Hallo, esteemed viewers, and welcome to Healthy Living on Supreme Master Television. Today, in the first of a two-part series, we meet Dr. Michael Klaper, a physician and nutrition expert who is based at the TrueNorth Health Education Center located in California, USA. He is also the author of “Vegan Nutrition: Pure and Simple” a book which explains how to transition to a plant-based diet and has tasty recipes.

My real passion is keeping people healthy enough to stay out of hospitals and off our operating tables. So in the last 20 years or so my focus has really been on nutrition and lifestyle medicine. That’s my real love of life.

Dr. Klaper is a strong advocate of the vegan diet for treating health conditions and maintaining one’s well-being. In the 1980s, he realized that many chronic diseases are caused by the high-fat and overly processed foods of the standard American diet or SAD. He then became a vegan and implemented nutritionally-based therapies in his practice. With Dr. Klaper’s help, many of his patients have regained their health and become more energetic by following a plant-based lifestyle.

My own evolution to a vegan diet and lifestyle and vegan brand of medicine was a kind of convergence of a number of courses that happened to me in the early 1980’s. I was practicing medicine in Vancouver (Canada). I was doing a residency in anesthesiology and day after day I was watching surgeons open up people's chests and open up their hearts and pull out these gobs of fatty, waxy material and I realized that this is largely the fat of the animals these people are eating.

And my dad died of clogged arteries; I knew I was at risk for this. One day I was going to be laying on that table with that Stryker saw going up my chest and I said, "Hmm. I don't think I want to do that." These people are very uncomfortable when they wake up so already I realized that an animal-based diet was not a healthful thing no matter what I had learned in school and our farm growing up.

And shortly after that, I read a remarkable book by an author, John Robbins who later became my friend and colleague called, "Diet for a New America.” And in it, this remarkable book, John Robbins first presented the animals and all their glory and their cleverness and their beauty and their wonder. And they said we don't treat animals very nicely and they outlined the reality of modern factory farming.

Then the second part was what an animal-based diet does to our health. And I'm a physician, I knew that as well, but I was impressed for a non-physician that he lays this out, all the effect on our arteries, our bones, and our diabetes risk very well. And I was impressed with that, but what I hadn't realized was in the third chapter of his book, he laid out what the realities of what a meat-based diet does to the environment.

And I'm a passionate environmentalist. And I grieve when I see the rivers running brown with topsoil, and the forest disappearing and the animals that I loved as a child disappearing. For what? To make room for feed grain fields and cattle grazing and our waters disappearing, our waters becoming polluted. And finally, it became so overwhelming there's no way I could walk into a fast food restaurant and order a cheeseburger.

After deciding to consume only animal-free foods, Dr. Klaper lost 10 kilograms without calorie restrictions and his cholesterol level dropped from 242 milligrams per deciliter to a healthy 140 milligrams per deciliter. The good doctor then also started asking his patients to alter their diets as well.

Well now I knew what to tell them. Stop running all that fat through your arteries and get yourself leaner. And amazing what happens, they start experiencing the same thing! They get leaner, their blood pressure comes down, their diabetes gets better. "Doctor, you're so smart!" I'm not smart, I just put the right fuel in.

What does the Standard American Diet consist of and why is it not healthy?

The diet that Americans are currently eating, that has become the Standard American Diet, has changed radically in the last 50 years, actually in my lifetime. I remember when I was a kid in the 1950s and the 1960s my mother would bring home food and prepare it in the kitchen. In the intervening 40 years or so we have seen the emphasis change from quality of the food to convenience. Especially the younger generations, really subsist on fast food, convenience foods.

And though they’re very convenient, their nutritional profile has changed. A lot of the vitamins and minerals are processed out of them, the natural fiber of fruits and vegetables being removed. The reality is that the American Diet has become a food stream of high fat, high sugar, high protein, and overly processed foods.

And these substances leap into the blood stream and the result you can see walking down Main Street or going down to any classroom. It’s made us obese, especially among adults, but disturbedly now in children. It’s given us an epidemic of diabetes, high blood pressure, various types of arthritis, and autoimmune diseases.

After this message, we feature more of Dr. Klaper’s insights on nutrition and maintaining a balanced diet. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

We knew it all the time, plant-based diets are the healthiest. Take away the subsidies from the meat industry, take away the sugar subsidies, all these things that perpetuate this type of pathogenic diet and instead hand out vouchers to make fruits and vegetables cheaper.

