By Jeff Walsh

Of all the McDougall DVDs, his latest is the one that I really want to carry with me at all times and whip it into DVD players everywhere I go whenever these questions come up.

“Dr. McDougall’s Common Sense Nutrition: The Truth About Protein, Soy, and Fish” is really a tour de force, and watching it will make it harder for soy burger-loving vegans, fish-eating vegetarians, and people whose defensive “But where do you get your protein?” to stay on these paths.

The disc features three individual lectures on the three main topic areas of protein, soy, and fish.

“When Friends Ask: Where Do You Get Your Protein?” does more than show the absurdity of this often-asked question, which wouldn’t take long to disprove on its own, but looks into why so many people believe what they do about the importance of protein. It also shows how long all of this information has been known, with studies dating back multiple decades coming to conclusions that hold up today but are still largely unknown. I’m not saying the “Where do you get” people will be converted by this lecture, but they’ll certainly have to look for new material after watching this.

“Soy Is Food, Not A Poison or A Miracle Drug” addresses a lot of the controversy and myth around soy that exist online. McDougall has always been consistent that he considers soy foods OK very sparingly and in small portions. On the McDougall plan, soy foods include tofu, edamame, tempeh, miso, soy milk, and other things that have a minimum level of processing. What he’s always been against (although he admits to having tried and loving a lot of) is the processed soy foods, where the soy protein no longer resembles its origins, because the protein has been entirely removed and reconfigured to make burgers, hot dogs, deli meats, and is also put into “health” bars and other stuff where the high amount of protein is used to help sell the product. Ifyou have any questions about soy, I can’t imagine it will be left unanswered after watching this lecture.

“Fish Is Not Health Food” is also nothing new as far as major topics go. We’ve overfished the oceans, it has no unique benefits for heart health, contains toxins, and we’ll run out of fish the way it’s available today in about 40 years. The major benefit given for eating fish is actually because the fish eat the seawood and algae which has the omega-3 fatty acids, so we’re eating the fish to get what the fish eats and, of course, there are other superior sources. McDougall also addresses the fallacy of fish being health food, better for you than other animal muscles, and necessary.

These are all topics that come up repeatedly and it’s good to know such concise, informative lectures are just a DVD away when they do. But the thing that’s really important to emphasize is that Dr. McDougall is an amusing lecturer, so a lot of what could be dry, boring medical study results are peppered with anecdotes, jokes, and even the occassional comic strip. So, showing these lectures to people will never be a bore.

If you want the complete word on these common themes, this is a great DVD to have on hand. If you don’t know the ins and outs of these topics, these lectures will be eye-opening, make you question your choices, and give you all the information you need to live a healthier life.

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You can find more information about this DVD on the McDougall website. It costs $24.95.

My Vegan Cookbook is the sort of site I shouldn’t visit often.

Unlike a lot of vegan sites where you just look and see a lot of great food porn and ornately-plated gourmet treats, when I visit My Vegan Cookbook I want to eat the food I see there. Not in the future. Not tomorrow. But now.

That said, it’s remarkable how few of the recipes I have made so far (I blame the commute for my new job, the new catch-all to explain why anything falls through the cracks, and during which this review itself is being written).

My Vegan Cookbook is the brainchild of Josh Latham, whom I’ve known for years from way back when he ran the now-defunct gay youth site, beautifulboy.com. (I also run a site for gay youth, in case my new vegan audience is unaware). So, it was surprising to find that Josh is also vegan; we’re both huge believers in the findings of T. Colin Campbell’s The China Study, linking animal protein consumption to cancer promotion; and try to eat a low-fat, whole-grain, plant-based diet without a lot of isolated soy protein.

I mention the gay angle because it seems to have a role here. It seems I am drawn to Josh’s balls. Whenever I see his balls online, I am hungry for them. I can’t wait for the next appearance of his balls.

I first put Josh’s balls in my mouth around Christmas. Since I know a lot of people in my hometown think of vegan food as tasteless bland fare, I needed to challenge their thinking. Many people there have the attitude of: You might live longer eating that stuff, but is it worth it?

So, I made Josh’s Vegan “Cheese” ball recipe and took it to different parties. Since I brought it, no one accepted it as a proper cheese ball, of course, leading to a game of “But what is it made of?” The game required eating the cheese ball, but the eating never stopped once they knew the answer. It was a hit at every event to which it was brought.

With such a great start, you’d think I’d be making nearly every recipe Josh posts, and I certainly wouldn’t mind eating it all, but it hasn’t happened. Until recently. And I would be remiss if I didn’t point out it is, to my knowledge, the second appearance of his balls on the site. This time, Josh whipped out his Vegan Meatballs (Isolated Soy Free) and, once again, I made a play for them.

I am a fan of meatballs in spaghetti (or, more likely, my sprouted whole wheat parpadelle pasta, but I digress). It is mainly a texture thing. I don’t even think of them bringing much flavor to the party, I just like something breaking up the abundance of pasta.

The store-bought versions of vegan meatballs are more what I’m used to, oily round brown things with minimal spicing, for textual variety. Josh’s balls redefine that concept.

First, let’s walk through their creation. Although the spices are entirely different, most of the process seems more like baking vegan cookies than making meatballs. From the mixing of ingredients to rolling Josh’s balls around in your hand, it seems like cookies are on the way. I found the mixture sticky and hard to roll initially, until I started rinsing my hand between rolling each ball.

