New Year, New You, New World!
New Year, New You, New World!
Going plant-based is the right thing to do
Yes, you can do this!
One of the first things I usually hear from newcomers to my plan is, “I’ll start right after ______.” They fill in that blank with any number of things. Right after the holidays, right after the new year, right after my birthday, right after I finish this big project, right after summer vacation, etc.
From the conversations we have around these statements, I’ve deduced that most folks think transitioning to a whole food, plant based diet is going to be hard. Here’s the good news: It’s not hard at all!
Listen, if you are cooking meals every day, just understand that it takes no more time or effort to cook a plant-based meal than a meat based one. It might be new to you, different for you, but it’s not one bit harder or more time consuming. Ditto the grocery shopping. People seem to think they have to have a slide rule, space calculator, and degree in algebra before they can get their groceries. When all they have to do is buy more produce and less processed.
It’s very easy. It’s even fun. A lot of the hurdles you think you’ll face only exist in your imagination. As soon as you begin actually doing this, all those make-believe obstacles and difficulties evaporate like the illusions they were.
Yes, you should do this!
I thought a big, juicy post about all the reasons why going plant-based is the right thing to do would help motivate all of you! We are at the very beginning of a newborn year, and you have the absolute ability in your hands right this minute to make it your healthiest year ever.
You can also make it the year that you, personally, make a dramatic impact on our planet’s health. Actually, we all, every one of us, already have a dramatic impact on our planet’s health with every single choice we make in every single day. But the choices most of us make are harming rather than helping our planet. And we can turn that around too.
This is your body on plants
Within only a few weeks of going plant based, the following changes are already happening:
Erectile dysfunction, the earliest sign of heart disease, reverses itself without medication.
Your blood pressure lowers without medication
Your cholesterol lowers without medication
Your inflammatory markers reduce without medication
You can reverse type 2 diabetes and lower your A1C without medication
Auto-immune diseases fade and often reverse without medication
Energy levels soar without stimulants
Sleep improves without sleep aids
Chronic reflux vanishes without antacids
Dandruff, flaky skin, flaky scalp, rashes and other skin conditions resolve without medicated shampoos, salves, or lotions
Your risk of death plummets
Acne clears without creams
In my case, a twenty-year heart arrythmia disappeared without metoprolol
Weight melts away like magic, without effort, without measuring, without counting, or without even exercising. (But you should anyway.)
Migraines vanish without medication
The telomeres, those little shoelace-caps that keep the ends of our cells from becoming frayed with age, instead of fraying, grow longer. This is literally reverse-aging at a cellular level.
Doctors are even reversing Lupus with a whole food, plant-based lifestyle!
There’s a reason for all these improvements. Switching to a plant-based diet changes the expression of more than 500 genes, increasing their positive expressions and decreasing the negatives.
9 of the top 10 leading causes of death in the United States are food born illnesses.
Check it out.
Heart disease: Largely caused by buildup of plaque in the coronary arteries, which you do not get unless you eat meat and dairy. Greens and cruciferous vegetables can actually remove this plaque from your arteries and restore your epithelial system to keep your blood flowing freely. No stent, bypass, or statin drug can do that. Only food can do that.
Cancer: Animal proteins have been shown in repeated, peer-reviewed studies, to “turn on” dormant mutated genes like BRCA1 and BRCA2, known as the breast cancer genes, among others. The genes are dormant until activated. A diet where about 20% of total calories came from animal sources, immediately “woke” the genes in 100% of animals tested, and they started producing cancer cells. A diet of 5% animal proteins woke the genes in 0% of the test subjects. Moreover, switching the 20% animals who were already producing cancer cells to the 5% diet, shut the cancer genes off. They stopped producing cancer cells.
To calculate: Based on a 2000 calorie per day diet, 400 calories per day from animal proteins will turn cancer ON. 100 daily calories or fewer from animal proteins, will turn cancer off. Count how many calories per day of milk, cream, cheese, butter, eggs, meat, poultry, and fish you eat to get your totals. Don’t forget to include the hidden animal ingredients in nearly all processed foods.COVID-19: A newcomer to our top ten causes of death, Covid 19’s alleged cause was humans tampering with animals, selling bats for food and medicine in a Chinese wet market. So there’s your animal cause. But in addition to that, post covid research in the US has shown that people on a plant-based diet were 73% less likely to have serious covid or to require hospitalization for Covid. We were also far less likely to contract it in the first place. You add a vaccine to a plant-based diet, and I think you’re extremely unlikely to get Covid. Anecdotally, I rode in a car with the windows up, unmasked, with my granddaughter every day for a week. (We put on our masks whenever we got out of the car.) At the end of that week, she tested positive for Covid. I never got it.
