A Plant Based Editorial

[gracoman]

I've been on this journey since 2007? 2008? I dunno. I don't remember exactly. It was too long ago and the date is unimportant really. I have seen trends come and go but this diet, a whole Foods Plant Based diet, is here to stay. Like it or not it is not going away. We are all the the better for it but the truth of the matter is over the entire course of my "career" as a whole foods plant based advocate, I haven't been able to change one single person's mind about this.


"Eating yourself to death is no way to go through life"
---Dean Wormer

[gracoman]

This ain't gonna make a bit of difference

Funny, recently the largest local (to me) milk delivery company stopped by my place looking to increase lagging sales. When I told him we live in a dairy free house he wasn't surprised in the least. The "Milkman" (perhaps we need to change that label too because I don't believe men produce milk - same argument, different circumstance) told me it was a trend that is getting worse. Worse for the dairy industry is not the same as worse for public health.

[gracoman]

This interesting article points out the term coconut milk was coined in 1698. The term almond milk is from the 14th century.  Almond milk (soon to be almond extraction, essence or...) was a popular drink during the Middle Ages.

Is the FDA 's wish to have the word milk removed from nut extractions good for consumers or is it a useless, desperate, protectionist means to an end. Useless because people are not that stupid. Who among us doesn't understand the difference between Moo Milk and Cashew Milk?  Heck, cashew is part of the name.  If you can't tell the difference you'd best not leave home without your helmet because you've got bigger fish to fry than trying to decide what to pour on your morning cornflakes. 

Funny, I thought it was the liberals who are supposed to believe people are to weak minded to understand what was best for them.  Scary, because it smacks of 1984 where "words mean what I say they mean". 

Rewriting history for the benefit of the dairy industry is probably not a good idea.  Thinking a nut milk name change will affect dairy sales is just plain silly.  That said, changing the name of milk to "Liquid Meat" might.  

It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

[gracoman]

I'm currently reading Michael Pollen's admittedly unscientific book In Defense Of Food. Unscientific because he believes the question of nutrition has gotten overly complicated by nutritionists and wants to return to a common sense approach. Stop eating the Western diet of industrialized food-like products. Eat real food.

It's difficult to argue his rationalization of what a healthy diet is. He has reduced the whole confusing mess to a seven word motto.

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

This is a great place to be if you are not trying to eradicate or reverse a food related disease and it is the traditional method of diet for many cultures before westernization reared its ugly head. Stop eating out of cans and boxes. Stop eating packaged foods with an ingredient list. Eat foods that will eventually rot. Stop eating white flour. Eat foods that have been cooked by humans. Stop eating foods that are advertised on television.

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

[gracoman]

“To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.”
                                          — La Rochefoucauld (1665)

[gracoman]

Friday, November 23rd, the day after Thanksgiving 2018. A day that marks the beginning in our culture of a season fully focused on... food.

'Tis the season as they say. The holiday season sees gatherings of all sorts with co-workers, friends and family. Ritual and tradition will be strengthened and passed down to the younger, stronger generations. Some good, some not so much.

One of these traditions is the arbitrary date of January 1st to promise ourselves great and lasting changes in our lives. We all know what needs to be done but don't seem to be able to get started without a wave of the checkered flag. A new year seems like the best time for a new beginning. A rebirth. Out with then old and in with the new so they say.

Something is horribly wrong with this scenario because New Year resolutions don't seem to work. We don't have the sticktoitiveness required to pull this stuff off. Now why is that?

We need to stop staring in the middle and begin at the beginning if we want to make truly lasting changes in our lives. We must “Be first a good animal.” -Emerson

First things first. We first need to fix ourselves. Physically and mentally. They are the same. Fat and sick is no way to muddle through life. Indulgence in fat, salt, sugar, dairy and all animal products take a hefty toll and all must pay. Pay now and pay dearly later. Nobody escapes.

Diet is king so eat the foods human beings were born to eat. You will look better, you will feel better and you will be stronger. It will affect every area in your life. You will re-gain the sticktoitiveness required to make other lasting changes. You will be physically and mentally prepared.  You will be fit.

Diet may be king but exercise is queen:

"As we age we stop following our physical bliss. The body is pampered rather than challenged. It is told to be quiet, and becomes no more than a receptacle for the mind and the spirit. Life becomes a matter of creature comforts. The challenge becomes its ability to withstand he effects of our bad habits. We are no longer athletes. We have become spectators.

This will never do. Among Emerson’s instructions for the good life was another terse statement: “Be first a good animal.” Life is not a spectator sport. Only to the good animal come the peak experiences, the joys, the epiphanies. All of us are Olympians. And each day brings with it success or failure, as it were, only to ourselves. How this plays out is determined much more by our body than we think. “The body is the source of our energy,” said Plato. We are our bodies, our bodies are us, and we must live this life physically and at the top of our powers."
—Going the Distance, George Sheehan

[gracoman]

I don't see my role here as preaching what you should or should not eat. Hopefully all understand I'm just presenting facts as I understand them and to keep those interested informed of the latest and greatest stuff. Do with it as you will.

