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(Alarms ringing and flashing red lights. The “landlord” has just entered a fast food restaurant.)

Eyes: Red Alert! All members of the Digestive Organs Crew, man your battle stations. You should see what our landlord is about to eat.

Mouth: Here’s the first bite. It’s a cheeseburger with ketchup and pickles, served on a white flour bun. Although the hamburger is only 20% fat by weight, my analysis shows that 45% of the calories are fat calories. I also detect small residues of growth hormones. The fat content in the cheese accounts for 70% of the calories. The pickle has too much sodium and the ketchup is 1/3 sugar.

Stomach: I need a fast decision from the Digestive Organs Crew about what they want to do with all this excess dietary fat.

Liver: A quick check of our glycogen energy supplies indicate healthy reserves. We vote to convert the dietary fat to body fat. So stand by while I manufacture a little extra cholesterol in order to digest this stuff.

Stomach: This guy’s britches are already too tight!

Digestive Organs Crew: We know that, but until he improves his diet he doesn’t leave us any other choice.

Mouth: You guys want something to complain about? Here it comes! A small order of french fries – 220 worthless calories, 47% from fat.

Stomach (in unison with other members of the Digestive Organs Crew): What we’d give for a potato! A natural, unsaturated potato. Hold the butter, hold the cheese – even hold the sour cream. Mash it, bake it or boil it; season with salsa or low-fat ranch dressing.

Blood Stream: With a few complex carbohydrates we could supply the landlord with some high quality energy. I could really rev up this guy’s system.

Pancreas: Yes, and I wouldn’t feel like such a yo-yo. All I hear is, hurry – more insulin, too much insulin, not enough insulin. If this landlord treated his car like he treats his body, it would be a junker in six months.

Mouth: Pancreas! Speaking of insulin, this guy is gulping a chocolate shake. Ten more teaspoons of hidden sugar – 383 empty calories. It will be in the blood stream within five minutes! If you don’t give him a generous dose of insulin to burn up the excess sugar, he’s going to be hyperglycemic.

Body Cells: Blood Stream, please get a call into the Pancreas. We’re getting energy in here faster than we can use it. Pretty soon we’ll be floating in sugar.

Blood Stream: Pancreas! Pancreas! I’m becoming hyperglycemic (high blood sugar). I need a quick dose of insulin to flush the excess sugar from my stem.

Pancreas: OK. Here it comes.

Digestive Organs Crew: Pancreas, we are mighty grateful to you. You never seem to fail us. Little does the landlord realize, if you ever did – he’d be out within hours.

Blood Stream: Oh, oh! The insulin dose was too much; my blood sugar level is dropping below normal.

Pancreas: Refined sugars get into the blood stream so fast, they usually trigger emergency dosages of insulin. Hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) usually results, but I never know how much sugar the landlord is going to ingest so there’s no way to dispense insulin accurately under those conditions. Sorry guys.

Blood Stream: Pancreas, nobody is accusing you of malfunction. We all realize this guy’s eating habits are causing the yo-yo effect in his energy levels.

Mouth: Wouldn’t it be a real treat if the landlord had a vegetable salad with olive oil and vinegar for lunch one day. And a piece of broiled chicken – without the skin? And two pieces of bread and a glass of skim milk?

Blood Stream: Whole grain bread! That refined white stuff is one step removed from becoming sugar, and gets into my system just about as fast. It causes nearly the same problems as sugar. Besides that, white flour is missing 78% of the nutrients contained in whole wheat.

Stomach: This refined food is a dilemma. It was my understanding that the nutritional composition of vegetables, fruits, and grains was such that when eaten whole, we could all function better.

Blood Stream: The intake of so much refined foods has seriously reduced the quantity and quality of our body building supplies. Refined foods are really inferior when compared to the nutrients painstakingly packaged into whole foods.

Brain: I’ve often wondered what a master home builder would say if his supplier gave him warped 2 x 4’s, cracked dry wall, soft bricks, shingles full of holes, leaky plumbing supplies, and electrical wiring with missing insulation?

Mouth: He wouldn’t even attempt to build a quality home with such inferior materials. The builder would read his supplier the riot act. He’d rant and roar and grumble until the supplier got the message.

Stomach: I rant and roar and rumble sometimes – but the landlord never gets the message. He tries to shut me up with antacid pills.

Eyes: I’d be curious to see a house made with all those shoddy building materials.

Digestive Organs Crew: You’re looking at one! Not only doesn’t this guy provide top quality nutrients, we haven’t seen adequate amounts of soluble and insoluble fiber for years.

Colon: Speaking of fiber! I’m still storing what the landlord ate three days ago and it’s getting pretty putrid. Incidentally, I had a long distance conversation with my cousin in Japan. He said those guys over there consume four times as much fiber as the landlords in the U.S. and the incidence of hemorrhoids, constipation, diverticular disease, and colon cancer is 90% less.

Blood Stream: You know, I hate this low blood sugar status because that’s when I’m most susceptible to viral and bacterial infections.

Brain: I always know when your sugar level drops below normal because I begin to feel tired.

Mouth: All that’s about to change. It’s break time. I mean cola time and that’s good for 10 more teaspoons of sugar and 162 useless calories.