Welcome back to Healthy Living here on Supreme Master Television where we are talking with Dr. Michael Klaper, physician and nutrition expert at the TrueNorth Health Education Center, located in California, USA. He is also the director of the non-profit Institute of Nutrition Education and Research, which offers continuing education courses to health professionals on therapeutic uses of nutrition in medical practice as well as a member of the Nutrition Task Force of the American Medical Student Association.

I remember a T-shirt from the 1960s where it says, “Question Authority,” and I was never one really to do that. Especially when it came to medical authority and what I read in Harrison’s textbook of internal medicine, or in Robbins’ pathology book, well that’s the way these diseases are, and you just have to work within those parameters.

And it was exciting back in the early 1980s to read the work of these few nutritional pioneers, Dr. Dean Ornish and others, to even see the words printed there: “Arteriosclerotic plaque that clogs arteries will melt away on a low fat plant-based diet.”

When I encountered the work of Dr. John McDougall and others I remember the dogma that was taught to me: “You have a diabetic patient. Once on insulin, always on insulin, nobody gets off insulin injections.”

And to hear Dr. McDougall say “We get them off insulin all the time. In fact we have to get them off insulin; these people get low blood sugar reactions if you don’t get them off insulin.” Wow, never thought of that. Sure enough people get leaner and these diseases go away, so many of them.

An autoimmune disease is caused when one’s immune system mistakenly attempts to eliminate healthy cells within the body. There are approximately 80 different types of autoimmune diseases.

These terrible autoimmune diseases, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, and scleroderma, the thought that what people are eating had anything to do with these diseases, that would get you laughed out of the clinic if you had mentioned that.

And yet indeed people come to TrueNorth here, we get them on a very clean plant-based diet, occasionally we’ll give them a brief fast on just water. And it’s amazing, those hot swollen joints cool off, and blood pressures come down as their kidneys heal. It’s a remarkably powerful healing modality.

A Harvard University, USA study found that eating meat increases the risk of colon cancer in men and women by 300%. One of the best favors we can do our body so that it can repair itself and keep strong is avoid animal products and strive to consume plenty of fruits and vegetables.

It's just a tribute to the healing power we all have within our bodies. We're constantly subverting that power by putting these floods of fat and sugar and chemicals through our body, hour after hour, day after day. And no wonder, the derangement happens, it’s like putting the wrong fuel in the car. And we are this engine, this machinery of a body we have.

It's a plant burning organism and you put in this nice, lean light fuel without all these saturated fats and sugars and amazing, health emerges here. And, then again, when there's terrible advanced disease, it doesn't mean everything is magically going to be restored and repaired to normal.

But if there's anything the healing forces in your body can do, then this kind of whole food plant-based diet will let those healing forces do the best they can do and what they can do is just remarkable. It's exciting to see.

If you keep your stomach full of vegetables, wonderful things happen: high blood pressure goes down, people get leaner, they get healthier, plaque melts away, these fearsome autoimmune diseases melt away. It’s quite remarkable as a healing modality. I wish someone had told me in medical school how effective a plant-based diet would be for real life diseases.

Dr. Klaper feels that health professionals are becoming increasingly aware of the need to keep a diet free of animal products to assure well-being and this trend will help to constructively transform public health in the future.

The truth of this is so powerful; it’s starting to show up in the medical literature. Everybody knows somebody who’s benefited from changing to a plant-based diet.

Every physician is starting to run into one of their patients or an office nurse or somebody has made this transition. Where it’s starting to percolate upward, and it’s hopefully going to reach that stage, we knew it all the time, plant-based diets are the healthiest.

Please join us next Monday on Healthy Living as Dr. Klaper will share more of his inspiring messages about the vegan lifestyle.

For more details on Dr. Michael Klaper, please visit www.VegSource.com/klaper
The book “Vegan Nutrition: Pure and Simple” and other media by Dr. Klaper are available at the same website

Loyal viewers, thank you for your presence on today’s edition of Healthy Living. Up next is Science and Spirituality, after Noteworthy News. Through Heaven’s grace, may humanity always be united as one.

