Conscious Consumers Network blog

By E. Originally published on The Conscious Consumers’ Network  on 07/19/04

   In our mass-media influenced society, where we are bombarded by images of physically fit, beautiful people, there is an enormous interest in what the proper diet is so that we may claim that hyper real body for our own. Diet books were 9% of all book sales in 2003. The health spa and gym industries also take in millions annually. However, even with all this interest over what should be put into our bodies, the American population suffers from specific diet related diseases at a disproportionate rate in comparison to most other populations.

     What can account for such a negative statistic in the so called “most advanced nation on the planet”? Could it be those ultra processed, preservative riddled, artificially flavored & colored “dead” foods we eat from boxes and cans? Or could it be the meat-centric, saturated fat laden fast food we catch on our 30-minute, eat-it-as-fast-as-you-can and get-back-to-work lunch breaks? It couldn’t be. Thoey’re FDA a& USDA pproved so they must be O.K., right? ‘Its’ the same food those people with the beautiful bodies oin the TV commercials are eating .and they wouldn’t lie, would they? Well, they are lying. It is processed dead foods and the meatcentric diet which is giving us and the planet a host of diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, deforestation, soil erosion, certain cancers and many others.

   What diet fad do you follow? Which book by which health guru or pseudo doctor is right? Let’s scrap all that and get down to the basics.

   It’s all very simple; maybe that’s why we’ve been so confused. Let’s break it down to the elements. Your body is a natural eco-system. The body is part and parcel of a larger natural eco-system (the earth and it’s environment). When you put natural fuels into your personal eco-system then your body is going to run smoother, faster and cleaner. It follows that the foods we put into our personal eco-system should be as close to their uncorrupted, naturally existing state for easiest absorption and utilization.

   Food is just a fuel source to power your body and brain. Put something unnatural into it (synthetic and or processed into such a state as could never exist in nature… Even cooking is nutritionally detrimental and chemically corruptive to most foods).

  The more we remove foods from their natural, “alive” states, the more side effects we get from ingesting them. Those side effects develop into serious diseases with repetitive of ingestions over time as the body’s natural state of equilibrium is continuously disrupted. Examples of dietary side effects are indigestion, heartburn, weight gain, certain cancers, cardiovascular, epidermal, and muscular disease. Etc.).

    In order to get more insight, imagine yourself in your body’s place. You are a natural, self-contained eco-system. A foreign agent enters; let’s say it’s a sour cream & onion potato chip (one of my favorites in my former, less healthy-less happy life). Among several other synthetic chemicals, they contain hydrogenated oil. Your body is not acquainted with this artificial molecule. In essence it is forced into a situation of “What the hell is that and what am I supposed to do with it?” Your body reacts, often first trying to jettison what it can’t assimilate (i.e. sweating out the toxins through the skin, passing them through the intestines, carrying them through the blood and lymph fluids, etc).

  Each bodily process of rejection also has reactions; (that zit you buy all those products to eliminate, bad breath and other body odors, etc. etc., etc.) Years of repeated ingestion of elements that cannot be assimilated or completely rejected lead to more serious bodily reactions. Non-assimilated and indigestible elements continually passing through and getting caught within the intestines are a possible cause of cancers here. The same applies to elements being passed off to the kidneys, blood, and lymph fluids; possible causes of cancers in those systems and heart disease.

   Now lets relate the microcosm of the human body eco-system to the macrocosm of the eco-system of the planet earth. This simple relation forms a way for us to understand that eating what’s right for our body is also right for the planet… This forms the basis of my “Personal Health Conscious Diet is the Environmentally Conscious Diet” argument. I believe that this argument, among other things, helps to show that the natural universe makes sense. It is only we humans that ultimately cause our own problems by acting like spoiled children and not playing by its rules.

The body does not have such negative reactions to foods that are naturally in a ready to eat state. These are foods already prepared for you having been cooked all they need to be by the sun. Naturally ready to eat foods; unless you are naturally allergic to them, are perfect, easily assimilated energy sources.

   As for allergies, there are many theories as to why allergies occur and are becoming more widespread; most of them exploring how many allergies are also a product of man’s unbalanced interference in natural systems.

   The other thing that is hard to swallow (literally) for most American’s is the subject of meat eating. Again, let’s get down to basics…

    The human digestive tract has little in common in comparison to other carnivores on this planet. Our Digestive system is most similar to herbivores.

    Meat eating among humans appears to have begun and reoccurred only among tribes who began to settle in harsher, colder climates where fruits and vegetables were not always readily available. It may have begun as a last ditch, desperate need to survive act, during the ice age. Some anthropologists theorize that the practice of killing other humans may have begun and developed among the tribes who first killed other animals to eat. This may have begat murder and war among humans.

    Whatever you think about my murder theory, the evidence suggests that American’s die of heart disease, colon and prostate cancer and many other diseases in great numbers because of their love of meat. Our digestive tract is just plain not set up for it. If we want to continue to argue with our own biology, well that’s up to us.

   What’s worse is that we are not only hurting ourselves with our meatcentric diet.

   As mentioned in ourAgriculture pages, our environment also cannot support this insatiable lust for meat. And if you think you need meat to have the fit muscular body you’ve been taunted with in those gym commercials, you’re also wrong. Look at gorillas, rhino’s and other massive land mammals.. Pretty strong. Not carnivores in the least.

  It just makes beautiful sense that what is good for our bodies is also be good for the environment that cradles, and gives our body sustenance. Wouldn’t it seem like a dirty trick if that wasn’t the case. However, as we continually pollute our bodies with synthetic, dead, and otherwise man-altered food products, we pollute the planet as well and give it diseases which are a direct creation of humanity.

   The standard American diet produces a tremendous amount of byproducts and waste. So, as we are hurting most the ones we love most (ourselves), we are also biting the hand that feeds (planet earth). How bad do we need to let things get before we get these messages. Improving this state of affairs is common sense, easy and best for all.

 For more see my article Escape From The Planet Of The Cows. 

Tags: Environmentally Conscious Diet, G.L.A.D. Organic Diet, raw food diet, vegan diet, vegetarianism

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 at 9:51 am and is filed under G.L.A.D. Organic Diet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.