Then, I baked them, flipped them, baked them, let them sit. And, because of my commute, I had already eaten dinner somewhere in the middle of this now late-night process. So, I put Josh’s balls to the ultimate test. They would start their life, sadly enough, as leftovers.

So, the next day, with Josh’s balls (I keep saying Josh’s balls because he claims to be shy, and it brings me great joy to think of him reading that phrase so much) in my refrigerator and not having shrunk as a result, I gave them their trial run. I let them come up to room temp while the water boiled, then just put some in the pan with the spaghetti sauce (sadly, I didn’t have Muir Glen Organic Spicy Tomato, as I had intended to use, since Josh’s balls include both chili powder and chipotle chili powder). But, I warmed them up with the on-hand sauce, and served them over my sprouted pasta, as indicated above.

Well, I must say, the role you desire for your meatballs will determine whether Josh’s balls are right for you. If you want brown, tasteless orbs that spit out some spice and oil when you bite into them, these are not those balls. Josh’s balls make the dish. That is, they are the flavor you will taste throughout the meal. If you like the flavor, you win. If you don’t, or are looking for something more traditional, these are probably not the balls for you.

Although they looked a bit dry going into the sauce, they were nice and chewy when they were heated through, and complemented (and somewhat overpowered) the pasta and sauce. This is behavior to which I am not accustomed from your garden variety vegan meatballs. The others sit back, ready to inject some soy, oil, and spice whenever necessary, but play a secondary role. So, again, this comes down to the role you want for your meatballs.

Personally, I liked them a lot and would make them again. The flavor was unique (in a good way), to the point where it all blended together so well, I can’t identify any one spice as being overpowering. The next test is going to be making them in a larger quantity and freezing them in packs of 3-4 balls per serving, so whenever I want Josh’s balls, I can just reach out and grab them.

Of course, there is still no good reason that I haven’t tried Josh’s Lentil Loaf (probably up next), Eggplant and Zucchini Casserole, and Mushroom and Lentil Stroganoff. All in good time. So, yeah, I’m a big fan of My Vegan Cookbook.

Until I marry Josh and he becomes my vegan feeder, keeping me fat, happy, and rolling in vegan vittles, his balls will have to do.

I wasn’t quite sure how to review The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. The biggest hurdle is that I don’t tend to make a lot of baked goods or desserts, because I’m following the McDougall Program (whereby baked goods aren’t really a staple), and living alone, so whatever the pace of eating is, eventually I’ll be eating the whole thing (which is bad news).

But recently I had an out-of-town relative in for Easter and there was a dinner planned, so I decided to use that opportunity to try some of the recipes. The Friday before Easter, we had dinner at Millennium in San Francisco, which is the pinnacle of high-end gourmet vegan dining. My plan all along was to bake the Meditteranean Olive Bread from the cookbook and take it to the dinner, but the plan kept building from there.

At that dinner, my cousin randomly mentioned vegan cookies, and how on several occassions he bought some at the store and they were dry and awful. I told him that’s usually how it goes, because vegan cookies don’t use all of the hydrogenated oils and such that give other cookies their shelf life (and often times stay on the shelf too long). So, I just happened to inquire what his favorite cookie is. He said Oatmeal Raisin. Mission one.

The second thing I heard incorrectly, but I was under the impression that his wife was a fan of the chocolate soy pudding they sold in the stores, but they were underwhelmed by that, too. I also knew that Goudreau’s book had chocolate pudding in there, so this dinner kept expanding as far as what I planned to bring.

I made all three at the same time, more or less, starting with the cookies, then on to the loaf, and finishing with the pudding.

I was a bit concerned that I didn’t have an electric mixer for the cookies, although the recipe didn’t explicitly require one, but I recalled from Christmas how well that folded the vegan butter and sugar together. It still worked fine without one, and the cookies came out great. Initially, I made them slightly rounder, but after the first batch started flattening them out a bit more.

The olive loaf was also my debut run using a silicone loaf pan, which turned out nicely, except it lacked that darker tinge that comes from using metal. It was so strange seeing bread that looked the same from all angles that I cut a piece off the end to make sure it was done, and it tasted fabulous.

So far, so good. The pudding is where things went a bit wrong. I’d never cooked with kudzu root before, so I can’t quite pinpoint where I went off-course. The recipe called for ground kudzu, and my local hippie co-op had kudzu chunks. But, since the recipe called for you to dissolve the kudzu in water, I didn’t really bother grinding it up. This could be the point of failure.

All I know is that the pudding never really set, but seemed to have congealed chunks floating around in it, making me think that the kudzu (having not been ground) didn’t fully dissolve as much as it disappeared into the liquid and when folded into the chocolate, was unable to affect the chemistry of the chocolate.

Again, all guesswork. That said, the quality of the chocolate was so good, that it vague state somewhere between solid and liquid didn’t prevent its consumption.

Overall, the entries were pretty stellar. The cookies redeemed my cousin’s notion of vegan cookies being dry and bland, a sadly well-earned but incorrect reputation. The Olive Bread was the hit of the dinner, and well on its way to be a staple when I want something easy to bring to dinner parties. The pudding was the weak entry of the bunch, but I’m going to blame my lack of ground kudzu for now. Certainly, the recipe made some great-tasting liquid chocolate, despite its lack of congealing.

