Pollywogs!

…so I read this book recently called The Food Revolution.  Just finished it today, in fact, after reading it in short bites for the past couple weeks.  The more I read, the more what was written resonated with something inside of me.  I can clearly remember the chapter where it had me hook, line and sinker.  It is easily one of the most important books I’ve read in my life, as a human being.  So, I’m going to attempt to write a series of posts summarizing and expanding upon some of the central themes of the book. 

I’ll lead with a short quote from the end of the book, and then this first post will focus on some of the health aspects of the food choices we make regularly in our modern diet…

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“Whether we like it or not, and whether we accept it or not, the choices we make, individually and collectively, in the coming years will make an incredible amount of difference, perhaps more so than at any other time in the history of life on this planet.  It is not just the quality of our personal lives and health that depends, now, on the choices we make.”

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Food and Health

What if your meat and dairy products at the store carried a warning label like a pack of cigarettes: contents have been proven to cause cancer.   Would you think differently about shopping for food and snacks?  Hold up, you say, that is a pretty bold claim.  How can you simply say meat and dairy cause cancer?  Animal studies certainly do not help, as each species is fine tuned for the diet they’ve evolved to survive and reproduce on.  And, man is clearly an omnivore, fully able to digest a very wide range of food sources, well adept at being a jack of all trades, and master of none…which as served us well as a species during lean times when our only single concern is simply living long enough to reproduce and ensure our children live long enough to reproduce themselves.

So, if we can eat all of this food, what is to say that some of it isn’t healthy?  Well, the way you determine what is and what is not healthy and the resulting consequences, is to compile data from studies where each factor of a person’s life is quantified and accounted for.   The results are scientifically unequivocal: eating a diet with even modest amounts of meat and dairy products extracts a heavy health toll, encompassing nearly every modern ailment that our health care industry has had to face.  Cancer, heart disease, diabetes & obesity…

But you hear and read that you need meat and dairy!  You hear it a lot, because literally billions of dollars are spent each year advertising brands (I’m loving it) and product categories (got milk?).  The other side of that coin?  The National Cancer Institute with their $1 million advertising budget promoting a diet high in fruits and vegetables…among a few, lonely others…

Speaking of the government subsidized milk industry (comrades, grab another delicious and cold glass of socialist milk and rejoice our cultural victory over the capitalist pigs), as we don’t really have any rules against truth in advertising, you may be surprised to learn that drinking milk is actually bad for osteoporosis.  Amazing?  You’re aghast, how could I try to lie to you so blatantly?  You’ve seen on TV over and over that milk does a body good!  Yes.  Milk does a baby cow body good.  In our bodies, the shot of protein in milk makes us literally piss calcium.   Scientists know this, but no one gives them millions of dollars in advertising to help people with osteoporosis make informed and healthy choices.  Whereas the USDA just showers our own tax money on lies that make our lives worse.  Thanks, government, for showering money on both ends of a bad equation! 

I could go on and on, but that is what this book is for.  Now, I’m not saying that everyone should sign up with PETA and go vegan, although that is not a bad choice to make.  I’m simply saying that what you’ve been told was true isn’t necessarily so…but it is not in the best interest of the rich and the powerful for the truth to come out, so the status quo continues.  I had Fettuccine Alfredo last Friday, and it was delicious.  It was also only the second meat or dairy item I had had all week (the first being a BLT earlier that day).  The dish tasted rich and opulent, like a meal for a king.  

I feel it is a simple shame that I cannot make sure that the grains were grown organically, nor that the dairy products used were free of genetic modifications or cruel farm practices.  We have no laws regulating labeling of food, other than a simple “organic” label.  Nothing regarding the presence of GMOs or certification regarding how the animal was raised, and then nothing at all governing how meals are presented in restaurants.  Literally, who knows what is in a prepared meal!

I also know that the food itself is not healthy for me, which is why I make these choices in moderation.  I would like to be able to make the healthiest, most humane choice possible while still occasionally enjoying myself in a decadent fashion.  Just as you know eating candy and smoking cigarettes all day long every day is going to ruin your health, know that eating meat and dairy all day long every day is going to ruin your health just as likely: there are always those who live a hard life to 90 with no repercussions, just as some people have bodies that can take the abuse of a high animal protein diet day in and day out.  

…but why take unnecessary risks?

If even a little of what I’ve written today has piqued your interest, please go down to your local library and check out “The Food Revolution” by John Robbins.  The end of the book is endlessly useful as it is filled with references so you yourself can read the original scientific studies that are cited.  I didn’t even touch upon the health risks that have increased lately due to factory farming, such as E. Coli and other pathogens all over (and in!) the food supply, dioxins accumulating within the food chain, and so on and so on…  

Upcoming posts will cover the ethical aspects of factory farming (which I may skip thanks to Kelley’s previous and comprehensive posts), the environment and hunger, and finally pesticides and genetically modified organisms.