The other night while I was cooking dinner and Scott was watching Monday night football, a commercial came on.
It was for Crestor, a statin drug. In print across the screen read “Endorsed by Weight Watchers magazine.”
Of course. It’s important to know that statins lower cholesterol in the blood. We know that cholesterol does not cause heart disease, but rather oxidation and resulting inflammation.
While I don’t support pharmaceutical drugs at all, Crestor is particularly dangerous.
From this Drug Recall website,
The dangers of Crestor include the potentially fatal disease rhabdomyolysis. Rhabdomyolysis can start as just minor seeming muscle aches but can eventually result in death. The disease can cause severe and total muscle degeneration, which floods the blood’s minerals with other substances that can cause kidney failure. Crestor danger can occur from the resulting side effects of the drug, which can injure or even kill people. Other dangerous side effects of Crestor include cardiac arrest, which can happen due to dangerous levels of potassium being released by decaying muscles into the blood. Dr. Sidney Wolfe of the group ‘Public Citizen’ says that Crestor causes primary renal failure and it is the only statin drug to do so.
Uhh, aren’t we trying to avoid cardiac arrest with this?
From Dr. Mercola’s website,
Liver injury, liver toxicity, and death are also concerns with statins. Like other statin side effects, these reactions are dose-related: the greater the dose, the greater the risk. Dr. W.C. Roberts, the editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Cardiology, warns:
“With each doubling of the [statin] dose, the frequency of liver enzyme elevations [indicating liver irritation or injury] also doubles.9”
Weight Watchers endorses Crestor because they get paid to. This is how Big Pharma operates.
And this is how diets like Weight Watchers keep people sick and keep them as consumers of unnecessary pharmaceutical drugs.
Weight Watchers is easily one of the most detrimental ways to lose weight. The first problem I have with WW is that there is absolutely no emphasis on real, whole foods. None. At. All. There is, however, a strong emphasis on typical diet foods, low-fat, over processed, devoid of a single nutrient junk.
While that may be effective for short-term weight loss, it sure isn’t for long-term, and it’s not at all healthy.
WW endorses the low-fat, high grain paradigm. While soy, canola oil, sugar and processed grains are completely acceptable on WW, a diet high in what humans have been eating since we began is eschewed: natural fats and animals. WW has no scientific or biological basis from which it operates. Their basis is profit, not health. Which is why it is sponsored by and therefore also endorses Smuckers, who uses high fructose corn syrup, Daisy Brand, who uses dairy from CAFO cows that are injected with bovine growth hormone, and Flatout Wraps.
The ingredients in their original wrap are as follows:
If that’s not bad enough, take a look at the ingredients in Weight Watchers Frozen Meatloaf and Potatoes:
Mashed Red Potatoes (Diced Red Potatoes, Water, Fat Free Sour Cream [Cultured Skim Milk and Cream, Food Starch-Modified {Corn}, Dextrose, Mono and Diglycerides, Artificial Color, Gelatin, Sodium Phosphate, Potassium Sorbate to Preserve Freshness, Agar, Xanthan Gum, Locust Bean Gum, Vitamin A Palmitate], Butter [Cream, Salt], Light Cream, Granulated Garlic, Salt, Modified Food Starch), Meatloaf (Beef, Water, Onions, Peeled Chopped Tomatoes [Vine-Ripened Fresh Peeled Tomatoes, Light Tomato Puree, Salt, Calcium Chloride and Citric Acid], Oatmeal, Chicory Extract, Organic Cornstarch, Sea Salt, Natural Flavoring), Beef Gravy (Water, Modified Food Starch, Beef Base [Cooked Beef with Natural Juices, Salt, Hydrolyzed Corn Soy Wheat Gluten Protein, Hydrolyzed Corn Soy Protein, Sugar, Beef Flavoring {Hydrolyzed Corn Soy Wheat Gluten Protein, Autolyzed Yeast Extract, Dextrose, Partially Hydrogenated Cottonseed and Soybean Oils}, Maltodextrin, Onion Powder, Hydrolyzed Corn Protein with Disodium Inosinate and Disodium Guanylate, Autolyzed Yeast Extract, Caramel Color, Natural Flavorings] Flour, Caramel Color, Salt).