The strange part of the vegan baking experiment was that I was not cooking for a vegan meal, or a vegetarian meal, but in fact, an annual tradition of grilled lamb. The bread featured fresh rosemary and was heralded with the phrase, I’m sad to say: “This will go perfect with the lamb!”

So, yeah, that was a bit strange.

On the whole, I have a great vibe for the rest of this book. Having listened to every episode of Goudreau’s podcast, I know her passion and knowledge first-hand. It was good to put her recipes to the test, and I would totally fly blind and bring any of her dishes, untasted, to any event without worry.

The book, which won last year’s “Cookbook of the Year” from VegNews magazine, is divided into sections for every sort of baking you can imagine, as well as a few that sort of stray from the ‘baking’ moniker (sorbets, smoothies, beverages, etc.)

The book has an exhaustive introduction about vegan baking not being an oxymoron, although I’m not sure why this notion exists (maybe it’s all those hard, dry baked goods in stores?). If there’s anything on which I can fault the book, it is Goudreau’s notion of experimentation, such as challenging people to try different non-dairy milks to see how it will change the taste of the dish. I think she could have recommended which she found to work best for each dish, but suggest we try others, as well.

Of course, that’s a minor ding in what is bound to be a vegan staple. Of course, just writing that is limiting. As Goudreau writes toward the front of the book, many people can’t believe that delicious baked goods are possible without butter, eggs and dairy, when it is more accurate to say baked goods rely on fat, moisture, and leavening, all of which are available without animal products.

So, whether your guided by compassion, lowering your cholesterol, or don’t care about any of that stuff and just want some kick-ass recipes, this is a great book to add to your collection.

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(At some point in the future, I will be doing podcast reviews and other stuff that will feature Goudreau on the site, but by all means check out her podcast. Unlike a lot of vegan podcasts that are too scattered, too preachy, or just boring, Goudreau really puts a lot of effort into hers, and it is always worth your time to listen.)

The fifth and final McDougall Advanced Study Series DVD review is on T. Colin Campbell, author of The China Study. I’m a huge fan of The China Study, which is why I put this lecture last, sort of the dessert for my week of watching lectures. The first lecture on this DVD is “The China Study,” and the second one is “Hidden Hazards of Animal Protein.”

In “The China Study,” Campbell spends half of his hour-long lecture showing the results of his epidemiological work done in China over a more than 30-year period. In a nutshell, his team found that protein was linked to cancer promotion. It is important to point out that Campbell is very clear to use the word promotion, as there are three stages of cancer: initiation, promotion, and progression. Animal protein doesn’t necessarily cause cancers, although it can, but it is amazing fuel to grow a cancer.

In animal experiments whereby all of the subjects were given cancer, they found that diets consisting of five percent protein did not promote cancer growth, whereas 20 percent protein diets would promote growth. In fact, if they switched their diets back from 20 percent to five percent, it actually turned off the cancer promotion.

Further testing found the threshold to be at around 10 percent as to when the cancer promotion actually began. On the same diet over time, all of the animal subjects on the five percent protein survived 100 weeks, the normal lifecycle for a rat, whereas all of the subjects on the 20 percent protein were dead at 100 weeks.

The protein used in all of these experiments was casein, the main protein found in cow’s milk. They found that switching to soy or wheat protein didn’t promote cancer even at 20 percent.

These findings were found to hold up in human populations, as well, as the research team had unprecedented access to the population of China to perform these tests. Rather than experimentation, they based their research on areas where people couldn’t afford animal protein compared to areas where they could. Where the population was able to afford to increase their intake of animal protein, cancer in that region climbed as well.

In the second part of his lecture, Campbell is quick to point out that although his research might appear otherwise, he actually thinks reductionism is a “tragic consequence of Western medicine.” He specifically cited the recent studies attempting to link low-fat diets to cancer promotion, and that there is no way to isolate the fat from everything else a person eats.

Studying their research data, Campbell found that the people who were on the low-fat diets actually increased their animal protein consumption rather than eat more fruits and vegetables, specifically eating lower-fat meat and dairy products. If you factor that into the slide showing no correlations, and switch the criteria to people who consumed animal products (rather than fat or protein), it completely lines up to show an increase in animal product consumption lining up with increased cancer promotion. If you plot out the vegetable protein consumption, no correlation appears.

Campbell ends this lecture by noting how vegetarian diets aren’t new concepts and that books were written on the subject in Ancient Greek times, and by Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Isaac Newton, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and others. It is estimated in a book on the history of vegetarianism that there were over a thousand books by the 1700s on vegetarianism and how it relates to issues of health, which prompts Campbell to ask how that information got lost for so long.

He finishes by saying the information isn’t new, but now we are finally getting the scientific data to support claims that have been around for centuries.

In “Hidden Hazards of Animal Protein,” Campbell starts by giving a history of protein. Discovered in the 1850s, it is immediately heralded as the chief component of life. But by 1908, a researcher already made the connection between increased protein intake, which was primarily synonymous with meat at the time, and cancer.

