call congenital hypothyroidism.

Female infant with congenital hypothyroidism. The protruding tongue is characteristic

Public health experts realized they couldn’t solve the problem by feeding everyone seaweed and seafood, but they learned that iodine can essentially be sprayed on table salt. Iodized salt first became available in 1924. By the 1950s, more than 70% of U.S. households used iodized table salt. Bread and some other foods also were fortified with iodine, and iodine deficiency became rare. It worked!

But the happy days when all was taken care of by iodized salt are gone. 

One reason is the practice of adding bromine to breads. Bromine is in the same chemical family as iodine (the halogens) and squeezes out the iodine, resulting in a functional lack. That’s been a problem for decades. Incidentally, fluoride is also a halogen substance (fluorine is a halogen). I don’t recall anyone debating that it might deplete iodine levels too but logically it should: the most active chemical substance wins and fluorine is so active it can eat its way through a glass container.

The truth is, manufacturers are not bothering to add iodine any more. They just don’t care.

Low salt diets often advocated ignore this important connection. Iodized salt still exists but we use less of it. Fancy-nancy cookery programs now advocate fashionable kosher salt or pink Himalayan salt, neither of which have added iodine.

“People have forgotten why there’s iodine in salt,” said Elizabeth Pearce, MD, of Boston Medical Center. She is a regional coordinator for North America in the Iodine Global Network, a nongovernmental agency working to eliminate iodine deficiency disorders.

Pearce noted a reported 50% drop in U.S. iodine levels in surveyed Americans from the 1970s through the 1990s, which is completely contrary to Mercola’s view.

Though iodine consumption is falling overall, most Americans are probably still getting enough through their diet, the experts say. But many doctors worry that’s not the case for women and children, who are most vulnerable to iodine deficiency.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical societies recommend that all pregnant and breastfeeding women get 150 ?g of iodine each day. You can get that from one-half to three-quarters of a teaspoon of iodized table salt.

In the last 15 years or so, according to Voice of America, U.S. researchers have increasingly reported seeing mild iodine deficiency in pregnant women. A 2021 study out of Michigan State University in East Lansing reported that in about 460 pregnant women in the city of Lansing, about a quarter of them were not getting enough. Incidentally, that implies we are all borderline and not getting enough.⁴

Many prenatal vitamins don’t contain iodine, noted study author Jean Kerver, PhD, also of Michigan State University. I find that staggering. That’s why doctors recommend that pregnant or breastfeeding women check labels to ensure they are taking multivitamins or prenatal supplements with iodine.

Some studies have linked even mild iodine deficiency to lower IQs and language delay in children currently, although there is debate about at exactly what levels problems start, Elizabeth Pearce said.

Try Googling “iodine accumulation” disorder. I’ve never heard of it except the natural accumulation in breast milk, where it’s needed, or excess accumulation in the liver, due to iodine containing drugs such as amiodarone.

Your call!

To Your Good Health,

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

References:

1. Lancet Glob Health. 2024 Aug 29:S2214-109X(24)00276-6
2. Domínguez-López I, et al “Urinary tartaric acid as a biomarker of wine consumption and cardiovascular risk: The PREDIMED trial” Eur Heart J 2024; DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehae804
3. https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2025/01/12/excess-iodine-thyroid-health.aspx
4. https://www.voanews.com/a/doctors-worry-that-iodine-deficiency-a-dietary-problem-from-the-past-is-coming-back-/7930543.html

This is the message I’ve been writing for my followers for over 30 years. Now, at last, the science is all packaged in one very telling article, published in the journal Lancet Global Health. In a nutshell, it found that nutritional deficiencies are the norm, not the exception. Our modern “balanced” diets are definitely NOT keeping everyone properly nourished, whatever the dieticians, nutritionist and other ‘experts’ are saying.

The study,  conducted by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), used data from 31 countries to model global nutrient requirements and then applied these models to a dataset from 185 countries, estimating nutrient deficiencies for 99.3% of the world’s population. Fifteen essential nutrients, including calcium, B vitamins and vitamin C, were evaluated across different age and gender groups. 

“More than 5 billion people do not consume enough iodine (68% of the global population), vitamin E (67%) and calcium (66%). More than 4 billion people do not consume enough iron (65%), riboflavin (55%), folate (54%) and vitamin C (53%). 

Within the same country and age groups, estimated inadequate intakes were higher for women than for men for iodine, vitamin B12, iron and selenium and higher for men than for women for magnesium, vitamin B6, zinc, vitamin C, vitamin A, thiamin and niacin.” 

These results underscore the widespread nature of micronutrient deficiencies globally.¹

“We hope this analysis … improves understanding of global micronutrient inadequacy so that public health interventions can more effectively address deficiencies,” the researchers concluded. 

The most common nutrient deficiencies include vitamins D, B1, B2, B3 and B12, A, C, E, and minerals calcium, magnesium and iodine.

The concept of a “balanced diet” has become meaningless pap.

So next time you read some idiot spouting that all supplements do it give you expensive pee, note that person is a liar or a fool, or both. At best it is a remark over half a century out of date. Foods, even whole foods, no longer contain enough nutrients because the soil is exhausted of nutrients. Modern intensive farming methods simply do not look after the soil; they deplete it.