Blood Stream: Pancreas, stand by! I’m going to need a BIG dose of insulin. By the way, my cholesterol levels are above 200. This stuff continues to collect in the lining of the arteries, vessels and capillaries. The flow of things is getting more difficult.

Heart: Somehow we’ve got to reduce the blockage in the nutritional supply line. I’m pumping harder than ever. Blood pressure is above normal and I get repeated complaints from the brain.

Brain: Some of the plumbing up here is pretty weak. If this pressure continues, one of these vessels is going to spring a leak, and the landlord is going to get a very expensive vacation to the hospital. And when he gets out – if he gets out– he’ll never be the same again.

Stomach: Well, if he survives maybe we’ll get some decent nutrition down here and we can get down to some serious work.

Liver: What makes you think getting sick would make this guy change his diet?

Brain: You’d be surprised what changes a human landlord can make – if his life depends on it. Frankly, these human landlords play a crazy game of self-deceit. Do you know how many times I process the thought – “it won’t happen to me?” While there is still time to make dietary improvements, they don’t. But after they’ve lost their health, they’d give everything they own to climb a stair without assistance; be around to see their first grandchild born; watch her take her first step.

Blood Stream: What’s it going to take to reverse this cholesterol build-up and give this guy a new lease on life?

Liver: If only he’d start eating lots of fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Then I could do a much better job! You see, the bile I manufacture to digest fats is continuously recycled – if there is little or no soluble fiber in the system. When the landlord eats a lot of soluble fiber, the intestines get a gel-like coating on there interior walls that prevents the bile from being absorbed and reused. So it gets flushed from the body. I have no choice but to make a new batch of bile. And the major ingredient is – you guessed it – CHOLESTEROL! I absorb some of the needed cholesterol from the blood stream and blood cholesterol levels drop!

Stomach: I guess we could blame all our woes on the appestat. After all, he is in charge of nutritional inventory control. Why doesn’t he just shut down the landlord’s appetite a little sooner? Processing half as much junk would alleviate a lot of overload.

Appestat: Okay team, I know you’re just joking – or have you forgotten? I’m programmed not to shut down until the landlord has consumed enough nutrients for all of you to perform at peak efficiency.

Brain: When did we ever have that luxury?

Appestat: Listen guys, this landlord does things that give me fits. He consumes empty calories (food with calories but little or no food value) like they’re going out of style.

Eyes: What choice does he have. He buys processed food from a supermarket or fast food restaurant. 90% of everything there has been refined. Just look at what food refiners do to food. After it’s been homogenized, irradiated, separated, blanched, fermented, hydrogenated, saturated, deep-fat fried, degerminated, boiled, gassed, dyed, aerated, artificialized, preserved and packaged – empty calories are all that’s left.

Appestat: It’s a real dilemma, but it’s not hopeless. I know that the members of the digestive organs team need certain nutrients in order to do their job. The landlord saw some TV commercial about a cereal that contains 12 times as many vitamins as whole grain cereals. That cereal is made of degerminated corn. Granted, it contains a lot of sprayed on artificial vitamins, but compared to cereal made from whole corn, it’s missing 67% of the potassium, 60% of the phosphorous, 29% of the calcium and most of the much-needed trace minerals. The landlord has been duped again! We would have to eat three bowls of this high vitamin cereal just to replace the minerals lost during the refining process. That puts three times more calories in inventory than the body needs.

Digestive Crew: Most of the time we have to convert those extra calories to fat. It’s rather senseless because we have a fat reserve now that’s 30 lbs. more than the landlord needs.

Appestat: Another problem I have is his consumption of 40 teaspoons of sugar a day. He doesn’t even know he eats that much sugar because it’s hidden in all the packaged foods he buys. It’s such a powerful appetite stimulant that he wants more and more – despite all my efforts to tell him I’m full. The worst part is, he consumes approximately 8000 empty calories a week in the form of sugar and fats. It he could cut that consumption by half, he would reduce the yearly work load on the digestive crew by 208,000 unnecessary calories (4000 calories x 52 weeks).

Brain: What do you think of that whole wheat bread he’s been eating lately?

Eyes: That’s not whole wheat bread! It’s white flour bread with caramel food coloring. He thinks because it says 100% whole wheat he’s eating wheat berries in flour form. He’s been duped by a technicality in the food labeling laws. 100% whole wheat in this case means that the flour in the recipe is derived 100% from wheat (meaning it doesn’t include flours derived from other grains). It does not include 100% of the nutritional value of the wheat berry.

Stomach: I can vouch for that. It acts just like a simple carbohydrate. By the time it gets to me it’s only one step removed from becoming sugar.

Blood Stream: That’s right! If it were a complex carbohydrate – which whole wheat is, its energy would enter the blood stream more slowly and not trigger the release of so much insulin.

Brain: Well, Crew, it’s clear the landlord needs to make some changes, wouldn’t you say?

Eyes: You’re right. He needs to start reading labels of processed foods, for one thing.

Colon: And make sure he’s getting enough fiber.

Liver: To reduce his cholesterol!

Appestat: And he really needs to cut back on added sugar.

Blood Stream: To keep blood sugar level within normal range.

Brain: You’re all right. Let’s just hope the landlord’s listening!