In 1905, a Yale researcher did tests with the school’s ROTC program and put a group on a plant-based diet, and they reached the same fitness level as people who consumed animal protein and also had a high fitness level. Some people questioned his work as not factoring in the differing fitness levels, so he repeated the test on people who already had a high fitness level and they increased their level even further. But by 1922, this researcher was disparaged within his field and was never heard from.

Revisiting some more research he did before the China Study, he determined that excess dietary protein (especially animal) is more responsible for cancer than chemical carcinogens.

Campbell also goes into the problems with reductivism and public policy. He says we are overfixated on daily recommendations of specific nutrients, when all of this is regulated by our bodies. There is no need for us to micromanage all of the specific components of the food we eat to make sure we are getting everything our body needs if we are eating a healthy plant-based diet.

The only beneficiaries of reductivism are the food and pharmaceutical industries, both of which are adept at affecting public policy to support the nutritional breakdown of their products, such as 2002 government guidelines that recommend, amazingly enough for the prevention of chronic conditions, a diet that includes between 10 and 35 percent protein.

Campbell said the important thing is to think of nutrition as a symphony, whereas one person sitting at a piano and hitting one note over and over… that’s reductive science.

This lecture is part of the McDougall Advanced Study Series DVD set. The DVDs cost $20 each, but you can get all five new DVDs for $60 total, including additional lectures from Howard Lyman, John Abramson MD, Michael Greger MD, and Neal Barnard MD. You can order them from McDougall’s website.

I was inclined to like Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food,” which is a follow-up to his book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” before I even started reading it. I mean, the thesis of the book is “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” How could I not support that?

Overall, the book provides a lot of valuable information about the world in which we currently live, and how a simple statement like “Eat Food” is not as easy as it might seem in a world of foodlike substances masquerading as nutritious food. I think it is an important book, especially for people who haven’t read a lot on this topic and are interested in learning more.

While I like the book overall, certain things seemed to be completely misleading. All of the correct information is in the book, but sometimes written in a way that might lead people to the wrong conclusion. Pollan writes about two major studies that look at the link between low-fat diets and cancer risk. In both cases, he admits that no one in either study was consuming what is considered a low-fat diet, but then he proceeds to question other flawed elements that could have contributed to the lack of results. Was the problem possibly looking at one component of food separately? Maybe how the information was gathered?

While I think it is fair to ask these questions of nutritional studies in general, it seems strange to keep probing why no link was found when the first thing he admits is that no one on the study followed the low-fat diet in the first place. If in a low-fat study, no one in the low-fat group is able to follow a low-fat diet, is there any benefit to even reporting the findings of the study let alone question what else might have contributed to the study’s problems? Newspapers were quick with the headlines that no link was found between a low-fat diet and cancer risk, but once again, it seems the fact that no one here followed the guidelines that would have led to such a correlation is just one of many things that were wrong with the study. No link can be found between two things if one of the two things is not present in the equation, which is not how a lot of people absorbed the conclusions of those studies.

If anything, the main question is why these low-fat studies were allowing 20 percent calories from fat, when all of the low-fat advocates use a diet of about 10 percent calories from fat. That’s the range where you find the people making such claims in the first place, be it McDougall, Ornish, or The China Study (And Pollan references T. Colin Campbell pointing out this very fact about this study in this very section, which is even more confounding). It just seems to reinforce the same confusion Pollan is trying to avoid by referencing a study that was flawed from the start and trying to further discern what went wrong.

Pollan also seems to leave the door open to meat eating whenever he mentions the health benefits of a vegetarian diet. It seemed reminiscent of how Mark Bittman went through such pains to ensure people knew he only authored a nearly 1000-page vegetarian cookbook; he wasn’t directly advocating a vegeterian lifetyle, God forbid. On one hand, I do think this will help Pollan get out his message to meat-eaters more directly, since he is on their side and not a “radical vegetarian,” it is also confounding that he soft-sells his own thesis so directly. Talking about heart disease and cancer, Pollan writes it is not a good idea to eat tremendous quantities of meat, and that studies show the greater your meat intake the greater your risk, he adds that “studies of flexitarians suggest that small amounts of meat – less than one serving a day – don’t appear to increase one’s risk.” In a book rife with large footnotes, and a detailed list of sources at the end, I was unable to figure out the studies from which that tidbit of information was found.

To be fair, I dismiss the whole flexitarian language as a bit of a catch-all for people who like the notion of eating vegetarian, except for when they don’t want to. Do we really need a special term for people who eat everything, albeit in supposed moderation? Don’t get me wrong, I suppose I’m happier to give them this term than have more vegetarians who eat chicken and fish. Anything that can bring a bit more purity to vegetarian meaning only ovo-lacto and vegan meaning no animal products is possibly a step in the right direction, but I just call them omnivores. Why do we need a new term for what boils down to animal products and everything else vegetarian? They’re just omnivores.

When it comes to eating meat, Pollan admits that, save for vitamin B12, “every nutrient found in meat can be obtained somewhere else.” He even notes that B12 is bacteria-based and not anything unique to meat. Of course, he goes on from there to add: “But meat, which humans have been going to heroic lengths to obtain and have been relishing for a very long time, is nutritious food, supplying all the essential amino acids as well as many vitamins and minerals, and I haven’t found a compelling health reason to exclude it from the diet.”