And THAT Is The New Story

It’s not just about poverty and inadequate nutrition. We have moved beyond mere eating habits and food. Our whole nutrition is now in the hands of commercialized agribusiness (Big Ag). They are taking over more and more of earth’s land and plundering it for profit, giving nothing back and making no provisions for the future.

It’s part of what I feel most scornful about numerous (not all) “successful” and “rich” people: they are stealing our children’s wealth, the grandchildren’s wealth and probably by now, the great-grandchildren’s wealth. There will be nothing left for them to live on at this rate.

Coming back to what that means for us, our food is no longer nutritious.

In 1997, Anne-Marie Mayer, a nutrition consultant in the UK, looked at the composition of the UK government’s food tables. She compared the mineral content of 20 fruits and 20 vegetables reported in the 1930s to those in the 1980s and found that the 1980s batch had lower levels of magnesium, copper and other micronutrients.

In 2004, Donald Davis and fellow scientists at the University of Texas carried out an investigation: 43 foods that were tested, mostly vegetables, showed a marked decrease in nutrients between the mid and late 20th century.

For example, the calcium in green beans dropped from 65 to 37mg. That’s almost halved. Vitamin A levels plummeted by almost half in asparagus. Broccoli stalks had less iron.

Of course the industry shills continue to add denials and confusion, to blur the lines. But modern supermarket foods—available in vast quantities all year round—are simply not nutritious. Oranges and other fruits may contain zero vitamin C. The reason is they have been on the shelves for weeks, kept viable by irradiation so the consumer is hoodwinked into thinking these are fresh crops.

The potential causes behind the decline in the nutritional quality of foods have been identified worldwide as chaotic mineral nutrient application, the preference for less nutritious cultivars/crops (choosing instead high-yielding varieties), and agronomic issues associated with a shift from natural farming to chemical farming.²

Since the 1940s, crop yield and the per-capita availability of foods have been continuously increasing due to intensive farming techniques, artificial fertilization, pesticides, irrigation, growing high-yielding varieties, and other environmental means, whereas malnutrition tends to increase incessantly due to disrupting the fine balance of soil life and decreasing the nutritional density and quality of the food crops.

Globally today, more than two billion people are suffering from micronutrient insufficiency, especially iodine, iron, folate, vitamin A, and zinc [1,2,3]. It is the main cause of premature deaths, morbidity, and retardation in the physical and mental growth of children [4]; in 2017, 11 million deaths and 255 million daily-adjusted life years (DALYs) could be attributed to malnutrition.³

In other words we are becoming overfed but undernourished, due to modern harvesting methods, which are deplorable.

Since ancient times, nutrient-intense crops such as millets, conventional fruits, and vegetables have been broadly grown and are the most important staple food, but the area dedicated to these crops has been declining rapidly over the past few decades due to their poorer economic competitiveness with major commodities such as high-yielding varieties of potato, tomato, maize, wheat, and rice.

In other words farmers have gone with profits and screw the consumer.

The Soil Is More Precious Than Gold

We can’t eat gold. But our soil keeps us alive. In my days as a country youngster (my people never owned a farm, were just laborers or “farm hands”), the ruling drive was to improve the soil. There is nothing more powerful and biologically positive you could do for your community than to leave the soil in a better state than when you started.

Only small-scale farmers now care about that. Yet they are a dying breed, being gobbled up by Big Ag and the likes of Bill Gates (now the largest farming landowner in the USA).

What’s sometimes overlooked also is that soils help manage water. They are a water containment system. If the inherent structures in the soil are distorted or destroyed, water retention is compromised.

Soil contains an uncountable multitude of inconspicuous microorganisms and soil animals that modern agribusiness destroys. These organisms include bacteria, algae, fungi, various worms, springtails, woodlice and many others. Soil organisms are responsible for the regeneration of the soil. Bacteria, fungi and earthworms create fertile soil and make nutrients available for plant growth.

Soil organisms respond to human activities through changes in their diversity and are therefore considered excellent early warning systems for disturbances. Soil is threatened in several ways. The biggest risk factors for soil are physical changes such as erosion, humus loss and compaction, and chemical changes due to external inputs of pollutants and pesticides.

We worry about pesticides hurting humans. I think maybe we should worry even more about the deleterious effect on organisms in our soil. Without them, the ecosystem will collapse and there are already these serious warning signs that soil can no longer do what it is supposed to do—nourish all creatures in the ecosystem.

Sorry to be a party pooper, but remember all this when you are munching your way through the Christmas feast! How MUCH you eat does little for your nourishment, if the food is already depleted in nutrients.

To Your Good Health,Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

References:

1. Lancet Glob Health. 2024 Aug 29:S2214-109X(24)00276-6
2. https://www.mdpi.com/2304-8158/13/6/877
3. Murray, C.J.L. Health effects of dietary risks in 195 countries, 1990–2017: A systematic analysis for the global burden of disease study 2017. Lancet 2019, 383, 1958–1972

Not so much to talk about acute damage due to vaccinations. That’s a very hot controversy! (well, not really—there’s no such thing as vaccination damage, don’t you know?)

