Hungry for Change

We all want more energy, an ideal body and beautiful younger looking skin. So what is stopping us from getting this?

From the creators of the best-selling documentary Food Matters comes another hard-hitting film certain to rock your world.

Hungry for Change (2012) exposes shocking secrets the diet, weightloss and food industry don’t want you to know about; deceptive strategies designed to keep you coming back for more. Find out what’s keeping you from having the body and health you deserve and how to escape the diet trap forever.

Featuring interviews with best selling health authors and leading medical experts plus real life transformational stories with those who know what it’s like to be sick and overweight. Learn from those who have been there before and continue your health journey today.

 Learn More

www.hungryforchange.tv (Official Website)

10 Step Action Guide. Make these simple additions to your life and watch your health improve. You can even print this out and put this on your fridge!

Jon Gabriel’s Evening Visualisation. Listen and learn how to apply the principles of visualisation as discussed in the film with visualisation expert Jon Gabriel.

Food Matters is a hard hitting, fast paced look at our current state of health. It is a feature length documentary film informing you on the best choices you can make for you and your family’s health.

The Food Matters Detox and Rejuvenation Guide is an informative guide that will teach you how to apply the principles addressed in the film. This instantly downloadable e-Book will help you find better alternatives for the foods your body might not agree with, giving you the tools and skills necessary to prepare more nutritious meals.

Food Matters the Recipe e-Book. If you’ve watched Hungry For Change and Food Matters and you are looking for ways to incorporate the lessons from these films into your daily life then this book is for you. The idea is that once you start adding these recipes into your life on a daily basis you will start feeling better and this will encourage you to keep eating this way!

Societal Control of Sugar Essential to Ease Public Health Burden

Robert H. Lustig, MD, and a team of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) researchers argue that sugar should be controlled like alcohol and tobacco to protect public health. In a new report, they maintain that sugar is fueling a global obesity pandemic, contributing to 35 million deaths annually worldwide from non-communicable diseases like diabetes, heart disease and cancer. 

 

 

Non-communicable diseases now pose a greater health burden worldwide than infectious diseases, according to the United Nations. In the United States, 75 percent of health care dollars are spent treating these diseases and their associated disabilities.

Robert Lustig, MD

In the Feb. 2 issue of NatureRobert Lustig, MD, Laura Schmidt, PhD, MSW, MPH, and Claire Brindis, DPH, colleagues at UCSF, argue that sugar’s potential for abuse, coupled with its toxicity and pervasiveness in the Western diet, make it a primary culprit of this worldwide health crisis.

This partnership of scientists trained in endocrinology, sociology and public health took a new look at the accumulating scientific evidence on sugar. Such interdisciplinary liaisons underscore the power of academic health sciences institutions like UCSF.

Sugar, they argue, is far from just “empty calories” that make people fat. At the levels consumed by most Americans, sugar changes metabolism, raises blood pressure, critically alters the signaling of hormones and causes significant damage to the liver – the least understood of sugar’s damages. These health hazards largely mirror the effects of drinking too much alcohol, which they point out in their commentary is the distillation of sugar.

Worldwide consumption of sugar has tripled during the past 50 years and is viewed as a key cause of the obesity epidemic. But obesity, Lustig, Schmidt and Brindis argue, may just be a marker for the damage caused by the toxic effects of too much sugar. This would help explain why 40 percent of people with metabolic syndrome — the key metabolic changes that lead to diabetes, heart disease and cancer — are not clinically obese.

“As long as the public thinks that sugar is just ‘empty calories,’ we have no chance in solving this,” said Lustig, a professor of pediatrics, in the division of endocrinology at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital and director of the Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health (WATCH) Program at UCSF.

“There are good calories and bad calories, just as there are good fats and bad fats, good amino acids and bad amino acids, good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates,” Lustig said. “But sugar is toxic beyond its calories.”

Limiting the consumption of sugar has challenges beyond educating people about its potential toxicity. “We recognize that there are cultural and celebratory aspects of sugar,” said Brindis, director of UCSF’s Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies (IHPS). “Changing these patterns is very complicated.”