So, after he says there’s nothing unique in meat from a nutrition standpoint, he reinforces all of the nutritional elements (that he already said can be found somewhere else) that are in the meat. And since we know Pollan is familiar with the work of T. Colin Campbell linking animal protein consumption to cancer promotion (The China Study is listed in the sources at the end of the book), it makes you wonder what would qualify as a “compelling health reason” if cancer risk doesn’t make the list.

Pollan also writes that “in all my interviews with nutrition experts, the benefits of a plant-based diet provided the only point of universal consensus.” It did strike me funny that his thesis about nutritionism looking for specific nutrients or components in food for your health didn’t prevent him from pointing out that scientists may disagree what is beneficial about eating plants. “Is it the antioxidants in them? The fiber? The omega-3 fatty acids?” he questions on behalf of scientists, whereby his acceptance of meat gets a pass based solely on history and culture. I realize he wasn’t really probing this point, but it seemed strange in a book advocating a whole food, plant-centered diet.

Certain advice in the book does sounds worthwhile. Not buying food your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as being food is fine, but I also find that the cultural argument connected to that notion has a breaking point. In my experience, it seems too easy to mistake eating culturally without enough regard that what we’re calling dinner would have been our ancestor’s special occasion or holiday meal, tipping toward the meat and rich foods that could never have been a part of their normal routine if for no other reason than cost alone. This is covered by Pollan’s admonition to eat “not too much,” of course, but that piece seemed to not get as much attention.

He also admires the notion of the Slow Food Movement and its grass-fed meat from pastured cows, and the usual take that anything outside of industry and animal agriculture is better. Now, there’s no question it is better for you than McDonalds or what you can probably get in your local supermarket. But, this whole argument would never work on a large scale, as the ability for everyone to eat organic, pastured meat worldwide is not realistic based on the cost and requirements to switch to a system that requires so much more land and upkeep. So, it’s better, but no matter how much Alice Waters and company push this concept, I can’t imagine that it will ever grow beyond being an elitist exercise for people with expendable income without major changes in the way everyone eats worldwide.

There is definitely language used that fits into the Slow Food mentality, such as when he writes: “Eating a grass-fed burger when you can picture the greener pastures in which the animal grazed is a pleasure of another order, not a simple one, to be sure, but one based on knowledge rather than ignorance and gratitude rather than indifference.” Although I’m not one to reject things based solely on animal rights claims, to seemingly fetishize the happiness contained within the environment the animal experienced before it, sadly, had to be humanely sacrificed because you like burgers, rings a bit perverse to me.

Although I’m pointing out the problems I had with this book, I do think there is more good information than bad in it, and anything that gets people to start thinking about the things they eat is a step in the right direction. And I do think messengers like Pollan get the benefit of sliding past people whose defenses would be raised if some vegan was talking about why plant foods were better to eat for your health. Ironically, it is why I specifically follow the people I do, most of my heroes (Campbell, McDougall, Lyman, etc.) were led to veganism by the evidence and not the dogma. They didn’t work backwards from their conclusions. Campbell and Lyman killed thousands of animals, if not more, on their respective paths to veganism.

I applaud Michael Pollan for raising these issues in a world where people are giving up on knowledge in a world of conflicting studies and health claims. I know from personal experience how quick people are do dismiss any health claims (“Ehh, you say this, another study will say the opposite, forget it, I’ll just eat what I want.”) Like Bittman, Pollan sees the future of meat as more of a side dish than the main course, and that is a future that is at least headed in the right direction, as far as I’m concerned.

I am perfectly happy buying copies of this book to give as vegetarian Trojan horses to friends and family who I suspect might give it more credit since it doesn’t tell them point-blank to stop eating animal products. It does tell them to eat less of it, and to eat mostly plants. That’s a good start.

The fourth McDougall Advanced Study Series DVD I’m going to review is from John Abramson, MD, author of Overdo$ed America. It is the only disc in the series that contains three lectures, the first two run about 45 minutes in length, with the third lasting for an hour. The first lecture is “The Misdirection of American Medicine: The Biomedical/Commercial Juggernaut,” with the second lecture on “Evidence-Based Medicine vs. Epidemiologically-Based Medicine,” and the third lecture on “National Cholesterol Education Program Guidelines: Pushing Statins or Preventing Heart Disease”

As you can tell from the lecture titles, this disc is all about the medical industry and not as much about diet and nutrition. In “The Misdirection of American Medicine: The Biomedical/Commercial Juggernaut,” Abramson talks about his revelation that the medical journals had been infiltrated by the influence of the pharmaceutical industry and that it was no longer safe to trust the information as the medical community had previously done. He is also aware that he comes across to his colleagues as a conspiracy theorist of the highest order. Thankfully, he has a lot of studies and photographs in his lecture to let us know that he’s on the right side of the evidence.

He documents that the medical community gets a lot of credit for things it hasn’t accomplished, which is often the basis for our trust. For example, the tuberculosis epidemic is something that was greatly reduced in society, but medicine was introduced when it was already nearly controlled by public health campaigns, so it played a very minor role. Similarly, people are living up to 30 years longer than before, but Abramson shows studies whereby the medical community only accounts for five of those 30 years, though they are often credited for the whole thing. In this lecture, he also explores the paradox whereby the more we spend on medical care, the worse the end result; and the complete co-opting of the medical community by the pharmaceutical industry, whereby even going to get re-accreditation is now navigating a big pharma obstacle course. It’s an interesting lecture and one you hope will someday show up in a time capsule as a document to what things were like before the reform.

