Food choices affect the environment and your health

  -->

Taking care of the environment is more than just recycling and not polluting. My daughter and I began our journey to a vegan lifestyle because we were concerned about the effects the mass production of grains and meats had on the earth. We began by eating organic food, grass-feed beef and free-range chickens and eggs. How food is grown and animals are raised affects the environment.

My daughter reads and learns a lot about nutrition, exercise and staying healthy. Both she and I are celebrating our one-year anniversary of eating a plant-based diet. This means we eat no animal products such as meat, diary or eggs.   Recently her friend sent her a Facebook note asking for nutrition advice for adopting a plant-based diet. 

Her friend and her friend’s beau had watched the movie “ForksOver Knives,” which prompted their wish to change what they ate.  

The movie is about the eating habits of people in the United States compared to people in other parts of the world.  It uses research from The China Study to show that most if not all degenerative diseases can be controlled or even reversed by cutting out animal-based and processed foods.

Here’s what my daughter, Rebecca had to say to her friends:

Yuri Elkaim

That's awesome! I'm always happy to share what I have learned about following a whole foods diet. On Facebook I follow YuriElkaim and

Dr. Issac Jones , and Young and Raw   
http://www.youngandraw.com/

Caleb Jennings & Sheleana Breakell founders of Young and Raw

All are advocates of the whole foods diet and have credible research about the health and environmental benefits. I can email you some of their programs and meal plans that I have gotten from them. ( Ask Prof. Cricket followers can click on their links and search the sites for the meal plans)

 Yuri's is probably the simplest to follow. Some good books to check out are The China Study 

by Dr. Colin Campbell and Thrive  by Brendan Brazier. 

Netflix instant streaming has Food Inc, Vegucated, Engine 2 Diet, Fat Sick and Nearly Dead, and Hungry for Change. All are excellent documentaries.

How to begin changing your eating habits

I think just starting out with adding a greens such as in a salad, smoothie or juice would be good. Depending on what your meals are like, you could have a goal or one meal or one day a week be completely whole foods. It doesn't have to be stressful.

I'm still working on optimizing my diet. What I have been doing lately is having a green smoothie as one or two of my meals. I've found Vega protein powder to be a good energizer. It has two servings of veggies in it along with protein to keep you satisfied. Mixing it with rice, coconut, or almond milk is good.

-------------------------------------------------------------

The China Study was written by Dr. T. Colin Campbell and is based on the China-Cornell-Oxford Project. This project is a large study conducted throughout the 1980s in rural China. People in rural parts of China ate plant-based or vegan diets until the 1980s when, with more money, people could afford more meat. Dr. Campbell and his colleagues found that many diseases, like diabetes and heart disease were previously rare in rural China and  are associated with eating more animal protein and dairy products.

-->