A few years ago, I started taking a closer look at where our food came from and documentaries and books such as Food, Inc and The Omnivore's Dilemma and others were the basis for my looking more closely at food. I think it was from Michael Pollan that I started to eat more plant-based and looked at meat as more of a side dish. But I still had it, and dairy. Lots of dairy, mainly cheese.
It wasn't until Mrs and I watched Forks Over Knives that the message really began to sink in.
I began to follow some of those featured in the film on YouTube as well including Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Dr. John McDougall, Dr T. Colin Campbell, and Rip Esselstyn. Another favorite of mine is Jeff Novick.
This lead me to rent Forks Over Knives again. Then it really clicked, and I have not looked back. It saddens me to see people in abusive relationships with the food or food-like products they are consuming. It really saddens me to watch the same behaviors repeating in the children. And it angers me to watch huge corporations with their fingers, toes, arms, hell, EVERYTHING in our government. They are the ones truly in control of policy and have created this mess. And the health 'care' industry is benefitting massively, too. They don't want to cure people. They want people fat and sick, so they can keep feeding us outrageously priced medications and procedures. I'll never forget my first physical with my current doctor. He almost seemed disappointed in his tone when he said "Well, I see no reason to prescribe any medications". And that was years before I was healthier and had a cholesterol just under what might soon get a person on a statin.
It amazes me that people get in an absolute panic when one person within a 100 mile radius is infected with something like West Nile Virus, or the flu, or whatever sickness of the week happens to make the news, but an EPIDEMIC of heart disease, cancer and diabetes goes virtually unnoticed and kills more than any virus or even a terrorist act probably could.
I thought things might get a little better during the first term of the current administration when the First Lady brought back the gardens on the white house lawn, but even she and the Administration succumbed to the pressure of big business and switched from healthful eating to get out and move more. I wonder which of their friends from Monsanto/USDA convinced them to switch the message?
So, moving on to Rip Esselstyn's latest book on the subject... "My Beef With Meat", the follow up to Rip's first book, The Engine 2 Diet, is very much on message with 36 quick, direct and to the point chapters about why meat and animal products are so bad. There are also 140 great recipes in the book that I look forward to trying, some of them at least.
I'm still working some things out and continue to read labels, but I am pretty confident and comfortable now with it. I even manage to avoid a high percentage of added oils. With the exception of corn chips (we try our best to get organic, at least) I am able to easily avoid the oils. I have no need or use for olive oil anymore, which is good since I never really cared for it anyway. I don't even bother with salad dressings anymore. It's really amazing that I was able to pull this off. I hope I can keep it up, but at this point I cannot imagine going back. The hardest part I had was making sure I was getting enough calories in, which is where the starch-based part of the diet is crucial, especially for an active person like me. I am almost exactly where I want to be with my weight and am working on building and maintaining lean muscle.
The next test will be an upcoming camping trip. I don't think it will be much different then cooking here, and may even be easier.
I love my new plant strong lifestyle and have never felt better.
1 comment:
Nice post, Barry. You know, I think we are following similar paths. I never ate a lot of meat, but last year I gave it up for lent, and then lent turned into summer and fall and I never really ate meat. I have since eaten meat, only rarely, and not because I said, "you know, I'm going to have meat for dinner tonight." Mainly if we go to someone's house and they prepared a meat dish I will eat it rather than get into some sort of "What are you, a treehugger?" kind of debate. I am not ethically opposed to eating meat. I am, however, ethically opposed to the industrialized meat process.
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