According to Brindis, effective interventions can’t rely solely on individual change, but instead on environmental and community-wide solutions, similar to what has occurred with alcohol and tobacco, that increase the likelihood of success.

Laura Schmidt, PhD, MSW, MPH

The authors argue for society to shift away from high sugar consumption, the public must be better informed about the emerging science on sugar.

“There is an enormous gap between what we know from science and what we practice in reality,” said Schmidt, professor of health policy at UCSF’s IHPS and co-chair of UCSF’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute’s (CTSI) Community Engagement and Health Policy Program, which focuses on bridging academic research, health policy, and community practice to improve public health. In order to move the health needle, this issue needs to be recognized as a fundamental concern at the global level,” she said.

The paper was made possible with funding from UCSF’s CTSI, UCSF’s National Institutes of Health-funded program that helps accelerate clinical and translational research through interdisciplinary, interprofessional and transdisciplinary work.

Claire Brindis, DPH

Many of the interventions that have reduced alcohol and tobacco consumption can be models for addressing the sugar problem, such as levying special sales taxes, controlling access, and tightening licensing requirements on vending machines and snack bars that sell high sugar products in schools and workplaces.

“We’re not talking prohibition,” Schmidt said. “We’re not advocating a major imposition of the government into people’s lives. We’re talking about gentle ways to make sugar consumption slightly less convenient, thereby moving people away from the concentrated dose. What we want is to actually increase people’s choices by making foods that aren’t loaded with sugar comparatively easier and cheaper to get.”

UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. For more information, please visit http://www.ucsf.edu.

Photos by Susan Merrell

 

Reference 

Lustig RH, Schmidt LA, Brindis CD. Public health: The toxic truth about sugar. Nature 2012; 482 (7383): 27-9.

 

Is Sugar Toxic?

If you are what you eat, then what does it mean that the average American consumes 130 pounds of sugar a year? Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports on new research showing that beyond weight gain, sugar can take a serious toll on your health, worsening conditions ranging from heart disease to cancer. Some physicians go so far as to call sugar a toxin (CBS News, 2012).

 

To Ditch Dessert, Feed The Brain

Brain reward regions are activated when glucose falls below normal levels (blue). In lean people -- but not obese people -- the prefrontal cortex which is involved in decision making and regulating impulses is activated (red) when glucose levels are normal.

If the brain goes hungry, Twinkies look a lot better, a study led by researchers at Yale University and the University of Southern California has found.

Brain imaging scans show that when glucose levels drop, an area of the brain known to regulate emotions and impulses loses the ability to dampen desire for high-calorie food, according to the study published online September 19 in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

“Our prefrontal cortex is a sucker for glucose,” said Rajita Sinha, the Foundations Fund Professor of Psychiatry, and professor in the Department of Neurobiology and the Yale Child Study Center, one of the senior authors of the research.

The Yale team manipulated glucose levels intravenously and monitored changes in blood sugar levels while subjects were shown pictures of high-calorie food, low-calorie food and non-food as they underwent fMRI scans.

When glucose levels drop, an area of the brain called the hypothalamus senses the change. Other regions called the insula and striatum associated with reward are activated, inducing a desire to eat, the study found. The most pronounced reaction to reduced glucose levels was seen in the prefrontal cortex. When glucose is lowered, the prefrontal cortex seemed to lose its ability to put the brakes upon increasingly urgent signals to eat generated in the striatum. This weakened response was particularly striking in the obese when shown high-calorie foods.

“This response was quite specific and more dramatic in the presence of high-calorie foods,” Sinha said.

“Our results suggest that obese individuals may have a limited ability to inhibit the impulsive drive to eat, especially when glucose levels drop below normal,” commented Kathleen Page, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Southern California and one of the lead authors of the paper.

A similarly robust response to high-calorie food was also seen in the striatum, which became hyperactive when glucose was reduced. However, the levels of the stress hormone cortisol seemed to play a more significant role than glucose in activating the brain’s reward centers, note the researchers. Sinha suggests that the stress associated with glucose drops may play a key role in activating the striatum.