“Evidence-Based Medicine vs. Epidemiologically-Based Medicine” builds on the information in the first lecture, showing how drug companies use misdirection to tout the benefits of their products. Compared to doctors working with their patients to discuss better health responses to their issues, which have dramatically better results, they are instead shown very processed data showing the effectiveness of one drug versus another. But the sad part is, the medical journals and clinical trials have been corrupted by the drug makers. With research money drying up, academia entered into a relationship with the pharmaceutical companies for their funding. While they don’t necessarily influence the process itself, many times the drug companies write the first draft of the findings, and use their more favorable data slides than the ones the academics prepared. With Vioxx, the company actually based its research findings on the first six months of a 12-month trial, because more cardiac issues were found in the second six months. But this information was never included in the report, which means it never was included as part of the information doctors use to determine whether to prescribe drugs. Ironically, the government reviewed the study and knew what had happened, but said they couldn’t stop them because the drug companies have a “first amendment right to commercial speech.” Abramson is passionate about this issue, although it does make you wonder what path there is to get things back on the right course.

In the final lecture “National Cholesterol Education Program Guidelines: Pushing Statins or Preventing Heart Disease,” Abramson digs down into what he showed in his previous lectures to show how this system works against us, focusing on cholesterol-lowering statins. He shows how the numbers don’t add up in the bigger picture, seeing that the United States currently takes twice as many statins as other industrialized nations, but still has three times as many angioplasties, and three times as many bypass procedures. In addition, for some populations of people for whom statins are recommended, such as women at risk of heart disease, there are no studies that show it would have any benefit, and one study indicates there might be a possible cancer increase as a result of taking statins.

Ironically, studies also show that diet, exercise, and stopping smoking all have extremely higher rates of preventing heart disease compared to statins, but they are not the recommended path because doctors are programmed to prescribe medications and their patients have similar expectations.

Abramson shows the vast different between what the medical studies say, how that information is reported in medical journals, and how those studies are then used as supporting documents in future recommendations despite them having no connection to the conclusions they are used to support.

Although this review is long, it is worth noting that these are incredibly dense lectures with a lot of facts, figures, charts, and additional resources. This information barely scratches the surface of what was presented. The overall thing that kept running through my mind as I watched these lectures was wondering how, in a time where candidates are running on universal health care, how the end result if it based on our current system still wouldn’t be health. In fact, the inability to get on medications for chronic conditions based on perpetually-reduced dosage guidelines might actually save more lives than giving everyone access. (Although, this doesn’t apply to necessary things the medical community provides that would save people’s lives who currently can’t afford them).

This lecture is part of the McDougall Advanced Study Series DVD set. The DVDs cost $20 each, but you can get all five new DVDs for $60 total, including additional lectures from Howard Lyman, T. Colin Campbell, Michael Greger MD, and Neal Barnard MD. You can order them from McDougall’s website.

The third McDougall Advanced Study Series DVD I’m going to review is from Michael Greger, MD. I had previously downloaded the audio of some of his presentations from his website, but think it’s worth watching them on this DVD series, as well. The first lecture is on “Stopping Cancer Before It Starts”, with the second lecture on “Coming Home To Roost: Bird Flu and Other Emerging Infectious Diseases.”

“Stopping Cancer Before It Starts” is an entertaining lecture mainly due to Greger’s presentation style, which in addition to his interesting cadence includes a lot of fun with the expectations of presentation delivery. For example, in one slide he shows the level of DDT-like toxin that is allowable in food by the government, and says he’s going to put McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken, ice cream and other fast foods up on the slide. Now, the expectation is that they would fit on the slide, which went from 0 to 200 units, with 120 being the daily limit. The presumption is that everything will come in at less than 200, though, since that is the top number on his graph. But when he puts Haagen-Dazs ice cream on the slide, though, it logs in at 49,000 units with the line crashing through the top of his slide. The other junk food also ranks with similarly high levels.

Greger’s lecture gives a primer on cancer itself and how it spreads, and he shows how a low-fat vegan diet can prevent the spread at different levels of its growth. He then starts talking about the antioxidant and other cancer-fighting properties of different foods in an entertaining way, showing how much anti-cancer bang for the buck you’d get with different fruits and vegetables. It’s good to see this recommendation about including these various whole foods in your diet rather than the reductive way the processed food industry will use this information to add health claims to their products.

A word of warning, though, the presentation does end early as this is a one-hour version, and he mentions you can download the complete presentation from his website to find out the full top ten list of cancer superfoods. But it’s certainly a worthwhile watch and reinforces how important it is to incorporate some of these foods into your regular diet.

“Coming Home To Roost: Bird Flu and Other Emerging Infectious Diseases” shows how human interaction with animals has led to many of our common ailments, such as the common cold. It started 10,000 years ago, when we started using animals as part of our workforce on farms. Once people got into close proximity with animals, they began to get colds and diseases that were previously unknown to them. It is why when Europeans came to America, the Native Americans were getting illnesses they had never known before encountering Europeans. There was no contamination from the Native Americans to the Europeans, however. The major difference is the Europeans had a closer relationship with animals, and Native Americans did not.

