Green,

Over the years I've seen a few too many "deep-enders". Once they get off the tracks it seems next to impossible to get them back on an even keel. It's like Ellen White says, once someone goes off on an extreme position their spiritual judgment is forever afterwards going to be questionable even if/when they recognize the error and come back to good spiritual judgment.

Green - why do you twist things? Yes, kwashiorkor is protein deficiency, but that is very hard to achieve if you are getting adequate calories. In a previous reply, you implied that several of us have brain damage from lack of B12, but you are the only one to acknowledged to have had B12 deficiency. My level is quite good, even above "normal".

EGW has given good counsel on diet, and it is good to take all the counsel and one can come to a healthy conclusion. Example: Grains, fruits, nuts, and vegetables constitute the diet chosen for us by our Creator. These foods, prepared in as simple and natural a manner as possible, are the most healthful and nourishing. They impart a strength, a power of endurance, and a vigor of intellect that are not afforded by a more complex and stimulating diet. {MH 296.1}

Hm, did she forget about milk and eggs?

Nature's abundant supply of fruits, nuts, and grains is ample, and year by year the products of all lands are more generally distributed to all, by the increased facilities for transportation. As a result many articles of food which a few years ago were regarded as expensive luxuries are now within the reach of all as foods for everyday use. This is especially the case with dried and canned fruits. {MH 297.1}

Nuts and nut foods are coming largely into use to take the place of flesh meats. With nuts may be combined grains, fruits, and some roots, to make foods that are healthful and nourishing. Care should be taken, however, not to use too large a proportion of nuts. Those who realize ill effects from the use of nut foods may find the difficulty removed by attending to this precaution. It should be remembered, too, that some nuts are not so wholesome as others. Almonds are preferable to peanuts, but peanuts in limited quantities, used in connection with grains, are nourishing and digestible. {MH 298.1}

...

If milk is used, it should be thoroughly sterilized; with this precaution, there is less danger of contracting disease from its use. Butter is less harmful when eaten on cold bread than when used in cooking; but, as a rule, it is better to dispense with it altogether. Cheese is still more objectionable; it is wholly unfit for food. {MH 302.1}

IF milk is used? IF? And butter - best to dispense with it all together!

EGW is clear that fruit, grains, nuts and vegetables are the diet we should strive for In fact, the in the whole book, The Ministry of Healing, eggs and milk are not recommended except for a few weak individuals. Example: But in the case of persons whose blood-making organs are feeble,--especially if other foods to supply the needed elements cannot be obtained,--milk and eggs should not be wholly discarded. Great care should be taken, however, to obtain milk from healthy cows, and eggs from healthy fowls, that are well fed and well cared for; and the eggs should be so cooked as to be most easily digested. {MH 320.1}

The diet reform should be progressive. As disease in animals increases, the use of milk and eggs will become more and more unsafe. An effort should be made to supply their place with other things that are healthful and inexpensive. The people everywhere should be taught how to cook without milk and eggs, so far as possible, and yet have their food wholesome and palatable. {MH 320.2}

How many people know the health of the animals their milk and eggs come from? Not many! And Gary note what Green objects most strongly to: Teaching people to cook without mild of eggs!! He says no, do not give them up. He may not be able to, but are his health weaknesses the prescription for all people? Is teaching people to eat the diet that the Lord has chosen for us and extreme view Gary? Green thinks so. Am I rejecting the testimonies? If so, how so?

I will just say this, apl. You are presenting a one-sided view of what Ellen White says about milk, eggs, and butter. Read everything she says on the subject and you will have a more balanced point of view.

She says in several places that milk and eggs should not be discarded in situations where their exclusion would bring about harm. She also says that it is preferable to use milk and cream in cooking than to cook tasteless insipid food that the stomach will reject.

While I agree that the commercial egg and milk industries are creating atmospheres that produce unhealthy animals it is still possible to get healthy eggs and milk produced on small farms where the farmers are humane and care about their animals, and do not use lots of antibiotics and hormones to force their animals into greater production.

Locally we have several farms that graze their cows in open fields and and when they do feed them grain it is not tainted with antibiotics or hormones. The same with local egg producers who have enough chickens to enable them to sell a eggs as a small sideline. A person can go there and talk to them and see how they care for their animals. I have no fear of using products from these people at all. I am, however, leery of the commercially produced products.

Ellen White advocated sterilizing all milk too. Growing up we drank raw milk, and raw milk is available in our area. I've been to that farm and seen their production facilities and how closely they are regulated and have drank their milk as it helps, for some reason, with my allergies. Two summers ago there were a lot of forest fires in this area and the smoke was so bad it was hard to see a quarter of mile sometimes, and drinking that milk kept my sinuses clear all summer long. I would have had to live on antihistamines without it. I'll take raw milk over antihistamines any day of the week as in all the years we drank raw milk we never once got sick from it.

apl,

I will give you one quote that will show you the one-sidedness of your approach.