But I’d like to focus a little on the equally serious problem of delayed reactions and the larger unanswered questions which surround the long term consequences of immunization. 

What triggered this was an enquiry which led me to search the pages in back of my alternative-doctor.com website. Shock! Yikes! I found 1,000s of pages were missing. The products of years of writing and publishing just gone!

Well, you don’t need to know how I got back most of them. But it did result in my reviewing the page on professor Rodney Obomsawin’s book, which I had got in turn (with permission) from John Scudamore of the incredible whale.to website!

To talk with you sensibly, you need to be reminded that the basic structure of a virus is nothing.. oh sorry, the smallest amount of something that is not quite nothing! It was a joke in my day that a virus was “a piece of bad news, wrapped in protein.” The protein was the virion casing, the bad news was viral DNA and/or RNA.

Even the layman knows that viruses are very adept at slithering into human cells and taking over the genetic material in the nucleus. WELL RIGHT THERE IS A PROBLEM THAT I DON’T SEE MANY PEOPLE WRITING ABOUT. Does anyone really know just to what extent viruses can inject their material into the human genome? I don’t think so.

But it’s an awesome question and worth asking, given the rise in chronic diseases, most notably perhaps, auto-immune diseases. We know viruses can cause cancer. What about leading to two heads or four legs?

According to Raymond Obomsawin, Joshua Lederberg, a Stanford University School of Medicine geneticist and Nobel Prize winner, was perhaps the first to raise the warning (1967) that the use of live virus vaccines in mass immunization campaigns represents “biological engineering on a rather large scale.” He (Lederberg) goes on to comment:

While these [vaccines] are thought to be of indubitable value for preventing serious diseases, their global impact on the development of human beings of a side range of genotypes is hard to assess at our present stage of wisdom. . . . Live viruses are themselves genetic messages used for the purpose of programming human cells for the synthesis of immunogenic virus antigens.¹

Researchers such as Buttram postulate that the use of live viral vaccines in mass immunization programs introduces foreign genetic material into the human system, which has precipitated an unprecedented escalation of various auto-immune disorders in recent decades. These are disorders wherein antibodies or immune cells indiscriminately attack the tissues of one’s own body-mind complex.²

Harvard graduate and physician, R. Markowitz, explains how the live viruses in vaccines can, in the long term, lead to such auto-immune disease conditions. Attenuated viruses (in the vaccines) attach their own genetic “episome” to the genome (half set of chromosomes and their genes) of the host cell, and are thus capable of surviving or remaining latent within the host cells for years. The presence of this foreign antigenic material within the host cell sets the stage for their unpredictable provocation of various auto-immune phenomena such as herpes, shingles, warts, tumors—both benign and malignant—and diseases of the central nervous system, such as varied forms of paralysis and inflammation of the brain.³

Markowitz further poses the caution that vaccines do not act by merely producing pale or mild copies of the original disease, but all of them commonly produce a variety of symptoms of their very own. In some cases “these illnesses may be considerably more serious than the original disease, involving deeper structures, more vital organs, and less of a tendency to resolve spontaneously. Even more worrisome is the fact that they are almost always more difficult to recognize.”⁴

A British Medical Journal article long ago by Miller et al, reports that “Various German authors have described the apparent provocation of multiple sclerosis by–vaccination against smallpox, typhoid, tetanus, polio, and tuberculosis.”⁵

No less disconcerting is the warning raised by Rutgers University Professor R. Simpson when he addressed science writers at a seminar sponsored by the American Cancer Society:

Immunization Programs against flu, measles, mumps, polio and so forth may actually be seeding humans with RNA to form latent proviruses in cells throughout the body. These latent proviruses could be molecules in search of diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, systemic lupus erythematosus, Parkinson’s disease, and perhaps cancer.⁶

A study in Science reported a notable similarity between certain different viruses (including measles and influenza) and the protein structure of the brains protective myelin sheaths. This being the case, antibodies induced by live viral vaccines could well be cross reacting and attacking brain cells.⁷

All this is very scary stuff and it’s being kept very quiet.

Mental Disorders

Medical historian Harris Coulter has developed a systematic and comprehensive thesis that childhood immunizations frequently result in a demyelinating encephalitis. This condition prevents the normal development of the protective myelin sheaths of the brain and nerve cells during infancy and early childhood. Such adverse pathologic changes may, on a visible level, lead to a range of learning disabilities and behavioral problems, which we all know has now reached pandemic proportions here in the USA.⁸

Bruce Rabin, a professor of pathology and psychiatry at Western Psychiatric Institute, Pittsburgh has found evidence that approximately one-third of all cases of schizophrenia are auto-immune in nature, with immune bodies attacking the brain cells.⁹

When we consider the alarming increase in the numbers of schizophrenic cases, and the now credible “viral hypothesis of mental disorders,” childhood vaccine programs can be considered as highly suspect in playing a causative role.¹⁰

Those of you who have read my massive compendium PSYCHIATRY WITHOUT DRUGS will know I regard almost all “mental health issues” as physical in origin. It’s been proven not to be a “chemical imbalance” as the medical literature still keeps propounding. Food allergies, vitamin deficiencies, hormonal imbalances and other disorders, including I specifically mentioned auto-immune allergy to brain tissue are the real cause of suffering but are never even considered by psychiatrists.

