BREAD, RICE, PASTA, CEREAL INCREASE RISK OF DEATH BY 28%; DIETS HIGHER IN FAT REDUCE MORTAL RISK BY 23%

Let's start with a stunning statement.

And now the final blow–the carbohydrate-rich diet that became the nation’s food guideline, leads to an early death.  As I write this column today a newly published study carried this news headline: “Death by Carbohydrates.” Yes, higher carbohydrate intake (bread, rice, pasta, cereal) increases the risk for death by 28% while diets higher in fat reduce mortal risk by 23%.

So if you eat breakfast cereal or toast with your bacon and eggs, pasta or rice for dinner on a daily basis, you're raising your risk of death by 28%?  Ouch. 

I eat rice.  On occasion.  As of late, on more than one occasion.

I don't eat breakfast cereal.  Who needs the added sugar?  But nor do I eat shredded wheat.

I don't eat pasta any more, but I do eat sandwiches.  Boy, do I eat sandwiches.  I hate this.  There are days, perhaps too many days, where I rush and am not able to prepare a meal at home.  So I eat out.  It is almost impossible to find healthy solutions on the go.  Maybe, just maybe a Whole Foods kale salad, but there isn't really a Whole Foods store in your immediate vicinity.  

So the path to health, the path to life is to get rid of breakfast cereals, rice, pasta, and bread from your home.  Don't quibble.  Just do it.  There are excellent substitutes.  Ground up greens.  Not to a pulp but shred it to the size of rice.  

Okay, now let's take a look at the rest of Sardi's article, titled "Mind Bending Drugs for Psycho Diets."

It's this "higher carbohydrate intake [of] bread, rice, pasta, cereal" that Sardi calls the American diet.  The statistic above illustrates how this American diet increases death by 28%.  But before you get there, you'll suffer from some terribly debilitating conditions--depression, forgetfulness, overweight (maybe obesity), fatigue, and other ailments--that reduce your productivity and your life to levels of mediocrity only public high schools are familiar with.  

When we're young, we're not taught to think about our diet.  As kids, whatever our parents put in front of us we would eat . . . more or less.  And when we're independent, we eat what our parents weened us on--pizza, spaghetti, oatmeal, bacon and eggs, soft drinks, milk.  In short, we did as we were wordlessly told.  As young men and women, the effects of this American diet did not immediately register.  We're going along.  We're moving along.  We were making progress.  Until we're hit with something.  That's when the accumulative effect of a psycho diet works its destruction.  Actually, before some event, for the havoc that this American diet reeks on our minds is the whole point of Sardi's article.  It destroys the gut and the mind.  So decision-making is hazardous.  Uncertainty raises stress.  Life can be a ride and a hell.  Sardi explains

There is such a thing as a mental depression diet.  It’s called the American diet.  In response, physicians hand out anti-depressant pills making patients dependent on these pills for the remainder of their lives when their calorie-rich/nutrient poor diet is causing their problems.  Where does depression/anxiety emanate from? Not the brain but the intestines, what is now called the gut-brain axis.  In a misdirection, mood-altering drugs directly target neurotransmitters in the brain.

Then there is this

Altered gut bacteria early in life, particularly from over-use of antibiotics that literally sterilize the gut, and modern sugar-laden carbohydrate-rich diets by virtue of their generation of low-grade chronic inflammation, increase the risk for a depressed mood and eventually losing one’s mind later in life.

There is a whole class of antidepressant drugs called serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI’s) that increase serotonin levels in the brain.  Gut bacteria (microbiota) control serotonin.  The SSRI fluoxetine (Prozac) is itself an antibiotic that kills gut bacteria.

So the depression/anxiety emanates from the gut-brain axis in the intestines.  And antibiotics kill gut bacteria.  Let this be a lesson to those who don't know this.  If you put your aging mom or dad in the hospital, and the idiot doctor wants to put her on a regimen of antibiotic IV, something "harmless" until they can run more tests, know that you're unwittingly be coerced into being an accomplice in your father or mother's death.  And see how that will sit you with for the next 5 years. What's my point?  Stay away from doctor-prescribed antibiotics.  The only antibiotic you should take is nature's powerul antibiotic, garlic.  

Therefore, that should be the first place to consider.  Be careful what you put in your gut.  The goal is to use foods that build a healthy brain.

In particular, high blood levels of an undesirable blood protein called homocysteine, are associated with mental decline, depression and other brain disorders (B vitamins are the antidote for this).

The diet is loaded with natural antidepressants – for example, blueberries, grapes, pomegranates.  Many of these anti-depressant fruits and vegetables contain molecules like quercetin, catechin and resveratrol that control homocysteine and bind to iron and copper, major culprits in the onset of age-related brain disease and depression.

Okay, so avoid bread, pasta, rice, and cereals, and replace them with phytonutrients found in fruits and vegetables.  Could it be any simpler?  

Keep reading.  

Be sure to check out Sardi's list at the end of where he points you everso specifically to effective nutritional remedies.