conscious consumption 209
more than four decades, there is now powerful evidence to bolster
the good common sense not to use them. Despite research by the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control during 1998 – 2005 that estab-
lished clear causal relationships between the use of antibiotics on
the farm and the emergence of newly resistant strains of bacte-
ria that then moved into the human population, little has changed
on the farm and in the federal regulatory agencies ’ actions. Now,
fi fty years after the antibiotics were fi rst fed to broilers to enhance
weight gain, the startling results are in from the fi rst study to show a
signifi cantly higher presence of antibiotic - resistant bacteria in poul-
try workers. When poultry workers were compared to people in the
same community who did not work on a chicken farm, they were
found to have thirty - two times the likelihood of carrying multidrug -
resistant E. coli! And guess what? This study, just like the previous
few hundred, was discounted as providing insuffi cient evidence to
support changes in the use of drugs on farm animals and in pub-
lic policies that are responsible for our health. The more I learn
about these problems with the U.S. food supply, the ineptness of
our political system, and the way we treat animals, the more I appre-
ciate the delicious fl avors of my organic vegetarian dishes. Note that
my three previous books ( Heal Your Heart, The Rice Diet Solution ,
and The Rice Diet Cookbook ) contain more than 450 recipes, and
there are numerous others on our Web site, http://www.ricediet.com.
How Big a Serving of Pesticides and
Insecticides Would You Like?Few people would admit to wanting to eat any amount of pesticides
and insecticides, but they simply assume that whoever is in charge
of deciding and regulating how much they can safely consume has
their best interests at heart. Wrong. That ’ s exactly the unconscious
consumer attitude that has allowed our food supply to become
as unacceptably unhealthy as it is. The conventional toxicologi-
cal perspective that “ the dose makes the poison ” was recently
amended in the toxicology arena to include the importance of the