Hallo, harmonious viewers, and welcome to Healthy Living on Supreme Master Television. Today, in the second part of a two-part series, we visit again with Dr. Michael Klaper, a physician and nutrition expert who is based at the TrueNorth Health Education Center located in California, USA. He is also the author of “Vegan Nutrition: Pure and Simple” a book which explains how to transition to a plant-based diet and has tasty recipes.

Dr. Klaper is a strong advocate of the vegan diet for treating health conditions and maintaining one’s well-being. In the 1980s, he realized that many chronic diseases are caused by the high-fat and overly processed foods of the standard American diet or SAD. He then became a vegan and implemented nutritionally-based therapies in his practice. With Dr. Klaper’s help, many of his patients have regained their health and become more energetic by following a plant-based lifestyle.

When I went to medical school we learned about all these exotic diseases. I thought I was going to be seeing six cases of leprosy and typhoid fever every week. I’ve been a physician almost 40 years. How many cases of typhoid fever I have seen? None. How many case of leprosy? One. I saw one once. That’s not what kills people.

What kills people is a rather small group of dismal diseases, as I mentioned, clogged arteries, diabetes, high blood pressure, and autoimmune diseases. And these largely stem from what we eat and this largely goes back to what has become the Standard American Diet, unfortunately which we have now exported to the majority of developed nations around the world.

Meat, eggs, and dairy foods are fueling an obesity epidemic. According to the World Health Organization, globally approximately 42 million children under the age of five are obese. Those obese as children are more likely to have this condition as adults. Anyone who is obese is also more likely to have other serious, chronic diseases as well that last a lifetime.

And we’re seeing an epidemic of malnutrition in its literal sense. ‘Mal’-as in bad, doesn’t mean you’re the skinny undernourished child necessarily. The face of the new malnutrition is obesity in childhood, and it’s very sad because these are all avoidable diseases, but they are fearsome once they get developed.

Adult on-set diabetes – We don’t even use that term anymore because it’s no longer on-set in adults. We are seeing 10 and 12 or 14 year-old children with type II diabetes.

Consumption of animal products is creating a true public health emergency and is also a significant economic and social burden in the US and countries the world over.

I just read for what the average person with diabetes will cost the system over the course of their lifetime with all the medications and the testing, and the hospitalizations, and the kidney failure and the transplants and the amputations. We’re talking about millions and millions of diabetic people, one out of every three Americans are destined to develop diabetes. The system, you’re talking hundreds of billions and billions of dollars, it cannot sustain that for a disease that is reversible and it’s preventable. And so I suspect the economics will drive a day of reckoning.

The healing power of food is being overlooked, the destructive power of processed food has been unleashed, and we need to reverse this.

A persistent myth is that vegans do not have an adequate amount of protein in their diet. Dr. Klaper now addresses this misconception.

If you’re eating whole plant foods, there is no way not to get enough protein. We need about five percent of our calories everyday as protein. Any whole plant food, any tomato, any ear of corn, any green bean, is anywhere between eight to 12% protein.

If you get your 2000 calories a day from whole plant foods, no matter what they are, fruits, vegetables, greens, etc. you’re going to be getting your 40 or 50 grams of protein. It’s in the fruits and vegetables and grains and potatoes and legumes, it’s in there. And so one, it really isn’t (an issue) to worry (about).

Second, when I went to medical school, I never heard the words “too much protein”; this person’s got too much protein. It seems to be such an American phenomena, where everything’s bigger and better here, and we’re the land of the 16 ounce porterhouse steaks, and we sit down and eat these huge slabs of meat.

Well, our kidneys aren’t really designed to handle that, and those big bolts of protein run through our kidney filters. It injures our kidneys, raises our blood pressure, leaches calcium out of our bones, and sets us up for osteoporosis. This is not a healthy diet; we’re eating too much protein, and these meat based diets are dangerous, hazardous to your health.

I would urge people not to worry. If you want some extra protein in your diet, you can certainly gather it from the plant kingdom, beans and peas and chickpeas and lentils and all these wonderful legumes, throw them in your soup, put them in your salads, have them in your side dishes. You can make burgers out of them; there are lots of ways to get these high protein plant foods in your diet, if you want a little extra protein.

I’ve been a physician almost 40 years; I’ve never seen anyone walk in the office with the diagnosis of protein deficiency, even long term vegans. It’s not really an issue.

