When it comes to health knowledge, doctors are surprisingly ignorant

America is a nation of widespread health and nutritional illiteracy. And I'm not just talking about the knowledge gaps of health consumers, either. It's the doctors and health "experts" who have astonishing gaps in knowledge that should be considered basic health information in any first-world nation.

Parents, too, lack any real literacy in nutrition and health. That's largely because medical journals, health authorities and the mass media actively misinform them about health and nutrition issues, hoping to prevent people from learning how to take care of their own health using simple, natural remedies and cures.

Here are some shocking examples of the huge gaps in knowledge among doctors, parents and others...

What your doctor doesn't know might actually harm you

• Most doctors have little or no understanding of the nutritional difference between LIVE foods and DEAD foods. Most doctors think they're nutritional identical!
• Most conventional doctors don't know that the NIH actively funded and operated criminal medical experiments on human prisoners.
• Most parents have no idea that processed meats (bacon, sausage, sandwich ham, etc.) are laced with the sodium nitrite coloring chemical that promotes aggressive brain, pancreas and colon cancers.
• Most doctors have no idea that seasonal flu vaccines are little more than quackery and simply don't offer any real protection against the flu.
• Very few parents know the difference between the words "natural" and "organic" on food labels. Most parents just think "natural" means "organic" and so they buy more products that claim to be natural (even when the word means nothing).
• Few doctors realize that statin drugs were engineered from a molecule called lovastatin, found naturally in red yeast rice. The drug companies pirated the molecule from nature (biopiracy), then patented it. Then they pressured the FDA to declare that red yeast rice was an "adulterated" supplemented because -- get this -- it naturally contains the drug they stole from it!
• Most parents are completely befuddled by the nutritional claims of infant formula. They are astonishingly unaware that some of the most popular infant formula products such as Similac are made with over 50% sugars.
• Virtually no one outside the natural health community knows that soy protein is extracted using a toxic, explosive chemical called hexane.
• Very few people know that the carmine food coloring used in fruit punch drinks and strawberry yogurt is actually made from smashed red beetles.
• Most doctors remain completely unaware of the anti-cancer nutrients found in celery, grapefruit, cabbage and chocolate. They tend to believe that medicine comes from laboratories, not food.
• Very few parents are aware that processed milk and dairy products promote obesity, heart disease and acne in their teenage children. Astonishingly, most adults have been fooled into thinking that yogurt is good for them because it contains probiotics (never mind the homogenized milk fats).
• Most people of all ages, come to think of it, believe that frozen yogurt is somehow good for them, even though it's really just processed ice cream sprinkled with probiotic powder.
• Most doctors are completely unaware of the health dangers of aspartame and MSG and make no attempt to educate their patients about avoiding these excitotoxins.
• Think cooking on non-stick cookware is safe? Most people have no idea that non-stick cookware surfaces are made of highly toxic chemicals, and if you heat a non-stick pan on the stove, it will actually off-gas enough toxic chemicals to kill your pet parakeet (this is not a myth).
• Very few doctors know that the human body has a second brain. It's located in your gut, and it's a highly complex mass of interconnected neurons that give real "intelligence" to your digestion and your interactions with food.
• A typical conventional doctor cannot tell you the health benefits of blueberries -- even though blueberries can make statin drugs obsolete for many people! Most naturopaths, however, are well aware of the benefits of blueberries and may even prescribe them to you.
• Most doctors DO know the truth about how toxic chemotherapy is for patients, but they won't tell patients the details of what they know. It turns out that 91% of oncologists would not choose chemotherapy for themselves.

This list could continue, of course. There are seemingly countless examples of extreme gaps in the knowledge of doctors who should frankly know better.

Med school graduates get an "F" in health

So why do conventional medical doctors remain so ignorant of the basics of human health and nutrition? Because medical schools don't teach health. They teach disease, surgery and pharmacology. They offer virtually no material on nutrition, disease prevention or mind-body medicine, so the doctors that graduate from medical school are nutritionally illiterate and lacking basic health knowledge.

Yet, at the same time, they are being told that they know everything about health and the human body, so they suffer from the most dangerous combination of all: A smug, know-it-all attitude combined with far-reaching health illiteracy. This is one of the key reasons why America's health care system is such an utter failure -- the people who are supposed to possess more health knowledge than everybody else are the very same people who actually lack it. In a sense, they have been "de-educated" by medical schools and come out knowing less than they did when they entered med school.

I'm not the only one who thinks this. In fact, you'll find some of these concerns reflected by other doctors who are appalled at the arrogance and health illiteracy of their own peers. For example, a commentary published in the July 14 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) features Dr. Pronovost, a professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, explaining how physician arrogance is killing tens of thousands of patients across America today.

Holistically-trained doctors who went way beyond medical school and taught themselves principles of nutrition often describe their own conventional medical school training as wildly inadequate. Dr Andrew Weil, for example, famously describes his conventional medicine colleagues as "nutritionally illiterate."

And he's right. Most conventional doctors are nutritionally illiterate. So are most parents. And if we wish to change the health future of America, this situation obviously needs to change. Nutrition should be the foundation of med school training, not an afterthought.

You can't create a healthy nation if the people practicing medicine don't know much about health and nutrition themselves.