As you can see Ellen White's advice on what she based her advice to avoid the use of eggs, milk, and cream was because of the abuse of the animals by commercial producers. That has only increased since her day, but the small farmer who takes good care of his animals still produces a healthy usable product.

I have seen commercially produced eggs in which the yolk was broken inside the shell as it was so weak. Yet in the free range chickens the yolks are the same as they were when I was a kid. It's sometimes hard to break them when stirring the eggs with a fork for scrambled eggs. The color of the yolks is distinct too. The commercial eggs are a very pale yellow. The free range chicken produced egg yolk is almost orange in color, as they used to be.

The small farmer produced eggs and milk are still healthy. I have no doubt the time will come when they will not be, but that time hasn't come yet, at least not when you avoid the commercially produced products.

Gary - Do you object to what EGW wrote in 1905 in The Ministry of Healing? Do you object to my question about the knowledge of where you eggs come from? You would rather risk raw milk contrary to the words of EGW? Yes, I have read everything I could find on what she wrote and the direction she is pointing to a plant based diet. I will continue to do as she has instructed us to do and that is to teach HOW to do without meat, milk and eggs "as far as possible" and have wholesome palatable food. No where I have said you "must not" have I? If you can't do away with these items of food, DON'T.

You take things so far out of context it isn't funny. Ellen White wrote what she wrote about raw milk because of the risk of contamination during milking. There was not very much knowledge at that time about germs and viruses and how disease was spread. Today we know better, and so do the producers of raw milk. They milk their cows in what are basically germ free environments. Everything must be disinfected, including the cow, before the milking process can begin. Those farmers who use their own products aren't going to shortcut the process because they would be making themselves sick. The levels of cleanliness that raw milk producers must maintain by law is not easy to reach. It's a lot different than in Ellen White's day. It's similar to her advice on buying bicycles. In her day they were spending a large percentage of their income to buy a bicycle. That's why she said people shouldn't be purchasing them just to join a fad. Today bicycles are cheap. Do your kids have/did have bicycles?

Ellen White also wrote on the taking of medicines and how we should avoid drugs as much as possible. Now, which is better, to take antihistamines, probably 12 to 14 a day just to be able to breathe, which have known negative side effects, or take a slight risk of contaminated milk? To me the no-brainer is to take the small risk of contaminated milk.

That isn't ignoring what Ellen White wrote. It's making an educated decision on which is the lesser of two evils in a situation where I had to do one or the other because of allergies and air conditions which were far out of the norm.

My eggs come from people I know and know how they care for their hens and how and what they feed them. See, I do follow her advice.

Did you know that she said that some who were getting extreme in her day on the issue of milk, butter, and eggs were "health deformers", and that is a quote, rather than "health reformers"?

It's ironic how Ellen White says that you just completely ignore and then accuse others of misusing the SOP because they don't focus in on exactly the same quotes you do.

Lack of exercise leads to weight gain? Really? Interesting. How many calories do you burn walking 1 mile? Obesity is not a problem of under-exercise, though exercise is good for many reasons. I can get 50% patients off diabetic (type 2) medication in 30-60 days with a simple diet. Check out some of the links above on eggs and disease, including type 2 diabetes.

Diabetes and Eggs

Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.

“Type 2 diabetes…is becoming a world pandemic.” We know the consumption of eggs is related to the development of some other chronic diseases. What about diabetes? Researchers found a stepwise increase in risk the more and more eggs people ate. Eating just a single egg a week appeared to increase the odds of diabetes by 76%. Two eggs a week appeared to double the odds, and just a single egg a day tripled the odds. Three times greater risk of type 2 diabetes, one of the leading causes of death and amputations, blindness, and kidney failure.

This is not the first time a link between eggs and diabetes has been reported. In 2009, Harvard researchers found that a single egg a day or more was associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes in men and women, and that finding has since also been confirmed in other populations—Asia in 2011, and Europe in 2012. And the “high” consumption of eggs associated with diabetes risk was less than one a day—though it appears you have to start early. Once you get into your 70s, avoiding eggs may not help.

Once we then have diabetes, eggs may hasten our death. Eating one egg a day or more appears to shorten anyone’s lifespan, but may double the all-cause mortality for those with diabetes. Not good news for the egg industry. From a transcript of a closed meeting I found through the Freedom of Information Act: “Given the rate at which obesity and incidence of type II diabetes is growing in the US, any association between dietary cholesterol and type II diabetes could be a ‘show stopper’ that could overshadow the positive attributes [of] eggs.”

L. Radzevivcienė, R. Ostrauskas...8):1437 - 1441.
U. Ericson, E. Sonestedt, B. Gullberg, S...6):1143 - 1153.
Z. Shi, B. Yuan, C. Zhang, M. Zhou, G. H...7(2):194 - 198.
L. Djoussé, A. Kamineni, T. L. Nelson, M...92(2):422 - 427
L. Djoussé, J. M. Gaziano. Egg consumpti...7(4):964 - 969.
L. Djoussé, J. M. Gaziano, J. E. Buring,...2(2):295 - 300.


