Highlighted in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and reverberated in the upcoming documentary film Food Matters, is one of the best articles documenting the tragedy of the conventional medical paradigm.

The author is Dr. Barbara Starfield of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health and she describes how the US health care system may be contributing to our poor health.

These are deaths per year:

- 12,000 — unnecessary surgery
- 7,000 — medication errors in hospitals
- 20,000 — other errors in hospitals
- 80,000 — infections in hospitals
- 106,000 — non-error, negative effects of drugs

These total to 225,000 deaths per year from modern medicine!

Add to this the number of deaths from Heart Disease and Cancer each year and the truth is out.

- 652,486 Heart disease
- 553,888 Cancer
- 225,000 Modern Medicine

Modern Medicine is now the third leading cause of death in America!

What we are experiencing now is a crisis of health care and looking to the economics of the industry is not going to solve a thing. The fact of the matter is that we need a whole new paradigm, we need to be looking at all the ways we can boost health through nutritional therapy and other alternatives approaches which are less toxic, less invasive, more effective, more safer and significantly cheaper. The 30 or 40 million people who are without health care insurance in America right now is getting some attention, as it rightly should. However is the answer giving them access to a system that doesn’t really work. Or do they need education rather than medication?

Every person reading this right now realizes that at some level they wish to help their families lives, their children’s lives and the life of the planet. And if this is our decision we need to be looking at our food choices very closely and this is exactly what the new film Food Matters delves into. If you’re after an answer to a significant health challenge or wish to protect yourself and your family from becoming customers of the ‘sickness industry’ then check out the trailer to the upcoming documentary film Food Matters.

Sources:

Death Statistics: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm
Modern Medicine Statistics: Journal American Medical Association July 26, 2000;284(4):483-5

That is the message from the founding father of modern medicine echoed in the controversial new documentary film Food Matters from Producer-Directors James Colquhoun and Laurentine ten Bosch.

With nutritionally-depleted foods, chemical additives and our tendency to rely upon pharmaceutical drugs to treat what’s wrong with our malnourished bodies, it’s no wonder that modern society is getting sicker. Food Matters sets about uncovering the trillion dollar worldwide ‘sickness industry’ and gives people some scientifically verifiable solutions for curing disease naturally.

In what promises to be the most contentious idea put forward, the filmmakers have interviewed several world leaders in nutrition and natural healing who claim that not only are we harming our bodies with improper nutrition, but that the right kind of foods, supplements and detoxification can be used to treat chronic illnesses as fatal as terminally diagnosed cancer.

The focus of the film is in helping us rethink the belief systems fed to us by our modern medical and health care establishments. The interviewees point out that not every problem requires costly, major medical attention and reveal many alternative therapies that can be more effective, more economical, less harmful and less invasive than conventional medical treatments.

“We need to get this message out there. It will change people’s lives,” says Laurentine.

The documentary film comes at an appropriate time where health care is high on the agenda in many industrial nations. As the US approaches elections, major health care reform is a hotly contended issue. The American health care system has received a great deal of scrutiny after Michael Moore’s exposé, Sicko, in which he voices the views of around 50 million Americans who don’t have access to health care insurance. But will giving people access to a system that is already in crisis solve the problem?

This is exactly what film makers James and Laurentine bring to light in this new film. “If we can help people become more aware of the choices available to them, they can start to reduce their reliance on the ‘sickness industry’. It’s about education not medication,” says James, “with access to solid information, people invariably make good choices for their health.”

In a departure from traditional distribution models, the film will be made available to viewers all over the world, using streaming technology provider Vividas, on a pay-per-view model. Using this cutting edge solution, the film will be accessible to an unlimited number of simultaneous viewers at exceptional quality. This same technology helped the producers of the 90-minute feature film The Secret expand their exposure worldwide contributing to their enormous international success.

“The internet is a ready and accessible medium for us” says James. “People all over the world are able to receive this message and apply it to their own lives immediately.”

The production has remained independently funded from start to finish. “We wanted to remain as unbiased as possible in the way that we presented this information to the public,” says James, “especially on such a sensitive topic”.

This has also been part of what has attracted others to the project with the team having recently joined up with the acclaimed Australian Triple Platinum ‘John Butler Trio’ who will be contributing music for the film. “We’ve been extremely fortunate to have John Butler on board; it will go a long way to help get the message out there” says Laurentine.

The film’s official trailer and website can be found at www.foodmatters.tv

We did tell him it was unnecessary (as we won’t be seeing him on screen) but if he wishes to clean up his image now that his music is starring in an International Production on Nutrition and Natural Healing then thats understandable.

Everyone handles the stress of success differently…

James…

I’m pretty sure I’ve been told this before but it tends to, at times, escape my immediate mental semantic net. We’ve been edging ever closer to a release of the trailer to FoodMatters for a few weeks now and the heat of the 11th hour is on! The grade is complete (making the visual aesthetics of the film nice) and the audio is coming together as we speak…. So very very close.

Creating the trailer to a film is for the most part much more complex and intensive than creating a feature film, or for that matter filming one. We’ve had to compress over 25 hours of footage, 6 months of travel, years of nutritional studies and an enormous mass of vision into less than 3 minutes. A mean feat at the best of times.

The psychology of a trailer is one that many people fascinate over and it’s study certainly warrants further consideration. Some trailers say very little and leave more to the imagination, others reveal all that is in store and yet others simply put whatever makes people laugh togeter with some funny music. Some indeed put you to sleep.

The trailers with the greatest impact are those which evoke the greatest emotional response. Emotions move people to action, and to wars for that matter. The focus of our trailer is in helping us rethink the belief systems fed to us by our modern medical and health care establishments. Let’s face it we all know that in modern industry it’s about getting your money first and leaving your concerns second. I’m sorry to say that this is no different in the Health (Disease) care system, as poignantly shown in Michale Moore’s fantastic exposé in the film Sicko. The disease care industry is one that when combined with the disease creating food industry totals trillions of dollars per year, big bucks for shareholders and bad news for consumers (us).

But it’s one thing that around 30 million Americans are without health care, and this is getting some attention, as it rightly should do. But is giving people access to a system that doesn’t work really the solution to the problem? And this is exactly what FoodMatters is all about, focusing on educating you on the best choices for your health and reducing your reliance on the trillion dollar sickness industry.

It’s about education not medication.

It’s about taking responsibility for your health, and trust me this is not as hard as it seems.

In good health,

James

After clearing the formalities away with a topping of meeting banta Enzo was ready to unleash…

‘Sit down and check this out’ he said as we prepared ourselves for the worse. He reached over to his computer fiddled around in iTunes for a short second and then commenced reverberating the music of the John Butler Trio’s song ‘Used To Get High’. At this stage Enzo’s devilish child like grin was a give away that the bad news we had prepared ourselves for was never going to eventuate. Through an act of random intervention Enzo had found the theme song for our film after hearing it on the radio earlier that morning.

After silently rejoicing to ourselves we settled down and came to the realization that identifying the song to the film is step one… Getting the John Butler Trio on board was another…

…stay tuned for more exciting adventures in the making of FoodMatters the Documentary