“The Doctors are Out”

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“Doctors are Out”

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“I’m not a Health and Wellness Expert, I just play one on TV.”

I don’t watch a lot of television. Yesterday morning I was informed about a discussion on The Doctor’s show regarding vegan and raw food so I went to their website and watched the clip. Jillian Michaels was very outspoken against vegan diets. The more she spoke, the more it was clear that she was not ‘one of the country’s leading health and wellness experts’ as claimed on The Doctor’s website.

The segment was about Dr. Jim Sears who had visited Chef Juliano’s Planet Raw Restaurant in Los Angeles and was impressed with the variety and flavors of the food and how well he felt after eating there. He says “there is a lot of controversy about raw…” and goes on to talk how they’ve covered raw meat on the show but when talking about vegetables, he says “in terms of infections, there’s no risk of that.”

Jillian Michaels blurts out “That’s not true, how many people died of uh, cucumbers… (insert a bunch of unintelligible stuff here)… salmonella…”

Okay, Ms. “health and wellness expert”, do you know where salmonella and – what I think you were trying to say – e coli come from? It comes from manure made in filthy factory farms, where innocent animals are raised in confinement, crammed together, tortured from birth until death until they are slaughtered for the food that you say is so healthy. Bacteria thrives in these conditions, gets into the water supply and ultimately contaminates our vegetable crops. Get rid of the factory farms, and the e coli and salmonella problems will fade away leaving our vegetables and the people who eat them, safe. With a hog population of over 10 million in North Carolina, each generating about 4 gallons of waste a day, is it a coincidence that those salmonella contaminated cucumbers that were recalled this past April came from a company in North Carolina? The surprise to me is that we are not hearing about these outbreaks more often.

Appalled, Ms. Michaels continues, saying that Chef Juliano said that the body makes all the vitamins and minerals it needs, if you give it fuel.  What Juliano did say was “your body makes protein, calcium, everything you need, it just needs fuel to do so.” Dr. Lisa Masterson, responds as the authority saying “you can’t get certain vitamins B’s you need unless you eat certain meats and things like that.”

Warning America, listening to this program may be dangerous to your health. First, Michaels, the “health and wellness expert” distorted what Juliano said. Second, Juliano is a chef, not a “health and wellness expert.” I wish chefs were trained in nutrition but most aren’t and most don’t care about it. Juliano does care about feeding people with food that is health-promoting rather than the popular disease-promoting foods loaded with cholesterol and saturated fat served in most restaurants. Lastly, in nutrition, when we talk about nutrients being essential, this means the body can not make them internally and we need to consume them in order to provide what the body needs to thrive. And we can get everything, even the essential nutrients from plants. The only B vitamin that is a challenge for vegans is B12 which comes from bacteria in soil. It is easy to supplement B12 and many health professionals recommend that vegans, vegetarians and meat eaters alike supplement with B12 because in the sterile society we live in, B12 deficiencies are on the rise.

The fact is we are experiencing an epidemic of chronic diseases, including heart disease and diabetes that we now know are preventable and often reversible and are caused by the Standard American Diet of animal products and overly-processed foods. And this epidemic is spreading worldwide. All the essential nutrients we need, meaning nutrients our bodies can’t make, can be found in plant foods. Ms. Michaels and Dr. Masterson are doing a disservice to the community telling people they need meat. Even the American Dietetic Association says that vegan diets can be healthy. People need to hear, on a daily basis, from doctors and health professionals, to eat a diet rich in organic fruits and vegetables and to reduce and eliminate animal products and processed foods. But I guess this show, like so many others is just about entertainment and making money from advertisers, not about making this world a better place.

Here at Responsible Eating And Living we’ll be featuring REAL doctors on the next two It’s All About Food shows who REAL-ly understand nutrition. Tune in on Wednesday, October 12, 3pm ET for Dr. Fuhrman, author of the book Eat To Live now in its 7th week on the New York Times Best Sellers list and on Wednesday, October 19, 3pm ET for Dr. Hans Diehl of the CHIP (Coronary Health Improvement) project and co-author of The Optimal Diet.

At Responsible Eating And Living we show you how a healthy, plant-based diet is not only accessible and affordable but delicious. You don’t know how good you can feel until you try it. Are you for REAL? Join us here at Responsible Eating And Living.

  7 comments for ““The Doctors are Out”

  1. I couldn’t believe how wrong she was. The problem is, people research things with an already biased opinion formed. She clearly was anti-vegan from the jump, so she looked up reasons WHY veganism is “so horrible”, rather than researching veganism itself. I’m a proud vegan, and I’m only 18. I researched for years before I decided to convert to veganism. Because the bottom line is, meat eaters have to justify what they eat. I don’t. I show them proof and they can either push the proof away or accept it. I’m not pushy on my ways of eating, but when someone claims to be a health instructor and claims to be right and that veganism is bad I get defensive. The human body needs omega 3’s, protein, calcium, iron, I agree. However, meat is the unhealthiest way to get it. I already got all my daily reccomended amounts of all of those things, consuming chia seeds, fresh fruit, almond and almond milk, etc.I wish people would research properly before they speak publically on television. It really just makes her look like a fool whose more obsessed with weight loss than health.

  2. Oh lord! This is so ridiculous! I agree, they need someone in those shows that can calmly yet clearly educate this people. Millions of viewers are watching this and believing the stuff these “experts” are telling them.

  3. Although I like Jillian Michaels, they should have Rip Esselstyn or Robert Cheeke on the show to show her how wrong she is. She probably already knows she is wrong though.

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