Sidebar: Incidentally, human abuse of animals is also responsible for the following diseases, and this is not a full list by any means: Animal flu, anthrax, bird flu, bovine tuberculosis, brucellosis, Campylobacter infection, cat scratch fever, cryptosporidiosis, cysticercosis, dengue fever, Ebola, encephalitis from ticks, enzootic abortion, erysipeloid, fish tank granuloma, giardiasis, glanders, hemorrhagic colitis, hepatitis E, hydatid disease, Leptospirosis, listeria infection, louping illness, Lyme disease, lymphocytic choriomeningitis, malaria, orf infection, parrot fever, pasteurellosis, plague, Q fever, rabies, rat-bite fever, ringworm, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Salmonella and E. coli infections, streptococcal sepsis, swine flu (our regular annual flu,) toxocariasis, toxoplasmosis, trichinellosis, tularemia, West Nile virus, zoonotic diphtheria and possibly HIV.Accidents: Not food related. Unless you count banana peels, I guess.
Stroke: Totally food related. Healthy, strong blood vessels free of plaque, with a strong epithelial system are the best prevention for stroke. You get these things from shunning animal proteins and increasing green leafies, cruciferous veggies, fiber, water, and a bit of exercise.
Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease: The same mechanisms that make Covid far less dangerous to whole food, plant-based eaters, makes us less likely to suffer from severe lower respiratory diseases.
“The incidence of respiratory diseases was 3.3 to 10.6% lower.” —Tarasov AV, Rakhmanov RS, Bogomolova ES, Perminova LA, Malakhova ZL. The Role of Plant-Based Protein Functional Food in Preventing Acute Respiratory Disease: A Case Study. Nutrients. 2021 Jun 20;13(6):2116. doi: 10.3390/nu13062116. PMID: 34203033; PMCID: PMC8234439.Alzheimer’s Disease: From the National Library of Medicine, “There is evidence indicating that a vegan diet could be beneficial in the prevention of neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease.” Studies are ongoing.
Katonova A, Sheardova K, Amlerova J, Angelucci F, Hort J. Effect of a Vegan Diet on Alzheimer's Disease. Int J Mol Sci. 2022 Nov 29;23(23):14924. doi: 10.3390/ijms232314924. PMID: 36499257; PMCID: PMC9738978.Diabetes: Type 1 diabetes can be greatly improved by diet. Type 2 diabetes is entirely caused by diet. More than 80% of type 2 diabetics can REVERSE the disease and GET OFF THEIR PRESCRIPTIONS simply by shifting to a whole food, plant based diet.
“Whole Food Plant-Based Diet Linked to Type 2 Diabetes Remission”
Medical News Today
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/whole-food-plant-based-diet-linked-to-type-2-diabetes-remissionLiver disease: “Vegan diets improve liver function in patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), according to research published in the Journal of Gastrointestinal and Liver Diseases.”
“Increased consumption of plant-based foods improved antioxidant intake and gut microbiota beneficial to liver enzymes. These findings support plant-based dietary approaches for liver disease treatment and the prevention of associated chronic conditions including hepatitis, fibrosis, cirrhosis, or hepatocellular carcinoma.”
”Vegan Diets Improve Liver Function”
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicinehttps://www.pcrm.org/news/health-nutrition/vegan-diets-improve-liver-function
Kidney disease: “Improving the nutrient quality of foods consumed by patients by including a higher proportion of plant-based foods while reducing total and animal protein intake may reduce the need for or complement nephroprotective medications, improve kidney disease complications, and perhaps favorably affect disease progression and patient survival.”
Joshi S, McMacken M, Kalantar-Zadeh K. Plant-Based Diets for Kidney Disease: A Guide for Clinicians. Am J Kidney Dis. 2021 Feb;77(2):287-296. doi: 10.1053/j.ajkd.2020.10.003. Epub 2020 Oct 16. PMID: 33075387.
This is your planet on plants
So now I’ve told you some of the good things eating this way will do for your body. There’s even bigger news. It does the same for the planet. And really, why wouldn’t it? We are a part of the planet, we evolved from its elements. We’re earthlings.
The fastest, most effective way we can curb climate change is by cutting out animal proteins. More than half of our greenhouse gasses come from animal agriculture, and they are the deadliest ones, such as methane. However, methane will dissipate the fastest.
Plant-based eaters add 1.6 tons less carbon to the atmosphere than a meat-eater.
It takes 3 acres of land to feed a carnivore, but only 1/6th acre to feed a vegan.
It takes 13 times more water to produce the food a carnivore eats vs the food a plant-based dieter eats.
A vegan uses 1/11th as much fossil fuel to produce their food, than a meat-eater uses to produce theirs.
According to the World Health Organization, 51% of greenhouse grasses are caused by animal agriculture.
Nearly 80% of the world’s arable land (where we can grow crops) is used to raise food feed for cattle, hogs, and chickens so that we can eat them. This 80% of our land provides only 20% of the world’s supply of calories.
If we stopped all fossil fuel use today, it would take 100 years for the C02 in our atmosphere to even begin to fade away. But if we stopped eating all meat today, it would only take 10 years for the far more harmful methane to clear from our atmosphere, giving us cleaner air and cooler temps during the additional 90-years it will take for the carbon to begin to clear out.
A carnivore kills one innocent animal for every single day of their own life, on average.
A vegan saves the life of one animal every single day of their own life, on average.
If you’d like a handy infographic you can share with friends and neighbors highlighting this, here you go:
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