I’ve made some valid predictions in my prior fiction. You wouldn’t know this, because my work has always been suppressed, just like the writing, thoughts, and interests of all non-elite, non-male, non-rich, non-white people.
But I know it. My first novel, written and published (conventionally, ha! ha!) in 2000, drawing on stories previously published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, predicted what we have gone through in the U.S. over the past 5–6 years. It has a billionaire villain, Harmon Jacques, the owner of DisLex, the entertainment utility, who wants to use the power of quantum computing to create the “Perfect Town,” populated by Imagos, virtual images of people who will be … “perfect.”
Harmon is secretly obsessed with Julie Curtez, a young, happily married DisLex marketing exec … he uses smart home devices to creep on her in every room, and he infects her with a nanovirus intended to make her “perfect” and his forever … and Harmon’s advisor is a cyber version of Dick Nixon —
There are also the changed people, victims of Human Mutational Virus. These poor individuals are either homeless or living on the outskirts of society and are taken to a work camp where they work for free (hm, where have we heard this before?) —
So, I wrote this over two decades ago and time has passed. Unlike 99.99% of individuals who portray themselves as “futurists” or who appear in media officially predicting the future, I am not paid by any individual company to make any prediction. And, I also have experience with over 400 startups and business expansions from companies around the globe in sectors that other consultants either can’t, or won’t work for — due to the complexity of the tech they’re involved in — or because they are founded by nonwhite, non-male, diverse founders. So they can’t afford the services of the top white, male, similar consultant.
The work I do for paying clients intersects with my personal interest in wellness and health. There is a revolution on the horizon and it is starting with our microbiome and with scientists who actually do science, have ethics, and care.
This is so long overdue, I can’t even express —
What the average person does not know is that the foods we eat in the West serve more than one purpose. I now believe that people who are members of various Boards of Directors, who attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, and who control large amounts of cash know everything I am saying — and then-some.
Want to Know What Richies Want You to Think And Do? Read the Economist
The December issue of The Economist has many “tells” in it. First, it featured an article with nearly two-decade-old information about why women pay an economic price in the workplace if they are not thin. This is pretty much true: the thinner and more conventionally “attractive” (blonde, blue-eyed, preferable) a woman is, the better she tends to do in terms of salary and advancement in most corporate or similar environments.
I didn’t realize, because I do not subscribe to the print magazine, that bookended with the “ladies, you will make more money if you’re slim, trim, and blonde,” article — was a basic introductory article on the human microbiome and its “potential influence” on mental health. Much like the thinness v. salary article, this article contained little to no real research on the microbiome. It certainly did not mention the hottest wellness startup in the world, Zoe, or Dr. Tim Spector or any of the rest of Zoe’s scientific advisory board.
This may be seen as a radical pronouncement, but I believe that rich people who own pharmaceutical companies (like the opioid Sacklers), legacy wealth holders like the Rothschilds (and many others), and others with less wealth, but plenty of influence, like legacy families from educational institutions like Oxford, Harvard, and Yale — know everything I am saying here and then-some.
Their most powerful tool to hold their positions of power are the twin towers of the horrific Western food and “healthcare” systems.
The standard processed Western diet makes people fat and sick. And, it makes people crazy, too. Bad, toxic foods dull the mind (“brain fog”). They create metabolic havoc. They kill beneficial gut microbes that keep us healthy, in good homeostasis. They addict, through addictive properties of additives and basic, yet highly-addictive ingredients like sugar, salt, and fat.
The richest people benefit from concierge medicine. They easily afford completely personalized nutrition provided by in-home chefs who cook foods free of additives and adulterants: no pesticides and no hormones blasted into young animals for quick growth and harvest. Rich people’s foods are grilled or seared in traditional cooking methods. Their foods aren’t seared “fat-free” in cheap nonstick pans coated with mutagenic “forever chemicals.”
These rich people are also building enclaves where they will have their own organic food, their own clean water, and their own little castles in their healthy, isolated lands of Oz … doubt me? Here’s one that I learned about working with a client: it’s called Maha, and it’s supposed to … take over a rural Northern California county using all of its water and natural resources. Ten thousand low- to moderate-income people live in Lake County now. If Maha is ever finished, it will add another 4,000. But they won’t exactly be what most of us would consider “good neighbors.”
Thinking More Clearly: Thanks to No Sugar
I decided to stop consuming excess sugar when I watched Damon Gameau’s That Sugar Film. It wasn’t Damon’s rapid weight gain and health deterioration after 60 days of eating sugar-laden foods advertised as “healthy” that influenced me, so much as his conclusion at the end of the film. The film illustrated people on city streets rushing around yelling at each other, completely stressed, upset and angry. Damon identified the hectic “sugar fueled modern lifestyle and attitude” and I thought, “I don’t want to live like that any more.”
Por ejemplo: I’ve spent countless hours of my life commuting: the worst was Beyond Shelter, with three and four-hour daily commutes. I was so proud of my Wilshire Blvd. corner office overlooking the hospital room where my father died. I thought I was really a big cheese hobnobbing with rich LA-area magnates with my six-figure salary: all to combat a problem, homelessness, that should not exist. I’ve managed to build a life where I do not need to do that any longer.
One of the first changes that happened when I gave up sugar was the ability to say “no.” No, thank you. To crappy job opportunities and lousy clients. Many of us women (and men) are “people pleasers” and we have all done countless things we would rather not have done throughout the course of our lives thanks to our difficulty in declining a request — especially on the job.
The other benefits I’ve enjoyed are numerous. I’m happier and healthier than I have been since I was a tiny child.
I know that the big food companies are aware of everything that I’ve documented and then-some. Nestle is creating plant-based Frankenfood at an alarming rate. You do not need to eat pea protein-based “tuna” with “only six ingredients.”
