Forks Over Knives Page #5

of this enormous corn surplus

was a low-cost sweetener called

"high fructose corn syrup".

Companies could add this

sweetener to anything

from soda pop to hot dogs,

and then make these products

widely available at low prices.

Processed sugars and

other refined foods

are far more calorie-dense

than the whole plants

they're made from.

The dramatic increase

in their use

is a major reason why our

food has become richer.

To evolutionary psychologist

and author Dr. Doug Lisle,

the consumption of

unnaturally dense foods

is the main cause for the

epidemic of obesity in America.

It isn't that people have

become more self-indulgent.

It isn't because they're

lazier than they ever were.

What's happening is that their

mechanisms of satiation

are being fooled.

The process starts

with a range of receptors

in our stomachs

that help us gauge how

much food we've eaten.

These include stretch

receptors to help measure

the sheer volume of

food in our stomachs.

We also have density receptors,

to help determine the

caloric density,

or what we more commonly call

the richness of our food.

For instance, 500 calories

of natural plant food

fills the stomach completely,

triggering both our stretch

and density receptors

to signal our brain that

we've had enough to eat.

But 500 calories of unnaturally

rich or processed food

fills the stomach far less,

deceiving these receptors

into telling our brain

that we need to eat more.

Even worse is 500

calories of oil,

which is almost pure fat

and barely triggers

any response at all.

The problem with weight

management in humans

is that if you make these

foods completely artificial,

which we do today,

you wind up with a problem

that people have to overeat

just to be satisfied.

But why do these

concentrated foods

that are so harmful to us

give us so much pleasure?

Dr. Lisle says the

answer is related

to a system called the

motivational triad.

This is a trio of

biological mechanisms

that nature has designed

into every creature on earth

so they can survive

to pass their genes

on to the next generation.

The first leg of the

motivational triad

is pleasure seeking.

And, primarily, two things

are the cause of that,

and those two things

are food and sex.

So in the case of a

great white shark,

its basically got a neon sign

flashing across its forehead

saying, "food, sex,

food, sex, food, sex."

Unless it's a male, then it

says, "sex, food, sex, food,"

but it's pretty much

the same thing.

The other two legs of

the motivational triad

are avoiding pain

and doing everything with

the least amount of effort.

Pleasure seeking,

pain avoidance,

and energy conservation,

that really sums up

animal behavior,

whether we're talking about a

paramecium under a microscope

or a great white shark.

Richer foods naturally

excite our senses

because it's nature's

way of telling us

they will provide the highest

amount of dietary reward

with the least amount of effort.

This helped our ancestors

find the most calorie-dense

and ripe foods available,

which contributed

to our survival.

But in today's environment,

we can artificially

increase calorie density

well beyond what our ancestors

would have found in nature.

The resulting foods give us a

hyper-normal amount of pleasure,

leading us into something

Dr. Lisle calls the

pleasure trap.

What the pleasure trap

is is an interaction

between our natural instincts,

which are trying to tell

us the right thing to do,

and some kind of artificial,

modern stimulation

that is piggybacking or

hijacking that process.

So the classic example

of the pleasure trap

would be drugs and

drug addiction.

The way drugs work

is they hijack

the existing pleasure circuits.

When certain chemicals

hit those areas,

they cause feelings of

euphoria and excitement.

The same drug-like

effect happens

when we eat highly

concentrated, processed foods.

We've removed the fiber,

we've removed the water,

we've removed the minerals.

We've done everything

that we can

to hyper-concentrate

sugar and fat

and add a bunch of salt

as well into the food,

and now what the food has become

is it's become a

low-grade addiction.

These things are drugs.

They have other

deleterious side effects,

not the least of which is

adding a lot of empty calories.

Dr. Terry Mason is

commissioner of health

for the city of Chicago.

He's one of the few public

officials in America

who openly supports

a plant-based diet.

If it walked, hopped,

swam, crawled, slithered,

had eyes, a mom and a dad...

don't eat it.

Dr. Mason contends

that the less affluent

segments of our population

have difficulty making

the best food choices.

Well, first of all,

the diets are calorie-rich

and nutrient-poor.

This is the real problem.

And, unfortunately, poor

people are poor in everything.

They're poor in health,

they're poor in food choices,

they're poor in almost every

aspect that you could think of.

This makes the less prosperous

particularly vulnerable to

the low-grade addiction

of highly processed foods.

People want stuff that's fast,

people want stuff that's quick,

and they like the

stuff that's salty,

and they like the taste

of something fried.

And so those are the

kinds of things

that you see in our community.

San'dera Nation lives

in a quiet suburb

in Cleveland, Ohio,

with her five children.

In October 2008, she was

stricken by a strange illness.

I wanna say something,

but it's not coming out.

I'm getting really

shaky and sweats,

and then I'm cold and I'm sick

and I'm fatigued, and my

stomach hurts and everything.

So I went to the doctor,

and that's when he diagnosed me

with hypertension and diabetes.

Like Joey Aucoin,

San'dera was treated with

expensive prescription drugs.

I was in denial for a while.

I heard what they said, but

I was in denial, like, mmm.

I still ate things

I shouldn't have.

I didn't really

get the education

that I needed to know,

so I really depended on

that pill to save me.

Then San'dera met with

Dr. Esselstyn,

who recommended that she

treat her illnesses

with a whole foods,

plant-based diet.

Come on in, and

we'll get to work.

I was a little nervous, but

he made it real easy for me.

I was real interested

in what he had to say

and what he was

going to teach me

and the new journey that I

would be taking with him.

Between China and the

United States...

In 1974, Chinese

premier zhou enlai

was hospitalized

with bladder cancer.

Knowing that his

disease was terminal,

he decided to give his country

a more complete

understanding of cancer.

So he initiated

what would become

one of the largest

and most thorough

scientific studies in history.

the mortality patterns

caused by several

types of cancer

for the years between

The study encompassed

every county in China

and over 880 million people.

Zhou died in 1976, years

before his study was complete.

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