The root of all evil is greed.
We are not fat and sick because we are lazy and have no will power. Harmful chemicals or other additives in our foods and beverages have hijacked the pleasure center of our brains, and we don’t eat meat and dairy by choice. Choice means we are fully aware of the consequences of our actions.
Who would choose disease, including cancer, and a shortened life span?
Who would bottle feed their infant with a dairy formula that could put them at risk of getting SIDS or Type 1 diabetes?
Who would choose to waste 2,500 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef?
Who would choose meat and allow children in other countries to starve so their crops could be fed to the animals that we eat?
Who would feed arsenic laced chickens to their families?
Who would risk Parkinson’s disease or want their boys to develop man-boobs just for the pleasure of eating dairy?
Who would willingly go through bypass surgery just because they like the taste of animals? (OK, I know a few of you are willing to risk it).
Who would happily send their teenagers to work at a slaughterhouse?
Who would commodify a sentient being, feed it GMO crops and worse, pump it full of harmful chemicals, torture and kill it, and then cut it into small pieces, doctor it up to look edible, doctor it up some more to taste or smell good, and then sell it as food?
We have become “sheeple” in the hands of Big Agriculture and Big Pharm. We obediently follow the established path they laid before us. Simply put, we are “processed people” from birth to death. Essentially we are an invisible extension of the slaughter house assembly line.
Einstein got it right when he said, “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity”. Yet like the Wizard of Oz, it only holds together if we keep silent and don’t move that curtain and don’t ask challenging questions.
The food and pharmaceutical drug industries are militantly driven by greed. Solutions to all our invented or supposed problems magically appear – a quick, cheap, tasty meal, and a pill for all ills, and we have unwittingly supported them. The many voices who speek out against them are marginalized or branded as quacks or charlatans or worse. The truth is hard to get out to the public because there’s little money to be made in a healthy population. Lies are disguised and pedaled as truth to the highest bidder. If there was a public outcry, corporations would actually have to produce something of value or go out of business. Our government, with its revolving door policy, won’t be there to help because the same employees who work there go back and forth to these corporations and then to the agencies that regulate them, a truly symbiotic relationship that maintains power and money, keeping us sheeple in line with the wool over our eyes.
We are deliberately deceived with heavy-handed and unethical marketing tactics. Drink and food-like products have adulterated or enhanced textures and flavorings, which are addictive. Then enticing colors are added to ensure that we purchase and consume them. These empty-calorie fake foods taste great but are, in addition to animal products, harmful to our biochemistry and cause damage to our immune system, leading to disease and cancer. But that’s OK because that’s where Big Pharma steps in to help us with those annoying symptoms from ingesting non-foods, and then when we experience side effects from those remedies, there’s another pill for that.
Big Pharma has discovered that we don’t scare easily. They boldly admit the potentially adverse and deadly side effects in their drug advertisements, which are often worse than the condition they purport to help.
The United States is one of only two countries that allow pharmaceutical drugs to be advertised directly to the public, thanks to their successful lobbyists and easily bought American politicians.
We’ve become so complacent that we don’t even notice the big picture. On TV we watch one commercial which depicts happy, healthy young people eating junk, and the next showing ill or hurting older people who feel better after taking their drugs, followed by a third commercial from an attorney to help you sue the pharmaceutical company that gave you a bad drug or therapy.
Then, to add to the total confusion, we have multiple diseases named after the different body parts or organs to which they appear to relate; when there should really be (in most cases) just one disease because the majority of them originate from the same source – the avoidance of our natural whole foods plant-based diet, along with eating and drinking fake foods, consuming any oil, and ingesting animal-based products (all meat, fish, dairy, eggs). This is akin to naming every hole in a garden hose leaking with raw sewage.
All parts of our body are affected by an improper diet, and each of these diseases is a result or “symptom” of that. Such an unnatural diet causes or contributes to these symptoms: obesity, constipation, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease, angina, stroke, arthritis, gout, lupus, colitis and other autoimmune diseases, acne, skin diseases, rashes, allergies, brain fog, depression, multiple sclerosis, dementia, Alzheimer’s, cancer, and on and on. If you don’t believe this, change your diet and partner with your doctor. Another side benefit is that you just might get “YOU” back!
We can start by stop blaming ourselves for making choices that were virtually forced upon us; we need to start making educated choices and stop supporting greed over our own health, which will hopefully force corporations to adapt or fail. We also need to rediscover what our true pleasures are – face-to-face conversations with family and friends, real food, helping our neighbors, creating things of value, and healing the Earth.
Fortunately, there may be a sea change coming in our future if we are open to it. Many fast food restaurants have added vegetarian alternatives, our grocery stores have added lots of vegan foods because of the demand, and there are a growing number of small businesses that are making safe and healthy food products out of plants. There’s an egg replacement, VeganEgg, that is tasty and nutritious. You can now buy cheeses made out of nuts. There are probably hundreds of recipes just for burger replacements, using vegetables, beans, grain, or nuts and seeds.
In addition, there is hope that one day what Hippocrates said may come true: “Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.”
Currently, there are a growing number of physicians who are successfully treating patients chiefly with nutrition. Do a search for “Plant Powered Professionals,” or ask your own physician about a dietary solution.
If you want to know more, read The China Study and The World Peace Diet. Read about plant-powered athletes, learn about the Plantrician Project, watch Plant Pure Nation, Forks Over Knives, Dying to Have Known, Processed People, Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, Cowspiracy, Simply Raw, Bought, The Future of Food, Hungry for Change, or watch the numerous TEDTalks on this topic, or go to http://www.drmcdougall.com, or http://www.nutritionfacts.org, or http://www.pcrm.org.
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is making great progress and has gotten some schools to introduce healthy plant-based foods to their cafeteria. The only way to become an unprocessed person is to opt out. Be informed and take action on your own behalf.
We need to stop this unconscionable exploitation of our health! Who knew that just by taking something off our plate, we could end the most dreaded diseases, including cancer, end childhood and adult obesity, end starvation, end the destruction of croplands that will be used exclusively for feed animals, end the needless suffering of billions of animals, save the planet and regain our innate compassionate and ethical inclinations.
– Susan Angland lives in Sweet Home.