The movement is growing. Personally, I view things like lab grown meat, clean meat, cultured meat or whatever they are calling it today as a last ditch attempt to keep meat eaters paying customers and perhaps help stem the tide of climate change. That and if one faces the facts existing meat production methods are unsustainable. Other transition foods like Beyond burgers (decidedly unhealthy) and the up and coming Impossible Burger that advertises "it's in the heme" (heme = bad) may currently enjoy a rising market share but are doomed to failure. I may be wrong about this but the educated among us have no desire to eat highly processed industrial food any more. Get thee behind me Satan!

We'll explore this further in the next post here which will come at all of this from a different angle. No health, no save the planet, no prevent animal cruelty involved.

Veganuary Movement Gains Momentum in the U.S. as Mainstream Interest in Plant-Based Diet Surges

[gracoman]

Federal Court Rules Almond Milk is Milk

The largest appeals court in the United States dismissed a lawsuit against Blue Diamond Growers, ruling that its almond milk labeling does not deceive consumers into thinking it is derived from dairy.

[gracoman]

Thanks meat, dairy, egg, salt, sugar and fat (oil) industries.

Your insidious methods have been working.

Keep that cash coming in.

Who cares if people are fat and sick.

it's not your fault people buy into your propaganda.

It's not your fault people eat what they eat.

It's a free country right?

Keep 'em dumb 'Merica

And on the news today...........................

[gracoman]

One day, should humanity survive the cliff we are presently racing toward at full throttle, we will look back on our barbaric treatment of animals, our environmental and health destructive behaviors with remorse, regret and disbelief.  The challenges we as a species face are so large in scope and number do we even possess the will to try.  It seems all we can do is watch it go down from the sidelines with the childish belief technology that doesn't presently exist will circumvent the monster looming ever larger.  Ever closer.

When and how will the human population at stabilize before we can even imagine a reduction?

How are we going to feed the currently expanding population?

Where is the water going to come from?

When and how are human generated greenhouse gas emissions going to... to what?  Stop?  

These are but a pin prick of the seemingly insurmountable issues that loom before us. 

It is greed that will be our undoing.  Is greed a human trait or is greed merely inherent in the economic system we all presently labor under.  A system where there are many losers so one winner can exist. Many critical thinkers believe the system itself must change before any real progress can be made.   All systems contain the seeds of their own destruction.  Capitalism is no different.  It is a grow or die system.  Nothing lasts forever.  Change is inevitable but will it happen fast enough for our current values to change?  Is greed the thing that will kill us all?  Is greed the Great Filter that we humans cannot break through?

There are those who believe if all current human environmental destructive activity ended today, right now, 100% ended, we may have already crossed the threshold of no return. 

I don't much care for the statement  in The Hardest Part of Being Vegan box below "Dealing with idiots".  It helps no one.  It only strengthens folks feelings that vegans are shoving their food choices down the throats of everyone around them.  And they are.  Mostly its only newer vegans (the likelihood these people will revert is extremely high) who are in your face about this stuff.  I don't say anything to anybody about my dietary status.  I do if asked, but stopped being in-your-face about it years ago.  And besides, I still revert from time to time.  Its hard not to after a lifetime of eating the rich foods that are killing all of us.  But it is an inescapable conclusion the diet and present economic system of the "normals" is destroying the traits planet Earth has that allowed us, and other life, to appear and thrive here.  Something's gotta give and its probably going to be us.  Mother Earth doesn't need us at all. 

I'd trade the phrase "Dealing With Idiots" out for "Helping Others Find Their Way"

[gracoman]

What we all know



What we all do


It isn't rocket science

[gracoman]

Take a close look at this face comparison of a young woman after one year on a whole-Foods Plant-Based diet.   She is a different person.  Obese and sick in the before shot.  She is positively glowing now.  I am so proud of this woman.... and so happy for her.   She took her health into her own hands and won.  Nobody did this for her.  She did it on her own. 

This 5'4", 21 year old female started by weighing in at 215lbs. She is now at 130lbs for a loss of 85lbs. But there's more.

"I didn't realize how sick I actually looked. I felt it for sure having an autoimmune liver disease that has improved so much now. So thankful for plants"




This is one of the most amazing dietary intervention transformations I've seen. Excess weight is one thing, autoimmune liver disease is another.

So, what is everybody waiting for? There are no logical downsides.

This is the stuff that makes me nutz.

"I can't", translated, means "I won't".

"It's to hard" means "I've never tried but it's much to scary to even consider".

"I don't believe it" really means "I won't take the time necessary to research this diet.

It's much easier to follow the crowd, I know.

Maybe when you've eaten the SAD long enough so your life is at stake you'll change.

Maybe not even then.

My Dad didn't.

His first heart attack at 45 didn't kill him but his second one did when he was 57 years old.   Things could have been different.  I miss you Dad   

One day, probably not too far off, my morbidly obese brother will suffer the same fate and I'll miss him too.  I continue to try with him.  Horse to water