But our current wave of animal agriculture poses one of the biggest health threats, because factory farm conditions could not be any more conducive to growing more savage strains of viruses if it tried. With millions of birds in a huge room with no sunlight, feces everywhere, the virus can just infect and mutate at a rate that was previously unheard of. Greger shows articles from poultry industry magazines where they clearly understand the problem, but then don’t do anything about it. The government’s plan if such a strain of influenza were ever to be released is to quarantine people at home for up to 90 days, according to the Department of Homeland Security, a measure for which few if any people are ready.

So, similar to Dr. Barnard’s lecture, the first one is more pratical advice you can put into use and the second lecture is more of a bigger issue piece that is good information to have. It seems unlikely that government regulation will ever respond in a dramatic enough way to address this situation, in which case it is only a matter of time before this crisis happens. But, if you’re lucky, you could be one of the two to five percent of the population who might get the vaccine for this bird flu, as that is the amount our government has stockpiled, as opposed to Western European countries who have up to 30 percent of their population covered.

This lecture is part of the McDougall Advanced Study Series DVD set. The DVDs cost $20 each, but you can get all five new DVDs for $60 total, including additional lectures from Howard Lyman, T. Colin Campbell, John Abramson MD, and Neal Barnard MD. You can order them from McDougall’s website.

The second McDougall Advanced Study Series DVD I’m going to review is from Neal Barnard, MD, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). The two hour-long lectures on this DVD are “Breaking the Food Seduction,” and “New Dietary Approaches for Diabetes and Cancer.”

The first presentation is based on Barnard’s book of the same name, where he shows that a lot of the foods people crave, such as sugar, milk, chocolate and meat are actually chemically addictive. Barnard says a lot of this activity is a product of nature not leaving anything to chance.

He starts with the example of dipping a baby’s pacifier in sugar water and holding eye contact with the baby for several minutes while it sucks on the sugared pacifier. If you then leave the room and come back with a group of people, the baby will specifically track you around the room. There is a similar opiate effect in milk to ensure calves and babies nurse from their mothers. Chocolate ups the ante by building several addictive things into its product including caffeine. It’s an interesting lecture that also links some of these addictions to their ability to promote cancer, such as a graph where countries with the larger consumption of dairy products have the highest incidents of prostate cancer.

At one point, Barnard said that there is a drug they give in emergency rooms to people overdosing on heroin, who are about to die. It is an opiate-blocker and it stops their brain from being affected by the heroin, saving their life. If the same drug is given to someone who regularly craves and binges on chocolate, they will lose their interest in chocolate.

I first saw Barnard give this lecture several years ago when the book was released, to a room that included many invited members of the medical community, to try and get them to include nutrition as part of their practice. The lecture hasn’t changed too much over the years, but helps to show people that in many instances there is more going on than mere cravings or weakness when it comes to certain foods in our diets.

The second lecture starts with a look at the fundamentals of diabetes and how different diet-based studies have affected people with diabetes. After that, Barnard goes in a different direction than the standard vegan diet and cancer connection, focusing on studies where people already have cancer and how different diet choices affected their health and survival rates. It focused primarily on breast, colon, and prostate cancers.

I don’t think I’ll be giving away the results here if I say that a low-fat vegan diet seemed to provide the best result no matter what area of focus the study was addressing. But it was interesting to see how the low-fat vegan diet compared to other tests and control groups in the various studies. The second lecture is less interesting to a general audience, but still helps to reinforce the power of a low-fat vegan diet for everything from weight loss to diabetes prevention to reducing the symptoms of various cancers.

I’m a big fan of the McDougall Advanced Study Series DVD set. The DVDs cost $20 each, but you can get all five new DVDs for $60 total, including additional lectures from Howard Lyman, T. Colin Campbell, John Abramson MD, and Michael Greger MD. You can order them from McDougall’s website.

In one of five new McDougall Advance Study DVDs (the other four reviews will be posted daily), Howard Lyman delivers two interesting hour-long talks. The first “The Journey of a Mad Cowboy,” chronicles his life from being a farmer, rancher and feedlot operator to becoming vegan and being sued alongside Oprah for disparaging beef. The second lecture, “Eating The Earth One Bite At A Time,” starts with a history of civilizations that built themselves on bad foundations and ends with a call to action.

Surprisingly, I have never attended a Howard Lyman presentation, but I was fortunate enough to be volunteering in a booth for the San Francisco Vegetarian Society once the day after Lyman had presented. What no one told us is that Lyman was going to sit in the booth all afternoon, talk to people, and sell his books and DVDs. So, when he showed up with his stuff, we really didn’t know anything about it.

Throughout the afternoon, there was a steady stream of people stopping by to meet him and talk. Some had been to his presentation the previous day, but many just knew of him and wanted to connect with the guy who got sued alongside Oprah. Whenever there were breaks in the action, I chatted with him about our mutual respect for Dr. McDougall, and other issues. He was a really nice guy, and gave me two of his DVDs at some point that was probably under his own cost, but he was more interested that I see his DVDs than be able to afford them.