After this message, Dr. Klaper will discuss the dangers of milk products. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

So it could be done, you could change the economics, make it more favorable for the broccoli growers and for the current meat and pig farmers to change to growing produce and fruits and vegetables. Help these people, don’t throw them off the land, don’t disrupt their lives. They’re the farmers; they’re growing our food. Help them change to grow something else. You don’t have to give up your land, just grow something that really helps us all.

Welcome back to Healthy Living here on Supreme Master Television where we are talking with Dr. Michael Klaper, a vegan physician and nutrition expert at the TrueNorth Health Education Center, located in California, USA. We asked Dr. Klaper for his views on dairy products and how consumption of items like milk and cheese affects one’s health.

When I was growing up, especially in my uncle’s dairy farm in Wisconsin (USA), I certainly drank a lot milk, and that’s what we do to all our children. Bones are white, milk is white, bones have calcium, milk has calcium. Got to have milk for your bones and your teeth are white and they got calcium.

Well, it makes initial sense for about the first 10 seconds. But to physicians who are dealing with these fearsome diseases like osteoporosis, where bone’s substance dissolves and people sneeze and they break their ribs, and they trip and break hips. When you look at the countries that have the most osteoporosis, the crumbliest bones, it’s the United States, New Zealand, Canada, and the UK; it’s the countries where they consume the most milk.

So right away, prima facie evidence, if milk produced strong bones the countries who consumed the most milk would have the strongest bones and have the fewest fractures. Well, it’s just the opposite.

Cow’s milk is designed by nature, specifically to turn a 65 pound calf into a 400 pound cow in a year. That’s what cow’s milk is for, it is baby calf growth fluid, that’s what the stuff is.

And when we consume it in any form, whether we drink it as milk, whether we turn it into cheese or yogurt or ice cream, it’s still all baby calf growth fluid. And it’s filled with hormones and sugars and proteins to make you into a great big cow, and it happens, and I think the major factor in obesity. And I’ve got people shocked, “I drink skimmed milk why am I putting on this weight?” It’s because there’s a lot more in it than just the fat.

So when you look at this white fluid, as much as it’s presented as it’s mother’s milk, it’s healthy for you, and yes, your parents want to give you love and so ice cream tastes sweet and milk helps you grow big and strong they think, and it’s given to us.

But the reality is that it makes us overweight. There’s evidence that it may contribute to childhood diabetes and it doesn’t protect our bones. Unless you’re a baby calf, I suggest you don’t consume cow’s milk products is basically what it comes down to. There’s no good reason to it and a lot of reasons not to do it.

Dr. Klaper strongly believes that the vegan lifestyle would be easily embraced by most youth and adults given the right encouragement. He now shares his inspiring suggestions to bring veganism to the forefront of society’s consciousness.

There are lots of ways to do that, just serving better food in school, plant-based foods. My friend in Hawaii (USA), John Cadman is the food service director of Haiku Elementary School. And he started a vegetarian line and a regular line for sixth graders. And within three weeks the vegetarian line was longer.

The veggie dogs and the veggie chilis are all good things and kids will respond and they’re aware of the planet, they’re aware of the animals, you can reach the kids. And then for the adults, lower their taxes; make it worthwhile for people to change.

Have cooking classes in schools, have potlucks in your neighborhood. If you really want to change the society, it is doable. Especially with today’s Internet and mass media, it can be done. And the younger generations are going to be a lot more amenable to that.

So that old, “Well, it’s never worked before and we can’t do it,” that’s going to get swept away, and there’s powerful motivations to do it. The ways to do it are available to us, and I’m going to do everything I can and I commend your organization for helping to get the word out to help this transition happen. It’s doable.

We truly appreciate Dr. Klaper sharing his knowledge and insight on nutrition and how to keep a balanced diet. May communities the world over soon adopt the invigorating vegan lifestyle and enjoy vastly healthier and better lives.

For more details on Dr. Michael Klaper, please visit www.VegSource.com/klaper
The book “Vegan Nutrition: Pure and Simple” and other media by Dr. Klaper are available at the same website

Praiseworthy viewers, thank you for joining us on this edition of Healthy Living. Up next is Science and Spirituality after Noteworthy News. May Heaven’s love always grace our world and touch all hearts.