To them, everything is a “drug deficiency.”

My hero, the “Medical Heretic”, Robert S. Mendelsohn comments trenchantly that:

While the myriad short-term hazards of most immunizations are known (but rarely explained), no one knows the long-term consequences of injecting foreign proteins into the body . . . . Even more shocking is the fact that no one is making any structured effort to find out.

There is growing suspicion that immunization against . . . childhood diseases may be responsible for the dramatic increase in auto-immune diseases since mass inoculations were introduced. These are fearful diseases such as cancer, leukemia, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease, lupus erythematosus, and the Guillain-Barré syndrome. . . . Have we traded mumps and measles for cancer and leukemia? ¹¹

There you go… a lot of look ups, if you are inclined. As I and others often joke: if you are not a bit scared scared, you don’t get what’s happening!

To Your Good Health,

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

References:

1. [Lederberg, J., Science, October 20, 1967, p. 313]
2. [Buttram, H., “Live Virus Vaccines and Genetic Mutation,” Health Consciousness, April, 1990, pp. 44 and 45]
3. [in  James, W., Immunization, p. 15]
4. [Markowitz, R., “The Case Against Immunizations,” Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy, Washington, DC, 1983, Institute reprint]
5. [Miller, et al, “Multiple Sclerosis and Vaccinations,” British Medical Journal, April 22, 1967, pp. 210-213]
6. [James W, ibid.]
7. [Jahnke, U., et al, “Sequence Homology Between Certain Viral Proteins and Proteins Related to Encephalomyelitis and Neuritis,” Science, Vol. 29, July 19, 1985, pp. 282-284
8. [Coulter, H., Vaccination, Social Violence and Criminality, Washington, DC, 1990, (entire work)]
9. [McGuire, R., “Brain Auto-Antibodies in 33% of Schizophrenics,” Medical Tribune, July 14, 1988, p. 6]
10. [Morozov, P., editor, “Research on the Viral Hypothesis of Mental Disorders,” in Advances in Biological Psychiatry, Vol. 12, published by Karger, S., New York, 1983, pp. 52-75]
11. [Mendelsohn, R., “The Medical Time Bomb of Immunization Against Disease,” pp. 47 and 48]

Who he?

Keys is the man who saddled us with the fake science claiming that saturated fats kill and sugar was NOT the culprit. He did not simply make a mistake; he criminally FAKED his results. For why? Because he was paid to lie, as a supposed scientist  in pursuit of the truth.

That’s what I have against him. Heck, you could even claim that Genghis Khan was just “doing his job” (aggressive head of state). But Ancel Keys set out cynically and deliberately to hurt Mankind by steering medicine in the wrong direction.

He was paid by the sugar industry to deflect attention from the manifold dangers of invert sugar, which is one of the deadliest, most inflammatory food substances known. It underlies modern metabolic disorders, from obesity, to diabetes.¹

Prof. John Yudkin, who wrote the awesome book Pure White and Deadly, assembled masses of demographic figures proving conclusively that sugar was a VERY BAD THING and the industry wanted him GONE. Keys set out to demolish Yudkin and his legacy.

The current trend to blame seed oils and omega-6 PUFAs, notably linoleic acid, is laudable in its way but it in no wise means that we were wrong about sugar. It remains a deadly dietary player.

Whereas fat, which Keys targeted, is not only not the problem but is an important dietary need and keeps us healthy.

So we got the current soaring debacle of health, where millions are going down with heart disease, diabetes, stroke and dementias. Yes, dementias. We currently have an epidemic of dementias, since the introduction of low-fat diets in the 1970s. Guess what? The brain is 60% fat, so for low-fat diet, read low-brain diet.

How did he do it?

Keys Conniving With Commerce for His Thirty Pieces of Silver

Keys won the battle with Yudkin (which was totally rigged by corrupt dollars) and Keys became nutritional dogma. The way he faked it was to pick only countries that illustrated his point. The rest were ignored.

Keys collected data on deaths from coronary heart disease and fat consumption from 22 countries but he cherry-picked the data from only the 7 countries which supported his theory that animal fat was the main cause of coronary heart disease. The results of what later became known as the “Seven Countries Study” appeared to show that saturated fat in the diet was strongly related to coronary heart disease mortality both at the population and at the individual level.

The title itself is a fraud: it was actually a 22 countries study! Here’s the truth:

The graph on the left was what Keys published. It looks quite convincing: the more fat you ate, the more certain you would have a fatal heart attack. The graph on the right includes all the data Keys had and, as you can see, there is no real pattern. Yikes!

In fact if you took the results from just Finland, Israel, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, France, and Sweden, the exact opposite would have been found: that fat in the diet protects against heart disease.

But history enshrined Ancel Keys as a virtual folk hero. He even had a picture on the cover of Time magazine (1961), a slot usually reserved for celebrities, politicians and heroes (like Taylor Swift??)

Meanwhile, John Yudkin lost his post, his career was damaged by the food industry and prominent nutritionists who tried to destroy his reputation. He was ostracized by his college at the University of London and vilified in the scientific press.

