It’s no surprise that more and more people worldwide develop diet-related diseases which most of the times are fatal. Serious diseases that are linked to what we eat kill an estimated three out of four Americans each year. Wow. These diseases include heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, cancer, and diabetes. Not to mention others that aren’t directly fatal but will definitely reduce your quality of living such as osteoporosis, atherosclerosis, obesity, sexual dysfunctions, you name it…
“People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are healed by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.” – Wendell Berry
How many of your family members and your friends’ family members have a disease already, or have died already from a disease? I will leave that unanswered.
Doing a shift in the diet by eating less meat, dairy and eggs (or none at all) increasing the intake of fruits, vegetables and grains is not even on many people’s radar screens.
But common sense is if a doctor prescribes you pills to lower cholesterol, lose weight and/or reduce your blood pressure, people will take that in no second. Health practitioners work for the health industry, most of them will only try to fix the problem and not the cause. It’s like putting a band-aid on a bullet hole – a very expensive one.
When was the last time you turned on TV and saw a commercial for shiitake mushrooms? Quinoa? Nuts? That’s right. The stuff we should all be eating isn’t ever advertised, instead we’ve got cheap government subsidized food products that will damage your body and make you ill. And to cure you, we then have adverts about calcium supplements, miraculous diet pills, vitamin tablets, yogurts that even lower your cholesterol and our doctors prescribing expensive and noneffective pills that lots of good people can’t afford.
A healthy diet is no doubt the way to go. It doesn’t mean sometimes you can’t have a chocolate bar or a yummy dessert – it’s not a sacrifice, just a way of rethinking habits. But constantly damaging your body with overly processed, saturated fats, trans fatty acids, harsh chemicals, casein and antibiotics present in animal-based foods, not to mention the really nasty stuff, is simply suicidal.
On the other hand, plant-based whole foods can provide all of health-protecting nutrients and vitamins the human body needs, with no negative side effects attached. We should be eating what comes from the earth. Every vitamin, mineral and nutrient that exists, protein, calcium, potassium, iron, all the B-vitamins, they come from the soil.
It’s illogical and irrational to filter your nutrients through somebody else’s body and adding in the nasty harmful stuff on top of it. Go to those sources directly, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, grains, legumes.
Trust me, there’s an exciting whole new world of food endeavors out there! You should give it a try! Go vegan, for you, for the animals and for the environment.