The thing I most remember about Lyman is evident in his lectures, which is his complete lack of pretense. In his first and more polished of the two lectures (probably because he’s been delivering it longer), he plays up that he grew up a farmer, rancher, and feedlot operator. He eventually turned his small family farm into a large agribusiness, until a medical issue almost left him unable to walk. Lyman really plays up his down-home nature perfectly to get people to lower their defenses. The lecture isn’t big on medical studies and research as much as his no-bullshit delivery about how his life changed as a result of becoming vegan.

The one interesting element (that I was completely unaware of) is language that was passed as part of the justifiably-maligned Patriot Act, which replaces the food disparagement legislation for which Lyman and Oprah weren’t found guilty. If the same situation came up again, Lyman could be considered a terrorist under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which can consider civil disobedience and speech as ‘domestic terrorism’ if animal-related businesses lose profits or property. Now, if some militant group burns down an animal processing plant or poisons the food supply beyond the levels currently accepted as normal by industry, then sure, I’m fine with that. But speech? It’s good to see that even in the wake of September 11, the Bush Administration was still sneaking corporate favors in under the cover of patriotism.

I think “The Journey of a Mad Cowboy” is a great lecture to show to friends and family who aren’t entirely convinced of vegetarianism. His personality will win them over and make every point get even deeper by the time the hour has ended. I also enjoy the fact that, like McDougall and T. Colin Campbell (author of The China Study), Lyman found veganism as the answer to a problem (in this case, his health), rather than being a vegan first and working backward to connect the dots. Like Campbell, who started his research on protein in an attempt to grow cattle faster, Lyman actually ran a huge cattle ranch before becoming “The Mad Cowboy.” So, this was definitely not the expected path for him.

“Eating The Earth One Bite At A Time” starts with a history lesson, of various civilizations that let their desires overshadow reality. One example is how on Easter Island the natives made elaborate carved statues to establish hierarchy within the group. At some point, rats found their way onto the island, but the natives didn’t mind since the rats only seemed to eat the seeds dropped by the palm trees. But, over time, the lack of seeds meant the older trees were not being replaced, which were being cut down for canoes to transport the statues. The deforestation also led to erosion, until the island became uninhabitable.

Lyman goes on with a series of examples of such history lessons. But ultimately the lecture ends on as a rallying cry, where he admits he’s only worried about reaching a good-sized chunk of the 20 percent of the population that is even listening. The down-home stuff continues, where he says if you lecture people about how they should eat and the consequences of their diet, you may be pointing one finger at them, but three fingers back at yourself.

Overall, another strong entry in the McDougall Advanced Study Series DVD set. The DVDs cost $20 each, but you can get all five new DVDs for $60 total, including additional lectures from T. Colin Campbell, Neal Barnard MD, John Abramson MD, and Michael Greger MD. You can order them from McDougall’s website.

By Jeff Walsh

In the new DVD “Losing Weight Without Losing Your Mind,” Doug Lisle points out that only three species struggle with gaining excess weight: humans, dogs, and cats. So, there seems to be one factor at work here if among two million species only one seems to be having a problem (and feeding two others).

In two filmed lectures given as part of a McDougall Program in Santa Rosa, Lisle says all other species eat as much as they want, don’t worry about portion control, or burning off more calories if they ate a lot, yet nature seems to sort everything out.

In his first lecture on the DVD, Lisle, the psychologist for the McDougall Wellness Program and co-author of the book The Pleasure Trap, says it all comes down to evolution and that our diet of processed foods is affecting our body’s ability to gauge satiety (when you feel full).

In one chart, he tracks the caloric density of different foods and most of the low-fat vegan stuff on the McDougall Program is around or under 500 calories per pound (raw salads, other veggies like corn and carrots, fruits, and grains — in ascending order of caloric density); whereas meat is at 1200, bread and cheese are both at 1700, and potato chips are 2500 calories per pound.

So, the more we take food away from its natural state (grain at 500 calories per pound becomes bread at 1700 calories per pound), our bodies lack the ability to correctly count these foods that were not previously part of our evolution. As he covered in detail in his book, the Pleasure Trap is our evolutionary impulse to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and try to expend the least amount of energy in the process. But we have made calorie-dense food much easier to obtain without expending energy, so that is immediately appealing.

The second lecture is all about Success Forces, and looks at the psychology of weight loss existing as a war within our brains. Lisle uses the example of catching a monkey to illustrate this dilemma. To catch a monkey, all you have to do is put food in a barrel with a hole too small for it to retrieve the food, and while its hand is in the barrel, it is vulnerable and, at some point, it cannot make a decision for its own freedom over the food in its hand.

Lisle explores why so many people have that same internal war between wanting to lose weight, but simultaneously wanting to eat, and it’s interesting information to consider. Lisle also goes on to look at many of the other mental games we play that help us from achieving our goals.

The McDougall Wellness Program has been putting out phenomenal DVDs pretty regularly now, and this is yet another keeper in the collection (expect some reviews of their previous DVDs in the future). Aside from the rather-blah stock titles on this one, it is a pretty straightforward two-camera lecture with his slides intercut, presented live in front of an audience of McDougallers.

Lisle is funny and entertaining, and presents a good case that a whole food vegan diet is the way to go (even to those of us who don’t need further convincing). The total running time is about an hour and 45 minutes, which is a pretty good deal for a $19.95 DVD.

You can find out more information on this DVD, or order it online at http://www.drmcdougall.com/store_losing_weight.html