Oh, and did I mention: hundreds of millions died of the false dogma, which continues to this day.

Cristin Kearns discovered by chance secret documents of the Sugar Industry in which its campaigns, lies and deceptions are collected since the 1970s. She contacted Gary Taubes, and together they published the whole truth in Mother Jones magazine.

The official Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) publishes an influential study linking sugar consumption to the risk of death from cardiovascular diseases 40 years after Yudkin did.²

Fortunately, it’s gradually becoming recognized that Keys cooked his data. But incredibly he still has his admirers and defenders, which I typically rate as those who supported the phoney cholesterol myth and refuse to admit they were wrong; an all-too-human quirk.

But there was evidence Keys was wrong, damnably wrong, even before the famous seven countries study.

For example, recently an unpublished 56 month randomized study of 9,423 adults living in state mental hospitals or a nursing home (which made it possible to rigidly control their diets) was unearthed.

This study, which Keys was the lead investigator of, found that replacing half of one’s animal (saturated) fats with seed oil (e.g., corn oil) lowered their cholesterol, but for every 30 points it dropped, their risk of death increased by 22% (which roughly translates to each 1% drop in cholesterol raising the risk of death by 1%).³

Note: The author who unearthed that study also discovered another (unpublished) study from the 1970s of 458 Australians, which found that replacing some of their saturated fat with seed oils increased their risk of dying by 17.6%.⁴

Likewise, recently, one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world published internal sugar industry documents.⁵

They showed  the sugar industry had used bribes to make scientists place the blame for heart disease on fat so Yudkin’s work would not threaten the sugar industry.⁶

In turn, it is now generally accepted that Yudkin was right, but nonetheless, our medical guidelines are still largely based on Key’s work.

However, despite a significant amount of data that now shows lowering cholesterol is not associated with a reduction in heart disease, the need to lower cholesterol is still a dogma within cardiology. For example, how many of you have heard of this 1986 study of older patients which was published in the Lancet which concluded:

“During 10 years of follow-up from December 1, 1986, to October 1, 1996, a total of 642 participants died. Each 1 mmol/L increase in total cholesterol corresponded to a 15% decrease in mortality (risk ratio 0 to 85 [95% Cl 0·79 to 0·91]).”⁷

And this:

For half a century, a high level of total cholesterol (TC) or low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) has been considered to be the major cause of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease (CVD), and statin treatment has been widely promoted for cardiovascular prevention. However, there is an increasing understanding that the mechanisms are more complicated and that statin treatment, in particular when used as primary prevention, is of doubtful benefit.

Expert commentary: Our search for falsifications of the cholesterol hypothesis confirms that it is unable to satisfy any of the Bradford Hill criteria* for causality and that the conclusions of the authors of the three reviews are based on misleading statistics, exclusion of unsuccessful trials and by ignoring numerous contradictory observations.⁸

*Association does not equal causation, as we are accustomed to hearing. That doesn’t mean we have to dump all such potential evidence. It COULD be correct to draw a causative relation. In 1965 Sir Austin Bradford Hill first proposed 9 criteria that would help strengthen the causality. Here are the first 6, for your understanding. I think only an epidemiologist would need all! 

Strength of association: The stronger the association, the more likely it is causal. 

Consistency: The same findings should be observed in different populations, study designs, and times. 

Specificity: There should be a one-to-one relationship between the cause and outcome. 

Temporal sequence: Exposure should precede outcome. 

Biological gradient: Changes in disease rates should correspond to changes in exposure. 

Biological plausibility: There should be a potential biological mechanism.

Sir Austin Bradford Hill CBE FRS was a British epidemiologist who pioneered the modern randomized clinical trial and, together with Richard Doll, demonstrated the connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer.

Well, I hope that got you thinking!

Eat well and don’t die before your time!

To Your Good Health,
Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

Final Note: You know what really pees me off? Ancel Keys went to live in Calabria, a region in southern Italy famous for the longevity of its population, and he lived to over 100 years. Yet people are still dying younger than they should of his dogma and the so-called cholesterol myth.

Spare a little thought for John Yudkin in your prayers tonight: he worked to help humanity and was destroyed. Ancel Keys worked to destroy the truth and lived to over 100! Go figure…

BTW I know why Keys lived so long! There’s a secret to the Calabrian longevity miracle; it’s Bergamot juice and I’ve got some.

References

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html
2. Kearns CE, Schmidt LA, Glantz SA. Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research: A Historical Analysis of Internal Industry Documents. JAMA Intern Med.2016;176(11):1680–1685. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.5394
3. https://www.statnews.com/2016/04/12/unearthed-data-challenge-dietary-advice/
4. BMJ 2013;346:e8707
5. JAMA Intern Med. 2016;176(11):1680–1685. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.5394
6. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat
7. Volume 350, Issue 9085p1119-1123October 18, 1997
8. Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology, 11(10), 959–970. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512433.2018.1519391

As we age, our bones lose density and become more fragile, putting us in danger of breaks and fractures. It’s a condition called osteoporosis and while it should not be lost sight of that aging men also suffer from it, this is a particular concern among post-menopausal women, who generally have much greater losses in bone density than men in their age group.

