Day Nine: Almost there!

Today my negative feelings started back up where they left off from yesterday. Luckily, I was able to toss myself into academic studies and be excited to get check things off my study list. Tonight I visited with some people before I went to sleep and discussed eating habits after the cleanse. Someone asked if it would ruin the point of the whole cleanse to go back to the way I had eaten before as soon as I am off. My answer? Hell yes!! No way did I just cleanse my body of whatever toxins I could in 10 days just to resupply my body with toxins to replace them. This cleanse doesn't give you a superhuman gastrointestinal tract after you do it, it only detoxifies your body. Although it is a more intense cleanse than an all raw foods diet (a very, very health-rewarding lifestyle!!), it is not serious enough to cleanse you of everything. My friend told me about a man who went on the Master Cleanse for 26 days and shed a 25-inch slough of build-up in the shape of his intestines. Other people have had the same experience with shorter sessions. Anthony, my Master Cleanse mentor, has gone without eating for 55 days!

Something this cleanse has really highlighted for me are two unfortunate consequences of American food-culture. A) Americans eat way too much and B) Americans have most readily available to them foods which both cause cancer and facilitate cancer growth.

It is quite obvious to me, especially after this time spent without eating, that we do not HAVE to eat three dinner-plate-size meals a day. I remember when my dad used to say, 'skipping a meal won't KILL you' in joke if I was ever in a swivet about missing a family dinner. Of course I knew I wouldn't actually die but I was CONDITIONED to expect, want, and "need" three meals a day. I didn't know any different. Part of the problem is thirst is very, very often (more than I had even realized before) misinterpreted as hunger. Seeing how full and satisfied I could be on a light-calorie drink all day really made me understand the gravity of this statement.

I always believed myself to be a healthy eater. I would buy pretty much only vegetables, fruit, nuts, yogurt, and eggs and very seldom wheat cereal, milk, shrimp, chicken, and noodles from the supermarket. I would pair with those staples with sticky white rice from my 25-lb bulk bag and a little soy sauce. Even with this kind of a diet (rather than one of frozen, packaged, processed and fast foods) some very dangerous things are being ingested. Rice, wheat, corn, and soy are mostly always genetically modified (unless they were very carefully protected and thus should be labeled "organic") and are grown on mass-scales to be added into packaged and processed foods. Along with many environmental and ethical problems with GMOs, this is what we know about GMOs in the case of human health;

• there is little scientific study about their health risks
• safety test technology is inadequate to assess potential harm
• they can carry unpredictable toxins
• they may increase the risk of allergenic reactions

We do not know the full health effects on GMOs because they are protected from being tested and regulated by the government and huge agriculture companies. Studies have shown cancer and complications in rats from genetically modified products but they are STILL RELEASED to the public because negative results the company finds do not have to be published or announced. Because GMOs are not labeled we may be eating them in any non-organic food item. If health complications develop due to GMO consumption a lawsuit cannot be enacted because there would be no identifiable linkage.

Companies disturb the cell walls of a plant (its natural defense system) to inject it with whatever they want to make it more profitable (resistant to pesticides [=we eat those pesticides that will no longer kill the plant], faster growing, needing less nutrients [vastly lowers nutritional value for humans]) all without being mandated to have it tested. Humans are the guinea-pigs.

There are "voluntary consultations" however...

"The very first crop submitted to the FDA's voluntary consultation process, the FlavrSavr tomato, showed evidence of toxins. Out of 20 female rats fed the GM tomato, 7 developed stomach lesions.[4] The director of FDA's Office of Special Research Skills wrote that the tomatoes did not demonstrate a "reasonable certainty of no harm,"[5] which is their normal standard of safety. The Additives Evaluation Branch agreed that "unresolved questions still remain."[6] The political appointees, however, did not require that the tomato be withdrawn.[*]" (1)

*********Please watch Food Matters and The Future of Food for a more developed explanation of the horrible effects of GMOs.*********

So even in my "healthy" diet, I was not eating organic vegetables and so, could have been eating GMOs my whole life as they are LEGAL and UNLABELED in the United States (Europe and Japan would never allow this). Processed and packaged foods profit from the use of GMOs especially the four big ones (rice, wheat, corn, and soy). Even people who go vegan or vegetarian for health reasons are often tricked as these four (especially soy) are added to so many animal-free products (tofu, meat substitutes, milk substitutes, ice cream etc).

(1) http://arizonaadvancedmedicine.com/articles/genetically_modified_foods.html
Good informational site on GMOs: http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/pusztai.html