REAL food has been sneaking into our diets for years and up until about a year or two ago I was, like so many others, fighting it. How silly would it be to have great nutritional food that didn't make us gain weight in fact if we ate it we would lose weight. Surely we would have been able to produce something better than Mother Nature??? All these new diet companies must know better than the typical gardner right? The solution to our problems had been sitting in the store all along- Fruits, Vegetable and Whole Grains! It's hard for man kind to accept that there are many things in this world that we do not need to mess with and food is one o
f them. Look at how many diet companies there are out there! And all of the food companies that cater to people who want to lose weight. I finally stopped the madness in my home and went back to basics. I cut out 80% of my dairy and all of my processed food intake(which also cut out most of our GMO food). See there is a simple, basic method to this. Kangaroos drink kangaroo milk, lion cubs drink lion milk, horses drink horse milk, humans drink---- well everything! and a lot of moms don't even want to breastfeed their child, but more on my opinion on that subject in my other post
Our Family Bed. Considering this article about how many puss cells are allowed in that glass of milk from
Food Matters and this one from the
Huffington Post about painkillers and other synthetic material that is in dairy. It is all very sad. Then we thought about eating the animal that puts out that milk... gross. There is another very simple way to think about this as well. How much land, food water, time, energy and antibiotics do we spend on one animal? What about the gas it lets out (yea I am being serious) and I am sure its not the most awesome thing to do- kill an animal- well not to my mommy self it's not, maybe someone else but anyhow you see where I am going with this? The answer for water is over 5000 gallons of water for
1 pound of beef. How many people could be fed by the same amount of food that we feed the cow? What would the health effects be on the human, the effects on the cow are wayyyy better lol and after the cow is dead there is the time it takes cutting it all up, the inspections, the packaging waste, the TRANSPORTATION, then how much will you throw out? Lets talk about medical costs. This article in the
NY Times says that the cost of eating a animal based diet is the same as smoking- $50 BILLION! That is a huge amount of money and when you think about our insurance premiums going up, the rate of cancer and tumors increasing along with diseases like MS and Alzheimer's rising it was very easy for my family to say- NO THANK YOU! I heard once that if everyone in the world ate like Americans and wasted food as much as Americans then we would need 5 earths to grow the food. YIKES! In my home we only eat meat on occasion. I on average cook 1-3 meals a month that contain meat.
Since we changed over to a PLANT BASED diet, we are not vegan or vegetarian, we have all seen changes. I lost over 30 pounds in 2 months, my anxiety has gone down and I feel soooo much better. I get up earlier and my sleep is better. My husband use to take allergy medication everyday because he had itchy skin and sometimes he would sneeze and his nose would run and now he doesn't take it anymore. My kids are all adjusting fine but the two oldest sometimes look at me funny. In their dads home they eat really really bad. One night for dinner my daughter told me the family had Ramen.. that's it :( and there are sodas and energy drinks like Monsters in their home. They eat a lot of processed, unhealthy food instead of REAL food that has to be prepared and cooked (instead of coming with the option to microwave) and so when they come here having a veggie dinner or bean chili it shocks them but then they eat and they like it. My oldest daughters acne clears up a little and they both say they feel better eating like this. I think that once you know what's in your food and what causes you to feel good or bad you tend to pay attention more to what you and your family are consuming.
Being on a plant based diet takes a few weeks to get used to. It is not easy to realize that you have to work at planning your menu and really preparing and cooking your food. I think the biggest hurdle is realizing what your friends and family (and what you yourself) are/were eating and feeding their families. You all of a sudden become the food crusader! We are not stuck up or better than anyone we just don't want to feed our family processed foods, sodas and a meat based diet.
The benefits of going plant based are amazing and you feel great both physically and mentally. The impact on mother nature is pretty awesome too. Here are some movies that really started me on this path. (I am also going to post a sample of what one of my menu plans look like for a week or two and include a planner for you- COMING SOON.) Good Luck and I hope you take a few baby steps towards a plant based diet soon!