Gary, there are those that have issue with trying to give up certain items of food. I'm not trying to convince you one way of the other. YOUR experience is not the same as someone else. Many children would benefit from avoiding milk because of mucus production it causes and the ear issue that ensue and have the opposite effect that you describe happens to you. YOUR experience of buying milk and eggs is not that of the general population which have NO IDEA the conditions of the animals from which it comes. Now what I have ignored that EGW said? None. Do you say she is too radical when she writes: The people everywhere should be taught how to cook without milk and eggs, so far as possible, and yet have their food wholesome and palatable. {MH 320.2} Or is she also out of context?

EGW's counsels on health are about the most controversial in Adventist circles. What is interesting is the non-Adventist population is seeing more light in her health message at the very time many Adventists are trying to circumvent it.

As to the discussion here --
It is true there are exceptions when some milk and eggs may be recommended, however, when looking at the subject for the majority, striving for a diet free of milk/eggs is definitely the road to take.

Green gave an example in favor of animal products--
Yet, that example was not concerning mainstream health, but rather of children who had an intolerance to some vegan foods that were high in protein. Of course if one is intolerant to beans and lentils, exceptions need to made to ensure a balance of amino acids.

However, I also know children who are intolerant to milk and milk products, so one can make the same type of case from the other side. I myself am somewhat allergic to milk. As a child I used to have very itchy rashes on my skin. No doctors knew why. But when I stopped using milk products my skin cleared completely and the rashes were gone! And back then we got our milk from a local farm.

Rather than focusing on the exceptions, and EGW's comments that in SOME cases milk and eggs should be considered, we should focus on
"people everywhere should be taught how to cook without milk and eggs, so far as possible, and yet have their food wholesome and palatable. {MH 320.2}

The counsel is to get away from milk and eggs as far as possible, not make the exceptions the rule.

Rather than milk and eggs being more healthy now than in her time, the opposite is true. The manipulation with drugs, hormones, and other "scientific" procedures of the animal food industry has NOT left us with healthier animals, but made animal food that much more unhealthy.

Here are a few quotes to the other side, which some here may already reject. Satan has many ways of getting us to reject the Testimonies, including deceiving us into thinking that we are actually more righteous for doing so.



The above was a testimony addressed to Dr. Kress in 1901 and later published in several volumes for everyone. The language is clear: "the doctrine of dispensing with [milk and eggs] should not be taught." She does not say merely that Dr. Kress should not be teaching this--but the statement would apply to anyone.

In that same year (1901), she wrote to all of the brethren in the Iowa Conference similarly, showing publicly the same message as it applied to the church membership at large.



To another individual she penned:



Clearly, both salt and milk were "nutritious" and desirable. Mrs. White expressly includes milk as part of an "unperverted appetite" (1890).



The most healthful diet, according to Mrs. White, includes milk or cream.

After all that she teaches about the benefits of milk, cream, and eggs; after her express words that we should not give them up too soon, but rather wait for God Himself to reveal that it is time to do so; after she expressly tells us not to teach others to dispense with them; after she expressly tells us that by giving them up too soon we will bring ourselves a time of trouble, and afflict ourselves with death--how can we still reject her counsels to enter a path of our own folly?

I ask everyone the same question: Has God told you to give them up? I do NOT ask if God has told you to teach others to give them up--we already know the answer to that one.

The answer I usually get is something like, "Well, all you have to do is look at how diseased the animals are becoming and how unsafe it is to use them now." Guess what? Animals were becoming diseased in Ellen White's day too. Many people sickened and died from poor sanitation. But she told people expressly that it was not yet time to give them up. When would it be time? When GOD revealed that it was. Has He? Or have people tried to run ahead of God, knowing that the time may come when this step is required, and thinking that they are somehow more righteous to take the step ahead of time?

God is not pleased when we try to run ahead of Him.

Blessings,

Green Cochoa.

I don't have a problem with anything Ellen White says. And, this last post of yours was much more balanced the first ones were.

With my inability to exercise also came high levels of chronic pain accompanied by depression from being unable to pay bills, unable to work off stress in my normal ways which was always physical exercise (full court basketball, high level volleyball, hiking in the mountains, walking the golf courses which in my area were all on hilly terrain). The depression that chronic pain often brings with it was a double whammy. I'm of a personality that eats when depressed, not is unable to eat. So, my weight gain is greatly attributable to my inability to exercise. It caused a lot of issues for me.

When you are used to burning off 3,000 calories a day or so between work and play for your entire life going from that appetite to doing nothing but sitting in one spot is not an easy chore. Especially not when your entire life has just been turned upside down.