I used to make it a
point to have a source of protein in every meal. And by protein I
mean animal product of some sort. An egg at breakfast, turkey or
chicken at lunch, beef or chicken at dinner. Add on top of that a
bunch of cheese and my meals consisted of mostly animals. It wasn't
very balanced, and I've been learning it's also not very healthy...at
all.
Something
I learned from Forks Over Knives, which
I actually knew all along, is that there are other good sources of
protein like beans, nuts, and seeds. So why not swap out meat for
beans every now and then?
Another
convincing story from Forks Over Knives
was the remission of cancers and diseases when people changed from a
western diet to a plant-based diet. The theory is that the human body
naturally wants to heal itself, it just need the proper nutrients to
do so. Therefore, eliminate the animal products, which are typically
low in nutrients but high in calories, and introduce a variety of
plant foods and whole grains which are high in nutrients and low in
calories. Overall, the people studied lost weight, normalized their
blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and were taken off of all
their prescription medications used to treat those things. And it
went beyond that. One story that stood out was of an older woman who
was given 3 months to live due to cancer and she was put on a
plant-based diet and lived for several more years. The cancer went
away. No surgery, no chemo therapy. Food saved her life in a matter
of months.
So what to do now?
Drop everything and become a vegan? The film was painting a picture
that meat is bad. It was saying that any food product derived from an
animal is bad. I don't believe that though.
People have been
eating meat throughout history. It's a natural thing. But then after
thinking about it a while, I doubt the meat we eat today is anything
like the meat our ancestors ate. Back in the hunter-gatherer days
animals were hunted or trapped. And hunts couldn't have been
successful all the time. Take a cheetah for example, they are the
most efficient hunter of the big cats and their success rate is about
50%. I doubt a human without a gun could match that. My point is that
meat couldn't have been abundant throughout the majority of human
evolution. It would have been scarce. Also, it was wild meat.
Nowadays meat is farmed as livestock and processed from birth to
sale. It's just not the same today in quality and quantity. But
still, I don't think it's unnatural to eat meat. I just think we're
eating too much.
Ok now what? I
learned how beneficial a plant-based diet is and how detrimental the
western diet is but I don't believe cutting out meat altogether is
necessary. It's so conflicting...
Then I
came across a TED Talk given by somebody in my exact position. He
loves eating meat, doesn't think it's bad when consumed in
moderation, but wants to reap the benefits of a plant-based diet. He
came up with the 5-Day Veg idea. He didn't eat any animal products
for 5 days of the week, and went back to his regular western-diet for
the other 2 days. He lost weight, his blood pressure and cholesterol
levels improved and he generally felt better. I had found something I
was willing to try.
That's the path
that brought me to this 5-Day Veg diet. My goal is to increase the
amount and variety of nutrients I eat and lower my meat consumption.
I'm hoping that doing a 5-Day Veg diet for a short period of time
will have a long-term impact on the way I eat...in a positive way, of
course.
No comments:
Post a Comment