Anne Marie Michaels – Real Food Media

Ann Marie Michaels, aka CHEESESLAVE is founder and driving force for Real Food Media, a groundbreaking organization that is using modern technology to help share the life saving information about Old-Fashioned traditional diets.

Real Food Media is a network of blogs about whole, natural, nutrient-dense food. They believe food should be: * Organic * Humanely raised (animals on pasture, not in factories) * Grown locally when possible * Whole and unrefined (real maple syrup instead of high-fructose corn syrup) * Processed as little as possible (raw milk instead of pasteurized and homogenized) * Nutrient-dense (enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and probiotics) * Free of additives and preservatives * Free of synthetic and chemical ingredients * Not genetically modified * Traditionally produced and prepared They publish stories about food and cooking, food politics, farming and producing food, health and nutrition, and green living. 

Ann Marie has over twelve years of experience in the field of interactive media and advertising. She began her career in 1995 in Silicon Valley and has worked at some of the top advertising agencies and consulting firms including CKS Interactive, Razorfish, Deutsch and Foote, Cone & Belding. Past clients include: Apple Computer, Levi’s, Target, Toys “R” Us, Clinique, AT&T, Warner Bros., Disney, Hallmark, Nestle, Turner Networks, Coors, E*TRADE, Quaker, Sony, Fox, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Creative Artists Agency, and Old Navy.

Deeply passionate about the interactive medium, she is especially interested in viral marketing, social networking, digital identity, RSS, podcasting, blogging, virtual community and Web mash-ups. She holds a B.S. in Radio/Television/Film, with a specialization in New Media from the University of Texas at Austin, and is a member of the Advanced Communications Technology Lab (ACTLab).

Ann Marie is a co-chapter leader for the Weston A. Price Foundation in Los Angeles, California. She is also the author of the cookbook, Cooking to Hook Up: The Bachelor’s Date Night Cookbook (Globe-Pequot, 2004).

The Liberation Wellness Hour Radio Show can be heard each week on Saturday at 12noon EST on

Liberty Works Radio Network, on BlogTalkRadio.com/LiberationWellness, and on Zubeo

The Shows Website is LiberationWellnessHour.com

Four years ago the American Heart Association (AHA) admitted it made a big mistake  when it endorsed the FDA’s soy/heart disease health claim back in 1999.   In the January 17, 2006 issue of  Circulation.  the AHA announced  soy does not lower cholesterol, does not prevent heart disease and does not deserve an FDA-approved soy heart health claim.   Given that mainstream organizations rarely admit they were wrong, this was both an act of courage and a sure indication that there’s precious little science to base any soy/heart health claim on.

Yet mainstream doctors and dietitians keep on talking about how good soy is for the heart.   Let’s review here just a few of the negative studies that came out around the time of that AHA announcement.

Athletes At Risk

University of Colorado researchers reported in the January 2006 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation that soy worsens cardiomyopathy, a form of heart disease that is very much on the rise, afflicting one in 500 Americans. Cardiomyopathy, defined as a weakening of the heart muscle or change in structure of the heart, is the leading cause of death among young athletes, a group that may consume a lot of soy in the form of protein powders and energy bars.

Women At Risk

Investigators also found more damning evidence against soy. High levels of soy isoflavones—plant estrogens found in products like soy milk and soy nuts as well as many menopausal supplements—put women at risk for cardiovascular disease. The study—reported in the May, 2007 issue of Journal of Women’s Health—began when Carl J. Pepine, MD, chief of cardiology at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville, along with ten other researchers from his own and five other medical institutions, aimed to find out whether women who have high concentrations of isoflavones in their blood had better vascular health. Subjects were participants in the Women’s Ischemia Syndrome Evaluation (WISE) who had reported chest pain and were thus suspected to suffer from myocardial ischemia (defined as pathological loss of or reduction in blood flow—ischemia—to a part of the muscular tissue of the heart—myocardium).

More than 900 women have participated in the WISE project, which was founded a decade ago by the National Institutes of Health to study whether heart disease develops differently in women than in men. Because heart disease is more likely to occur after menopause, scientists have blamed waning estrogen levels. Dr. Pepine and his colleagues had expected that women with high levels of genistein (the primary isoflavone found in soybeans) would show improved vascular health, but found the opposite to be true. Speaking to a reporter for Science News, Dr. Pepine said: “There are a lot of women taking these things (isoflavone-rich products), without any direct evidence that they’re beneficial.” He warned that there is a “small but growing body of research suggesting there could be a down side to overindulging in them.”

Industry Response

Industry response to mounting evidence for soy’s lack of benefit has been entirely predictable: endless references to soy being both low in saturated fat and free of cholesterol (twin evils that “everyone knows” cause heart disease) combined with chipper reports of hot, new evidence “proving” that soy is the best thing for the heart since love. Although some of this hype has made it into the news—particularly in magazines where soy foods and soy milk are heavily advertised—a shift has definitely taken place. Health magazines are increasingly leaving soy off lists of healthy foods. These days they aren’t yet reporting risks from soy, but they aren’t singing its praises either.

To read more about soy’s many dangers to the heart, read the Weston A. Price Foundation’s petition to the FDA, in which we asked the FDA to retract the soy/heart health claim.  It’s posted on www.westonaprice.org.

 Kaayla T. Daniel, PhD, CCN, is The Naughty Nutritionist^TM because of her ability to outrageously and humorously debunk nutritional myths.   The myth that soy is a health food is one of the biggest myths she has chosen to debunk.   A popular guest on radio and television, Dr. Daniel  has appeared on ABC’s View from the Bay, NPR’s People’s Pharmacy and numerous other shows.  Dr Daniel is the author of The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food.   To learn  more about the dangers of soy, visit www.wholesoystory.com.