The Hundred-Year Lie: How to Protect Yourself from the Chemicals That Are Destroying Your Health [Paperback]

Randall Fitzgerald (Author)

Book Description

Release date: June 26, 2007

In a devastating exposé in the tradition of Silent Spring and Fast Food Nation, investigative journalist Randall Fitzgerald warns how thousands of man-made chemicals in our food, water, medicine, and environment are making humans the most polluted species on the planet. A century ago in 1906, when Congress enacted the Pure Food and Drug Act, Americans were promised ?better living through chemistry.? Fitzgerald provides overwhelming evidence to shatter this myth, and many others perpetrated by the chemical, pharmaceutical, and processed foods industries. In the face of this national health crisis, Fitzgerald also presents informed and practical suggestions for what we can do to turn the tide and live healthier lives.

Consider this:
? The average American carries a ?body burden? of 700 synthetic chemicals
? Chemicals in tap water can cause reproductive abnormalities and hermaphroditic birth
? A 2005 study of lactating women in eighteen U.S. states found perchlorate (a toxic component of rocket fuel) in practically every mother?s breast milk

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This provocative and frightening look at the synthetic chemicals used by the processed foods, pharmaceutical and chemical industries delivers an excellent, up-to-date summary of "what is really in our food, water, vitamins, prescription drugs, childhood vaccines, cosmetics, and in our homes." Former Wall Street Journal investigative journalist Fitzgerald (Mugged by the State) takes aim at the belief that "lab-created synthetics are as benign as—and more effective than—naturally occurring foods and medicines." The "hundred-year lie" dates from 1906, the year Congress enacted the Pure Food and Drug Act. Utilizing a range of articles from science journals and government reports, along with interviews with scientists and environmentalists, Fitzgerald looks at synthetic chemicals—from artificial sweeteners to antidepressants—that are diminishing our health. Throughout, Fitzgerald explodes various myths such as that one right dose of a particular drug works for everyone and that all food additives have been tested for safety. Still, Fitzgerald's faith in Eastern and other natural healing processes will not convince everyone. The author concludes with practical steps for "choosing a diet of pure foods and a lifestyle free of synthetics." (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Provocative and frightening . . . excellent. (Publishers Weekly)

Exhaustively researched . . . a useful addition to your library. (Salon.com)

A frightening wake-up call . . . if Fast Food Nation made you consider some serious lifestyle changes, The Hundred-Year Lie will inspire you to go ten steps farther. (Boston Herald)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Plume; Reprint edition (June 26, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452288398
• ISBN-13: 978-0452288393
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.7 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (93 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #75,696 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #83 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Safety & First Aid

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

167 of 173 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A sobering look at the dire consequences of the highly toxic world we have created in just the past century. April 2, 2007

By Paul Tognetti TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Just over a century ago, the Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. According to author Randall Fitzgerald it was this legislation that reassured the American public that the food and medicines they were consuming had been thoroughly tested and were safe to use. As it turns out nothing could be further from the truth! "The Hundred Year Lie" tells the sordid story of a century of deception and irresponsibility by the companies who process our food and manufacture the drugs and chemicals we use everyday. Indeed, the promise of "a better life through chemistry" is a notion we all need to examine and seriously reconsider.

At a bare minimum, reading "The One Hundred Year Lie" will make you stop in your tracks and think about all of the different chemicals you are ingesting and coming into contact with every day. It is not just the voluminous amounts of additives in your food that you must worry about. Stop and consider all of the personal care products you use on a daily basis. Add to that the over-the-counter and prescription drugs you may be taking and all of the household cleaning products that you employ. Then think about all of the chemicals that are applied to our clothing, our bedding and to our furniture. Next, you might want to consider the flouride in your municipal water supply and maybe the highly toxic arsenic in all of that pressure treated lumber around your property. Now if you are a pretty unscientific sort like me you will then appreciate Randall Fitzgerald's attempt to explain the concept of "synergy". Most people just take it for granted that the products they use must have been thoroughly tested and deemed completely safe to use. It is when you discover that the scientific community, the manufacturers themselves and various government regulators really have absolutely no idea how these different chemical concoctions are going react with each other in the real world that you just might become a bit concerned.