If you don’t want to eat tuna, you can eat … wait for it … peas. You know: the plant.
The Pharmas are somewhat more desperate than the food companies, I think, based on my work with small molecule AI drug discovery businesses. There was really only one full “tell” in The Economist’s article about how the microbiome “might” affect mental health. They noted that food-based healthcare approaches might not be adopted because, and I quote,
The difficulty with developing this new field of research lies in the economics. Unlike drugs, vitamins, minerals and microbes are not patentable. Pharmaceutical firms have nothing to gain commercially from running trials on pills that anyone can flog. It is difficult to trust industry-sponsored research since it has a bias towards favourable findings.
A few years ago, I was watching an average documentary about the benefits of vitamin and mineral supplements. The film devoted about five minutes to a Pharma-industry expert whose eyes nearly popped out of his head as he declared, “You could die if you take too much Vitamin A!” and he then referenced a man who juiced kilos of carrots every day for years who ultimately succumbed to turning orange and dying from Vitamin A toxicity.
I couldn’t help but think about the irony of this hysterical pronouncement, which I’ve heard before — about basically every supplement — and the lack of hysterical pronouncements on the order of “If you take an opioid for pain longer than a few days, you run the risk of dependency and ultimate addiction and potential death …” One weird carrot-juicer hasn’t died this way: over 300,000 people in the U.S. alone have since addiction-promoting opioids were introduced in the mid-90s by the Opioid Sacklers.
What I Now Believe
I now believe that every person should strive to take the same care of themselves that the very richest do. We should not accept second-best — from information about our health to safety on the roads, to a return on our tax dollars, to the foods we eat.
We are what we eat, there is no question about that. We are also the type of information, entertainment, and “content” we consume.
I have changed so much, from eating a healthy (as in whole, basic, simple foods, prepared simply, varied each week) diet and eliminating processed foods completely, that I look at the same things I used to do, think, or pay attention to with astonishment.
Today, in my so-called “field” (sci fi or general “writing”) there’s a repeated controversy attacking a man who used to be a friend of the guy who left my baby by himself to die. This dude is angry that people other than himself and his pals have received some type of award or recognition. There’s little to no money in this field, even for the highest-awarded people. The woman that supposedly “beat” me for a Nebula Award came to the ceremony dressed in a thrift store skirt and a tacky, baggy t-shirt. Maybe seven or eight years later, my co-worker read both stories and said, “How the f- did that other story beat you?”
He was just a regular — well-educated, smart, humane — guy. Not a “fan.”
“She and her husband had a small press,” I said. This is true to this day, from those attacking my former partner’s pal who’s definitely on the oldschool and racist side, and from those defending him. Every single one of them is caught in this rotating whirlpool of bullshit and pointlessness.
Learning and growth does occur. This was when I realized that most, if not all awards were at best, meaningless, or at worst, embarrassing due to who was voting on them, how, and why. I also started to cogitate that my physical health and diet was essential for everything else. All other aspects of my life. My life: you have one too, this is what I write about. For myself, and for you.
Around about this time, I lost a lot of weight (enhancing my earning potential — see above) by giving up dairy, which automatically limits processed foods … but only one coworker listened to me about that. All of the others either laughed at me or ignored my limited, basic experiences. “I’ll never give up my ice cream,” said one person who had many health challenges.
Zoe: For Wellness
A few weeks ago, I saw a 1 hour video with Dr. Tim Spector, the co-founder of Zoe Nutrition. He explained his personal health journey and research interests. More recently, I was researching to write about “Type 3 Diabetes” — aka Alzheimers Disease. Alzheimers is so closely related to Type 2 Diabetes that it has been called Type 3 diabetes for the past decade.
I stumbled upon a research study of the microbiome and specific responses to meals, right after consumption. It turned out to be the biggest of its kind ever conducted. Only a few paragraphs in, and I could tell that the paradigm had shifted: hard. And in the best imaginable direction.
Zoe is the most highly-funded current wellness startup, having received an additional $30 million in Series B funding last December for a total of $77 million raised to date. It provides personalized analysis of the microbiome, blood sugar, and blood lipids using the Zoe kit. It can recommend appropriate diets for a wide range of individuals. It — shocker — turns out that not everyone responds to foods the same way.
But, in general, Zoe’s co-founders and scientists, led by Dr. Tim Spector, recommend eating plant-based foods as much as possible. This doesn’t mean consuming Nestle- or similar Big Food-designed Frankenfoods. Nor does it mean that we should allow people like Bill Gates to buy heartland farmland and “control” our diets. We can — in most areas — grow fruits and vegetables locally. We can farm and fish locally, too.
So, last week, I ordered my Zoe kit and read Zoe’s advice to eat 30 different plant based foods every week, and I started doing it. I was up to 30 on Friday, and over the weekend, got another 5 varieties and made the amazing achievement of 35.
I know how much protein I need to eat daily. The addition of varied vegetables and fruits hasn’t just made for a tasty and interesting daily diet —
I feel even better and … massive meno-belly … boys and girls, I have almost achieved that goal of flat belly!! —
It is inside-out, outside and inside, it is all together. Health and happiness, mind and body, it is all the same thing.
We were not made to consume Frankenfood, and we weren’t made to consume Franken-tainment or have primitive, Franken-attitudes.
We aren’t “Gods” either. We are living creatures — we are human. It is about time we treat ourselves with the respect and care that the richest assume, take, and believe is their “birthright.”
This birthright belongs to all of us, not just a privileged few.
Great article.
I have found eating healthy foods overall is a great improvement both physically and mentally. Sugar is the one thing I actively seek to avoid - packaged, processes, fast foods are packed with it. Get that sugar out of your life - and your life improves. Thanks Amy!!!!