In fact I learned years ago that more women die of fracture of the femur (osteoporosis, weak bones) than die of breast cancer!

Ock Chun, professor of nutritional sciences in The University of Connecticut’s College of Agriculture, Health, and Natural Resources, has been working with blackcurrant, a tart berry, for years, investigating its potential to ameliorate a host of conditions including postmenopausal bone loss and osteoporosis.

Professor Ock Chun

Chun previously led a study showing that in mice, blackcurrant supplements helped prevent bone density loss post-menopause. This study showed that the best time for intervention was in the transition between pre- and post-menopause before bone loss has significantly progressed.

With these findings in hand, Chun and her team wanted to see if they would translate to a human population.

They recently published their findings demonstrating blackcurrant’s protective effects against bone density loss in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry.¹

Forty peri- and early post-menopausal participants between the ages of 45 and 60 took capsules of blackcurrant powder daily for six months. Participants were randomly assigned to either take one capsule, two capsules, or a placebo. Each capsule was 392 milligrams.

The researchers found that the supplements prevented the loss of whole-body bone mineral density. The group that took two capsules actually showed overall increases in bone mineral density at the end of the six-month trial period.

The researchers looked at changes to the gut microbiome and immune system, which interact to play a key role in bone metabolism.

Down With RANKL!

They found that the blackcurrant supplements decreased levels of proteins called interleukin-1 beta and RANKL. Interleukin-1 beta stimulates the expression of RANKL which causes bone resorption and thus a decrease in bone density.

So it is very important to reduce levels of RANKL, which the study did. RANKL is the abbreviation for receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa beta ligand. It is also commonly referred to as osteoprotegerin ligand (OPGL) or osteoclast differentiation factor (ODF) or TNF related activation-induced cytokine (TRANCE). 

Listen… don’t worry about all those daft names! Haha! We’ll stick with RANKL. And remember: it increases bone resorption, which is a BAD THING.

So it is a GOOD THING when blackcurrant berry extract significantly reduces RANKL, in a direct dose-related response, after just 6 months.

Taking the blackcurrant supplements also increased a bacteria found in the gut microbiome called Ruminococcus 2. This led the researchers to infer that it could be one of the bacteria driving the protective effects blackcurrant has on bones.

Interestingly, science shows this particular bacterium has a lot going for it. It appears to protect against sarcopenia (muscle loss); osteoporosis (bone loss); Crohn’s disease; lower serum levels of alanine, valine, leucine, isoleucine, proline, tryptophan and ornithine; infections and hospitalization for complications of cirrhosis.²

In fact one article suggested it might be classified as a probiotic! The Ruminococcus bacteria in our gut play a major role in helping us digest resistant starches, producing butyrate. The slow digestion of these particular carbohydrates by Ruminococcus has been linked to many health benefits such as reversing infectious diarrhea and reducing the risk of diabetes and colon cancer.³

Out With Bisphosphonates

Typical of the pharmaceutical industry, they have come up with a dangerous and ineffective treatment for osteoporosis, which they have tried to establish as the “standard of care.”

Drugs like Fosamax, which are pushed on women, do little or no good. But they do have serious side-effects. For instance, jaw bone necrosis. Plus they cause fractures of the femur, which is the exact opposite of what you would expect if bone density really was increased.

Other side effects include abdominal pain, skin rashes (including blistering), red eyes and tearing up, trouble breathing and swollen joints.

How much nicer to munch on a natural fruit!

You can add blackcurrants to your smoothies, make purees, even eat blackcurrant jam – but sugar-free only! The French brand Maman (Mummy) is widely available in the USA and elsewhere but it must be kept in the refrigerator. 

DON’T CONFUSE THIS FRUIT WITH BLACKBERRIES, THEY ARE DIFFERENT.

Got Prunes?

While we are on the topic of natural solutions to bone loss, how about prunes? I came across an interesting article in the journal Osteoporosis International (2024)⁴ which found prunes had similar benefits to blackcurrants (notice the dark colors, by the way).

“This is the first randomized controlled trial to look at three-dimensional bone outcomes with respect to bone structure, geometry and estimated strength,” said lead author Mary Jane De Souza, distinguished professor of kinesiology and physiology at Penn State. “In our study we saw that daily prune consumption impacted factors related to fracture risk. That’s clinically invaluable.”

There is more to prunes than just a laxative effect

To see whether daily prune consumption influenced bone quality, the research team conducted a 12-month randomized controlled trial with 235 postmenopausal women. Participants were assigned to one of three groups: no prunes; 50 grams (4 to 6) prunes daily; or 100 grams (10 to 12) prunes daily. Every six months, the participants were assessed using a peripheral quantitative computed tomography scan, which allows for cross-sectional imaging to measure 3D bone mass density, bone geometry and bone strength.

Over the course of one year, the researchers found that measures of bone mass density and bone strength in the tibia (shin bone) all decreased in women in the control group. In contrast, those who ate at least four to six prunes every day maintained bone density and bone strength and preserved bone structure, particularly in cortical bone. 

