Whole Foods Plant Based Diet
Save Your Health - Save the Earth - Save the Animals
A majority of the debilitating diseases of our western culture can be traced to our diet. It is possible to feel good and avoid heart disease, strokes, cancer, diabetes and the multitude of auto-immune diseases such as arthritis. It has been proven in controlled studies that heart disease can even be reversed with this way of eating. The secret to this is a whole-foods, plant based diet. The scientific evidence for this is so vast and overwhelming that Kaiser Permanent, the largest private health care provider in the world, issued a bulletin to all 17,000 of their on-staff doctors, to encourage all patients, regardless of their issues, to pursue a whole-foods, plant-based diet. Kaiser has even put together a 20 page full color booklet explaining how and why one can and should do this.
The greatest repository of destruction in the world is that of animal agriculture. All of the wars in human history do not compare. All of the genocides throughout history added together would be but a tiny drop of evil compared to the eating of animal flesh and the resulting destruction, suffering, disease and death that it causes in the world today. The magnitude of the suffering, destruction and disease is astonishing! If it continues it will literally destroy life on earth as we know it and the human race will face extinction.
More than 6 million animals are slaughtered each day for food which comes out to 100,000 every minute! Worldwide 70 billion animals are raised in mostly horrid conditions only to be slaughtered at a very young age in a slaughter house. These are billions of living beings who feel love, grief, sorrow, happiness and, like us, only want to live out their lives and be happy. Nowhere on the planet is there a greater concentration of suffering all perpetrated by not understanding the horror of it all or by heartless indifference.
Animal agriculture is destroying the planet more than any other malefic influence. It is 90% responsible for the clearing of the Amazon Rainforest and this is only one catastrophic item among many. In every direction we look, eating animals is causing so many beings and the earth in general such great suffering.
The United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization published a report in 2002 that, in part, had this to say:
"Although two-thirds of the world's population depends on cereal or tuber-based diets, the other one-third consumes significant amounts of animal food products. The latter group places an undue demand on land, water, and other resources required for intensive food production, which makes the typical Western diet not only undesirable from the standpoint of health but also environmentally unsustainable. If we balance energy intake with the expenditure required for basal metabolism, physical activity, growth, and repair, we will find that the dietary quality required for health is essentially the same across population groups."
And the World Health Organization (WHO) said this:
“Households should select predominantly plant-based diets rich in a variety of vegetables and fruits, pulses or legumes, and minimally processed starchy staple foods. The evidence that such diets will prevent or delay a significant proportion of non-communicable chronic diseases is consistent. A predominantly plant-based diet has a low energy density, which may protect against obesity."
In 2010, the UN reported on this again. It said that the world as a whole must move towards a vegan (pant-based) diet. This is necessary to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the very worst impacts of climate change. They are saying this is necessary to “save the world” and used these words in their report.
It is interesting to note that making dietary suggestions invokes the same intensity of wrath from most people as if one had suggested changing political parties or religions! This is because the mind has forged powerful habitual bonds with foods as a result of experiencing the pleasure of eating them over and over.