“The key seems to be eating healthy foods that maintain glucose levels,” Sinha said. “The brain needs its food.”

 

Reference

Page KA, Seo D, Belfort-Deaguiar R, Lacadie C, Dzuira J, Naik S, Amarnath S et al. Circulating glucose levels modulate neural control of desire for high-calorie foods in humans. J Clin Invest 2011 Sep 19. [Epub ahead of print]

 

Sweet Remedy: The World Reacts to an Adulterated Food Supply

Sheldon Rampton, co-author of some of the most unflinching accounts of fraud and deception (Trust Us, We’re Experts and Toxic Sludge is Good for You) provides a detailed account of the mechanisms by which people are regularly deceived. Himself an “expert” on the workings of the PR industry and the deceptions that large corporations can inflict upon a trusting public, Rampart reminds us that things are not always as they appear and that the motivations of large corporations are generally not in the public’s best interest.

While aspartame was the single focus in Sweet Misery: A Poisoned WorldSweet Remedy (2006) demonstrates that a corrupt flagship regulatory agency has given birth to numerous toxins in our food supply.

A closer examination of the U.S. corporate power structure unveils a two-fold approach to manipulating the public. First, by attempting to shape public opinion and, second, by affecting an individual’s ability to discern PR from the truth. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent selling neuro-toxic food additives to the public. In the United States and through each nation within its global corporate grasp, maintaining a healthy mind and body is an act of civil disobedience.

Ultimately, healing has become the path of resistance for informed individuals improving their health. We interview a host of MD’s and Natural Health practitioners to gain the clearest possible perspective for a path to recovery. Perhaps the sweetest remedy this film offers is the hope provided by witnessing a variety of groups as they withstand the confusion, casualties and obstacles involved with taking control of their food and their health.

 

Big Sugar

 Big Sugar (CBC, 2005) explores the dark history and modern power of the world’s reining sugar cartels. Using dramatic re-enactments, it reveals how sugar was at the heart of slavery in the West Indies in the 18th century, while showing how present-day consumers are slaves to a sugar-based diet. Going undercover, Big Sugar witnesses the appalling working conditions on plantations in the Dominican Republic, where Haitian cane cutters live like slaves. Workers who live on Central Romano, a Fanjul-owned plantation, go hungry while working 12-hour days to earn 2 USD.

 

Aspartame: Sweet Misery A Poisoned World

Narrator Cori Brackett had a strange cause-and-effect experience with the diet cokes she was drinking and quickly found herself disabled and diagnosed with MS. Slowly able to walk and speak again, she believes her illness is linked to aspartame. She is a co-owner of a video/film production company. After 7000 miles, and 25 hours of footage, “Sweet Misery” (2004) will reveal one of the most pervasive, insidious forms of corporate negligence since tobacco.

 

 

 

Nutrition and Behavior (Lecture)

In this lecture, Dr. Russell Blaylock explains one of the most important connections between nutrition and our health, how nutrition affects our behavior. Citing a series of important studies, he shows that good nutrition can powerfully enhance our memory, mood, and behavior in a socially desirable way. Likewise he shows us that poor nutrition can lead our youth into a world of violence, crime, depression and suicide. By using an impressive array of studies on both juvenile and adult prisoners, Dr. Blaylock demonstrates these principals and outlines specific measures you can take to protect your children from these detrimental effects. Most importantly, he shows us that it is never too late to make these nutritional changes.

 

 

The Dangers of Aspartame

Aspartame (E951) is an artificial sweetener, used in over 6000 products. It is a very sweet chemical, responsible for a host of health problems. The US Department of Health has recorded 92 symptoms following complaints about aspartame.

Some of the brand names for aspartame: AminoSweet, NutraSweet, Equal, NatraTaste, Canderel, Spoonful, and Equal-Measure.

 

How Sweet Is It?

The following video is an excerpt from a CBS 60 Minutes feature aired in 1997 entitled How Sweet Is It? It investigates some of the unanswered questions and concerns overshadowing aspartame. Produced by Isidore Rosmarin.