While women in both prune groups saw benefit, four to six prunes a day may be the more feasible dose. Women in the 10 -12 prunes a day group dropped out, due to boredom with the quantities required!

Yet another prune study showed significant reductions in inflammatory cytokines, which are proteins that help control inflammation, and activated monocytes, which are a major type of immune cell that has been shown to drive the chronic inflammatory response when 50 to 100 grams of prunes (about 5-12 prunes) are included in the diet, daily.

Specifically, reductions were seen in Tumor Necrosis Factor-? following 50 grams of daily prune intake, and reductions in Interleukin-1?, Interleukin-6, Interleukin-8 secretions, as well as activated monocytes, with 100 grams of prune intake, compared to diets without prunes.⁵

All of this is great for bone issues, as well as general health.

“These findings may be attributed to the abundance of bioactive compounds found in prunes, including vitamins, minerals, phenolic acids and polyphenols, which are likely acting synergistically to suppress activated monocytes and their secretion of bone-resorptive inflammatory cytokines,” said Co-author Connie Rogers, Ph.D., MPH, Professor and Department Head, Department of Nutritional Sciences, University of Georgia.

This is really the science of “food as medicine”! Good ‘ol Hippocrates…

To Your Good Health,Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

Sources:

1. Nosal, B. M. et al. Blackcurrants shape gut microbiota profile and reduce risk of postmenopausal osteoporosis via the gut-bone axis: Evidence from a pilot randomized controlled trial, Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.jnutbio.2024.109701
2. [JHEP Rep. 2022 Oct 29;5(1):100619. doi: 10.1016/j.jhepr.2022.100619. eCollection 2023 Jan]
3. [https://live-biotherapeutic.creative-biolabs.com/ruminococcus-spp.htm#]
4. Kristen J. Koltun et al, Prunes preserve cortical density and estimated strength of the tibia in a 12-month randomized controlled trial in postmenopausal women: The Prune Study, Osteoporosis International (2024). DOI: 10.1007/s00198-024-07031-6
5. Janhavi J. Damani et al, Prune Consumption Attenuates Proinflammatory Cytokine Secretion and Alters Monocyte Activation in Postmenopausal Women: Secondary Outcome Analysis of a 12-Mo Randomized Controlled Trial: The Prune Study, The Journal of Nutrition (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.tjnut.2023.11.014

She was astonished to discover that 19 out of 20 people put on the spot admitted to having one or more foods that disagreed with them. Replies would be along the lines of, “I don’t eat chocolate, because it gives me a headache. But I don’t have any food allergies.” Or “No I don’t have a food allergy but I avoid onions because they make my joints swell and ache.”

Nancy got the point immediately and off we went!

It is common, indeed you might even say that bandit foods are the norm, rather than unusual. The trouble is, most people think of the rare and dangerous exceptions, such as peanut allergy, which might result in an emergency visit to ER and a terrifying near-death experience (anaphylaxis).

Most food allergies are not obvious and indeed may be what we call a “hidden food allergy”, which we’ll come to in a different tract.

When to Suspect That Foods Might Be Disagreeing With You

Let’s start with another of my famous Scott-Mumby maxims: if you do not leap out of bed every morning, bouncing with abundant vibrant energy and eager to get the day’s work done, you are not well! 

Not 100% well. 

There are many reasons why you might not be hitting that particular bar, but bandit foods are by far the most likely cause. Now this all leads me to an absolutely KILLER Scott-Mumby question; probably my number one question in medical practice… Do you ever have good days (symptom-free days)?

If so, you can always be well all the time; it means there is nothing missing or broken; no deficiencies; etc. Great news! You can always be at least as good as you are on your best days. Patients found it comforting when I told them that.

Look at it this way: if you feel great sometimes and not others, it isn’t cancer, or a deleterious infection, parasite overload or a degenerative disease. Conditions like these don’t come and go—well on Tuesday, feel ill on Thursday, fine again by Saturday and then down again for another two days—is a classic pattern for a food allergy. Actually it’s the pattern for any intermittent trigger, including chemical sensitivity, stress overload and food allergy.

Again, the bandit food problem can be hidden and unsuspected. We’ll look another time. But the principle holds good.

Now there is a slew of symptoms that will tip you off that food might be the problem. 

• Bloating and flatulence

• Food binges

• Food cravings

• Overweight, underweight or wildly fluctuating weight (gaining a few pounds in a day)

• Symptoms actually come on while eating (duh!)

• Symptoms after food (falling asleep, chills, sudden rapid heartbeat)

• Feeling unwell without food (food addiction)

• Feeling tired, crabby or very lethargic on waking 

Please note that irritable bowel disease (IBS) so-called is NOT a disease; it’s a symptom!  They call it a disease because they can’t or won’t get to the bottom of it and solve the real problem! Same for migraine, it’s not a disease; it’s a symptom of something deeper.

How do I know? Simple: if giving up a food clears up the problem, it is not a disease. There is nothing wrong with the patient. Nothing broken, dysfunctional or missing!

Then Food Addiction

It astonishes people, that a food addiction can mean an allergy. People get hooked on the very food(s) that make them sick? But it’s true!