On many different levels "The Hundred Year Lie" challenges the way we live our lives today and implores each of us as individuals and society in general to make the necessary changes before more damage is done. I simply cannot imagine that anyone who reads this book will not feel compelled to make some significant changes in his or her own lifestyle. In our never-ending quest for comfort and convenience we have done considerable damage to our our own personal well-being and to our environment. Some say the damage may be irreparable. This is a fascinating and well written book that is certainly worth your time and attention. Highly recommended!

90 of 98 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "If there was any danger, someone would tell us!" December 31, 2006

By John Morley

Format:Hardcover

As Al Gore's movie makes "inconvenient truths" about global warming more understandable, this book will open your eyes to the unintended damage being done to you, those you love and and every other creature on the planet.

In a story that makes clear the need for this book, the author stands outside a Wal*Mart. Shoppers are rushing past a state-mandated sign that warns of chemicals inside that are "known...to cause cancer, birth defects and other reproductive harm." He stops a shopper to ask if she had thought about the sign. She brushes past with the dismissal that, "If there was any danger, someone would tell us!"

Well, you are being told. If--like the shopper and most of the rest of us--the signs with the bold letters aren't clear enough for you, this book certainly is.

Fitzgerald is a professional writer, rather than a scientist, activist, politician or scholar. This may be why his book is an enjoyable read and easy to understand. And it's unburdened by the technical complexities or alarmist attacks that are too common to writing on this topic.

Also to its credit, the book goes beyond gloom and doom to offer practical solutions that you can begin right now. Although nothing quick or easy is promised, the case that we need to do something is made starkly compelling. Getting informed is the first step, and this book is information that we all need now to make better choices concerning every detail of what we eat and how we choose to live.

48 of 50 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fitzgerald's book is not abstract October 22, 2006

By Alexandre Merineau

Format:Hardcover

Fitzgerald goes where few would dare in this meticulously researched Magnum

Opus on the rise and ubiquity of unsafe and largely untested synthetic

chemicals passing as food, medicine, and their undeniably extreme impact on

our ability as a species to maintain our health

and civilization. Impressive...

Fitzgerald's book is not abstract, it is not philosophical, it is not a cheap

attempt at self or product promotion, and it is completely devoid of

finger-pointing or blame.

Even when he identifies the culprits that have generated, maintained and

profited from what he calls "The Synthetics Belief System" (a century old

attempt to equate the application of synthetic chemical "discoveries" to food,

medicine and consumer goods with notions of identity, self-worth, and the

myths of "progress, all promoted by the processed food, pharmaceutical and

chemical institutions... and our blind belief) he convincingly points that it is

we consumers, we employees, we stockholders, we government officials and the

electorate that are ultimately keeping this pattern of "accelerating

degeneration" in place...all because we have come to aggressively demand all

this synthetic chemical "food stuff" and "medicine stuff" and "consumer stuff"

as our birthright. We have been taught an awful lesson.

The implications are such that our actual birthright (a state of "naturally

occurring health" as he puts it, where the body burden of synthetic chemicals

is allowed to be eliminated, a point he drives home in the book by chronicling

a experiment in detoxification himself) has been deftly robbed from everyone

on the planet, including the planet itself it seems. We have become entirely

dependent on stuff that is clearly destroying our health.

In fact, we are complicit in this attack on everybody's health by maintaining

our habits, which in turn are heavily reinforced by everything we hear and see

everywhere on a daily basis.

I saw how my purchase decisions are not only destroying my health and the

health of my family (even my kid's ability to reproduce) but how MY consumer

choices are in fact destroying people everywhere, animals everywhere and the

very ecosystem we entirely depend upon.

I'm a Gen-X'er with a predilection for healthy living. He's a Baby Boomer.

Regardless, everybody everywhere is confronted with this super-massive

problem. Like the old Palmolive ad kept repeating on TV when I was a kid:

"You're soaking in it!" That's the problem nobody wants to talk about.

Luckily Fitzgerald offers us a framework in which to begin dealing with these

realities, not just talk about it like some novelty item that is as dangerous

as any WMD. I'd say the Synthetic Belief System is the WMD we need to be

talking about as citizens of all countries.

Read this book.