One of the questions above puzzles and intrigues people: how can waking up feeling lousy (feeling like death warmed up first thing in the morning is an amusing English expression) mean food addiction. But look! By 8.00 am in the morning you may have been off food for 10 – 14 hours. That’s enough to set up withdrawal symptoms!

Nothing is more characteristic of addiction than withdrawal symptoms. Indeed, that’s the very definition of addiction. Think about coffee “addicts”; I’m sure you know a few, even if you are not one. This person needs coffee every couple of hours. They are always at the drinks machine. And I do mean NEEDS coffee. If they go without for more than a few hours, a terrible headache sets in, enough to ruin the rest of the day.

That headache is a withdrawal symptom, just like heroin or tobacco, plain and simple.

What happens is that the patient (typically) muddles around in their robe to prepare some breakfast: toast or wheaties, cornflakes, milk, tea or coffee and sugar. One or more of these items fixes the withdrawals, winds them up and within an hour they feel better and get to grips with the day ahead!

If that’s a familiar scenario in your house, beware! One of more of you are playing with bandit foods. It’s not just that it will slow you down in the morning but lurking in the background are headaches, arthritis, dysbiosis, heart disease, even dementia. You don’t want to go there.

Feeling rotten first thing is just a staging on the way to something far worse. You don’t need to see a doctor or get labs to know that.

But do what I tell you and it will be gone within a week.

So What To Do?

Your first tool in trying to work out your private ME diet is a food diary. You can buy “food journals” online. But it’s a simple device you can make for yourself, just pages in any notebook. Rule 2 columns and on the left side, write down everything you eat and drink; that includes snacks, candy, coffee and anything else you have between meals. On the right side write down any symptoms, however mild.

https://experiencelife.lifetime.life/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Food_Journal.jpg

You should include supplements and any other health formula you take. I had a lady once, very ill; it turned out she was reacting to potato shavings in a well-known multi-vitamin. OK, potato and/or rice shavings (used as a compacting filler) are better than yucky corn starch for most people—but not her!

Make a note of the time for every entry; it is important to be accurate. In other words don’t write down a symptom before eating, unless it was present before eating. A reaction coming on BEFORE a food could not, logically, be caused by that food. On the other hand, a mild unfamiliar or unwanted feeling AFTER eating, however trivial, might be a clue that one of the foods you ate was not suiting you.

Noting the exact point when symptoms started could be important, even if it was mild at first and then many hours later when you felt really rough. Get it?

Note foodstuffs, not “foods”. In other words what actual food items did you eat, not how were they concocted (recipes). Here’s a startling observation I made often to patients: bread and whisky are the same thing to me—grains and yeast! A powerful whisky reaction can put a wheat-sensitive person in bed for days! Bread, cakes, biscuits, pastries, pizza, pasta, muffins, cookies and pancakes, are all wheat products, so look out for that.

Something else that stumbled people often was not noticing that certain foods are essentially the same thing (or very similar). Thus chicken and egg; pork and bacon; beef and “ham”burger. I’ve had people say, “I’m allergic to pork.” “Do you eat bacon?”  “Oh yes… Aah!”

Warning: a food diary does tend to make you very conscious of food, which is probably a good thing in the short term. However, taking the long view, try to avoid the exercise making you too introverted about feelings and symptoms, otherwise it can start becoming an obsession. Many allergy patients become so consumed by anxiety about what they are eating that they cannot eat or socialize normally. Food allergy investigations, as described here, are merely a tool not an end and should not become a way of life, otherwise family and friends will feel excluded and that in turn leads to rejection.

Patterns

You may begin to notice certain patterns appearing. Look for them carefully. For example headaches always seem to come on a Monday. I had a young schoolgirl who had migraines every Monday and didn’t want to go to school. Nobody really believed her; they assumed she was trying to get out of studies. The culprit turned out to be a major vegetable which always featured in the Sunday lunch!

Another case I recall was a man who had a bad headache pretty well every evening after work. He would come home, shot of whisky, throw back a mouthful of peanuts and go switch on the TV to relax. Within an hour he had his unpleasant symptom. Obviously, the whisky, right? Wrong! It was the peanuts!

Maybe you are better at weekends, better on vacation, or always ill after you go round to Amy and Jim’s place for dinner?

It can be laborious but remember, that’s all Luigi Cornaro had to go on. With enough persistence and determination, you can usually work out where the problems are coming from.

And there are fuller, more complete ways of working. Certain tests can be helpful. And if you want a comprehensive self-help guide as to how to do this, you could do no worse than get my own manual: One Diet For Life,I consider it a journey of a lifetime, that everyone undertake, at least once.

Now all this is not to say that everything is a food allergy. Lord no. But diet adjustments are a great place to start because there is usually some kind of beneficial result and they are relatively easy to do. If you can feel much better just avoiding, say, milk or wheat, that is far easier than battling against multiple environmental shocks and stressors, though I am on record (a TV interview) as saying that divorce could be a good cure for food allergy and intolerance! 

The reason is simple if you understand the overload principle: avoiding even just one stressor, especially if it is an important one, may free your body defenses up enough so that systems can cope with the rest, without your help!

Give it a try if you do not bounce out of bed in the morning, revved and ready to go!

Good luck,Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor