Are you wondering what the pros and cons of becoming vegan are?If you already are or you're thinking of becoming vegan, it is important to know that out of all the varied dietary practices going on today, veganism seems to get the most criticism. Old out-dated cultural belief systems, meat, dairy and egg industry propaganda and general ignorance to scientific facts have led many people to believe that animal products are a necessary component of your diet. Some, who shun becoming vegan, have even gone so far as to suggest that they should be the largest portion of it! The real truth is that every longevity society that has ever been studied and every properly conducted, peer reviewed, study that has ever been done on health points to a vegan diet being the best for longevity in humans. "Everyone in the world should be eating a plant based diet." -T. Colin Campbell Ph.D, author and epidemiological director of "The China Study". I think the #1 reason everyone should eat a plant based diet is for health. Other benefits such as animal rights, environmental conservation and "karma" are all great reasons but they don't stand up in the critical eye of the public if you're trying to convince them of why they should try becoming vegan. Since the benefits of a vegetarian diet on health are numerous, you should make sure to educate yourself about them. If you're ever confronted by someone who is trying to argue against your lifestyle, you can establish the health benefits first (which is the convincing argument) and then you can add on the benefits such as animal rights for additional effect.
However, this was just an example I wanted to show you the frame of mind that many people who consume animal products are coming from. Yes, many of them can sympathize and say it would be nice to be able to not eat animals, but a lot of these people have been brainwashed by the media and food industry lobbyists into thinking animal products are necessary for health. This is why it is up to you, me and every other follower of this lifestyle to convince them of the health benefits of becoming vegan first and then adding on the ecological and animal rights benefits as "low-glycemic icing on the raw vegan cake". Fortunately it just so happens that the vegan lifestyle is a great diet for longevity as well as beneficial for the health of the planet and animal rights. For a complete list of every single benefit that vegan diets offer (at least every one I could get my hands on) as well as the corrections to the false beliefs some people hold about 100% plant based diets, please download my free ebook (coming soon). This is important to know as you need to be able to handle and inform people that question your choice of lifestyle without sounding misinformed like many vegans unfortunately are today. (Although most people eating animal products are just as misinformed!) A vegan diet can provide you with every nutrient known... with one exception.
That nutrient happens to be cholesterol. Our body manufactures this on its own and simply does not need it from external sources. Excess cholesterol from the consumption of animal products has been extensively proven without a doubt to raise unhealthy cholesterol levels. Every longevity society that exists (known as blue zones) has low cholesterol levels as well as diets extremely low or even devoid of animal products and that focus on vegan nutrition.One of the main factors of longevity is to be able to get optimal nutrition with fewer calories, which a vegan lifestyle makes possible. There are plenty of vegetarian protein sources as well as sources of minerals thought to be lacking in vegan diets such as calcium, iron and even some of the B complex vitamins. I go into more detail and crush these culturally limiting beliefs that seem to have spread so widely in my free ebook (coming soon). If you're a bit nutrition savvy, right now you might be thinking to yourself "well, what about vitamin B12?". I can stick to my above statement about all nutrients being available in a vegan diet because B12 is a very misunderstood nutrient. It turns out that B12 is supposed to be made by bacteria in your gut that you consume from organic soil (it's also in the air and water all around us). The only reason people talk about B12 only being in animal products is that animals spend all day eating food off the ground and thus get plenty of exposure to the bacteria and make B12 inside their own gut! Furthermore, as Dr. Brian Clement explains, B12 is destroyed by heat and chemicals. Technically it is destroyed only in acid or alkaline solutions. There are no neutral animal products thus it is destroyed in all animal products when heated. Thus pasteurization of dairy, cooking of meat and the pumping of chemicals (growth hormones and antibiotics etc) into animals has made B12 unavailable in all animal products today. The myth that vegans are lacking in B12 has been largely propagated by the meat and dairy industry. The USDA states that 40% of the population is deficient in B12 regardless of what diet they eat (closer to a 60% deficiency rate is estimated by the Hippocrates Health Institute). Supplementation of non-synthetic bacteria based B12 is necessary for everyone. 99.9% of the B12 supplements on the market are actually made from synthetic or animal waste materials which confuse the body and get treated as toxins. Dr. Clement researched many old volumes of medical drawings in medical school libraries and discovered that since the modernization of the human species (perhaps since we began cooking our food), humans have had a portion of their colon atrophy. In the area where the appendix now resides, we once had a small cavity about the size of the inside of the toe of a boot. This "pocket" allowed good bacteria to culture and provide us with an endless supply of vitamins such as B12. Unfortunately due to modernization, this part of the colon has shrunk down to the size of the appendix which happens to be cut out of many people anyways! "Everyone on the planet should be taking a soil based B12 supplement" says Dr. Brian Clement. He goes on to explain that the B12 that is detected in cooked animal products is actually a charred "exoskeleton" of the nutrient. When this is consumed, the body recognizes the nutrient because of its molecular shape. It assumes that it is getting B12 and slows down or stops the natural production of B12 in the appendix area (if this fermentation process is still even active in the individual). When this charred "nutrient" enters the colon however, it can't be used by the body. The Hippocrates Health Institute (which Dr. Clement is the director of) has reached the conclusion after over 50 years of study on their patients with spectral blood analysis (the most advanced blood-work that can be done), that people eating animal products are more deficient in B12 than vegans. People consuming dairy are the hardest hit because the mucus forming properties of dairy inhibit absorption of all nutrients, so vegetarians consuming dairy products are also in the category of those who are most at risk of a B12 deficiency. According to statistics from the World Health Organization as well as the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, osteoporosis and incidents of bone fractures are highest in the countries that consume the most dairy.Perhaps the most pervasive health fraud ever marketed is that dairy is a health food. The commonly held belief and marketing illusion that milk builds strong bones is a propaganda myth. All research that hasn't been funded by the dairy or meat industries has clearly demonstrated that milk is not good for your bones and is in fact detrimental to them, your heart, as well as your waistline.Actually, there is something dairy products are great for. They are great for giving you cancer! According to the largest epidemiological peer reviewed study ever done on health called "The China Study", casein (which makes up 87% of cow's milk protein) is the most carcinogenic food based nutrient in the human diet. In comparison, casein was found to be more carcinogenic than the famous dioxin a.k.a. "agent orange" (the chemical that was sprayed on jungles in the Vietnam war as a defoliant and was the cause for many American troops developing severe immune and neurological disorders). Incidents of cancer occurred more frequently from casein than they did from dioxin according to Dr. T. Colin Campbell, director of "The China Study". In dairy products, not only do you have a large source of saturated fat being a major cause for heart disease, but you also have the high animal protein content being a major cause of cancer. You might remember the word casein from your elementary school days. If you learned to read early enough, you would have seen that the main ingredient in glue was... you guessed it... casein. Casein is virtually undigestible in the human digestive tract and it turns into a big sticky mess, impairing digestion. The casein in dairy products cause a reduced ability to absorb all nutrients including those found in the other foods you are eating. It has also been found to completely block your bodies ability to absorb and utilize antioxidants. Do you really need to take these risks to satisfy your addiction to this abomination of a food? Have you ever felt the "comfortably numb" sedative effect that comes after eating your favorite ice cream?All dairy products contain casomorphinogenic compounds. These have an opiate-like effect on the creature drinking it. This substance is 1/10th of the potency of morphine. This is designed by nature to makes the babies (of any species) latch on to their mother and not stray from her side. Not only do humans drink dairy well past the age that they require to, but they drink it from a completely different species whose milk has a vastly different nutritional composition than their own.Cows are large animals which means that their milk has large amounts of these compounds in them. This could be a reason for the seemingly drug-like dependency many people develop for dairy products, specifically when in need of emotional support (binging on ice cream or cheese for example). The health problems associated with this are simply the excess consumption of fat and animal protein. Some people recommend organic, unpasteurized dairy as a superior health food to the stuff you get in the fridge at your local corner store. Yet all of the above mentioned problems are still present in it. While it's true that raw, organic dairy products are not as bad as conventional milk products, they still contain casein, fat in very high quantities and the casomorphinogenic compounds. Some health teachers will cite the eating habits of traditional cultures as the cause of their lack of degenerative diseases. What they forget to mention is that these cultures often have very low life expectancies which prevents them from living long enough to develop these diseases. Also, there are a multitude of other lifestyle factors that traditional cultures follow that we must look at a a whole scientifically before attributing health claims to one specific portion of their diet and try to imitate that in our own. Cheese, yogurt and kefir are the worst of the dairy products we can choose from. When fats ferment (which is how these dairy products are made) they oxidize and form carcinogenic compounds. So, not only do you have the casein in fermented dairy products as a carcinogen, but you now have the oxidized fats as both a carcinogen as well as artery cloggers. The excess acidophiles (the pro-biotic culture in kefir, unpasteurized yogurt and cheese) is only one of a variety of different strains of bacteria you need in your gut to maintain balance in your bowel flora. If you're only getting this one strain of bacteria, you will develop an imbalance in your digestive system. I have a hypothesis about why there are major health problems with dairy products. It is a historical fact that agriculture began approximately 10,000 years ago, a mere blink of an eye in the evolutionary history of our species. With new found practices came the domestication of wild animals to serve as our slaves. We began milking cows and other animals for food and thus introduced a brand new food into our diets. 10,000 years is no where near long enough for us to have adapted the proper mechanisms to break down and utilize the nutrients contained in dairy, no matter what any misinformed health "teacher" tells you. As for meat, we've been hunting and consuming meat for a much longer time and although I still don't consider it a food fit for human consumption, it doesn't have as negative of an impact on our biology because we've had a longer amount of time to adapt to it. If you're considering becoming vegan, it is my recommendation to consider dropping dairy products from your diet first before eliminating animal flesh. This is the opposite of what many people advocating vegan diets say, but then again they have yet to read this information. ;p Almost all allergies are connected to the consumption of animal products.Lactose intolerance and shellfish are obvious ones, but many other allergies, such as hay fever, arise from a sub-optimal level of functioning in the liver. Consuming animal products is a burden on the liver because of the toxins produced in the body from its metabolism. Factory farmed meat may have tons of added chemicals and hormones that your liver works overtime to filter out of your body, but organic meat has its own problems as well.The high saturated fat content of meat along with the stress hormones that are released in the animal at the time of slaughter overburden the liver and gallbladder. The cooking of meat causes cross-linking of amino acids which is a burden on every metabolic function. Consuming raw food protein from plants is the best way to prevent this from happening. Cooked flesh proteins are very difficult for the body to digest and excrete, thus it can become impacted along the walls of the colon causing everything from weight gain to colon cancer. Cutting animal products out of your diet can reverse most allergies according to Dr. Brian Clement. Another great way to reverse allergies is to take bee pollen, royal jelly or flower pollen. The human digestive system is not designed to handle animal flesh as it doesn't metabolize quickly enough and will begin to putrefy and create toxins inside the digestive tract. Please read my ebook (coming soon) for more information on how our bodies are not designed to eat meat. Animal products are the biggest carriers of parasites, unfriendly bacteria and viruses. It's best to avoid the introduction of these into your body to begin with by getting vegan protein from plants. If you're skeptical of my supposed "extreme" vegan views and/or you just want more evidence of the dangers associated with the consumption of animal products, feel free to read up on the following cutting edge nutritional research:"The Framingham Study", "The China Study" by Dr. T. Colin Campbell, work by Dr. John A. Mcdougall, Dr. Dean Ornish and Dr. Edward Howell. These are some of the sources I have used to gather this information. These are some of the most prestigious, widely accepted and peer reviewed doctors and studies around today that specialize in nutrition and health. These sources all point to a vegan diet as being the most beneficial way of eating and ideal for everyone on the planet.According to Dr. Gabriel Cousens, per year a vegan when compared to the average consumer of animal products, saves an acre of trees, uses 1.5 million gallons less of fresh water, 1/27th the amount of fossil fuels and 1/16th the amount of farmland!If people are serious about increasing human longevity, this is a crucial point to understand. It makes sense that mother nature would design the best anti-aging diet for humans to also be the most sustainable for the planet.Developing the healthy eating habits I have outlined in this article, as well as on this site, you can begin your shift towards contributing to environmental awareness and a better future for everyone living in this world. The vegan lifestyle has a carbon footprint 22-27 times smaller than lifestyles that include animal products. Economically speaking, that's more efficient than switching from a gas guzzling SUV to a hybrid vehicle! Grains being fed to animals for slaughter and dairy production could instead be used to eliminate famine in developing countries. Cows are designed to eat grass anyways and if you insist on drinking cows milk or other dairy products at least make sure it's grass-fed and organic. However even grass fed beef and dairy cows are hazardous to your health and cause the development of jowls... and nobody wants jowls. There is an un-acknowledged and unspoken holocaust that is occurring world-wide.
Since the creation of agriculture, the enslavement of animals to work for and provide humans with food has been the single biggest ethical downfall of humanity. Many people will argue that there are predators in the wild that catch and eat prey and that this justifies humans eating animal flesh. I find this both surprising and ignorant when people use this "argument" as they have clearly not given it much thought. Catching an animal in the wild with your bare hands (without any tools such as a gun) is many times removed from the act of purchasing a red slab of flesh in cellophane wrapper from the deli section of your local grocery store.The modern creation of factory farms are without a doubt, strikingly similar in design and function to the concentration camps used under various dictatorships, most notably those of Nazi Germany. Do you feel that this is an overstatement? Well please watch the video in the link below. "But animals aren't people, we can't view them as the same as us..." many people will retort. As a reader of material that is intended to bring about an increase of conscious awareness, you'll most likely be familiar with the fact that animals do have feelings, they do have emotions and they do have a desire for comfort and freedom. Anyone who has ever had a pet they were close to will agree. Farm animals are no different then cats and dogs in this respect. At the very least, mammals can be understood as having these basic characteristics. It is mostly mammals that we keep on farms and abuse for their resources. Animal exploitation and cruelty are rampant in all industries that use animals. When it comes to slaughtering animals, conditions are even more intolerable. Images and videos of animal abuse on the internet make the gore-fest horror movies you see today look like a day in the park. This has caused a rapid increase of people becoming vegan or vegetarian or at least considering the transition and limiting their intake of animal products. These images are often so shocking and upsetting that it has led many people to become outspoken about everything from factory farms and animal testing to the leather and fur industries. This is heart warming to see such large groups of compassionate people coming together for a common cause such as this. I do urge these animal rights activists to include foremost in their arguments that the health benefits of a vegetarian diet are the primary causes for turning to this lifestyle. Like I mentioned, if the hard core sadistic people are to ever be convinced, we have to demonstrate the health side of things first and then follow up with animal rights and ecological benefits. A movie that I believe should be mandatory viewing in every school curriculum as well as seen by everyone before they decide if they should continue buying animal products is titled "Earthlings". This is the best documentary on animal cruelty and abuse ever put together. It covers every industry from farming to the pet industry, from the leather to the cosmetic and scientific testing industries. Caution, viewer discretion is advised: EARTHLINGS: written, directed and produced by Shaun Monson A common argument many people have to say in regards to the points I have been raising is that organic, natural and smaller farms aren't cruel to their animals and the animals are happy in these places. In an attempt to justify their addiction to meat and dairy they have overlooked the fact that the animals still have to be penned up, they are often still force fed food they aren't designed to eat, they are still treated like slaves rather then the sentient beings that they are and they are still slaughtered in often inefficient ways that result in unnecessary suffering on the animals part. Yes, eating organic, small farm animal products is a wee bit more conscious, or shall we say not as ignorant, then eating factory farmed meat, but it is still unethical on many levels. I worked on an organic farm one summer and saw first hand how the animals react to their forced conditions. The role a farmer has to take on is one of a slave driver, even on "conscious" organic farms. There is no making friends with animals, because you don't steal from friends nor do you send them off to the butcher. Using animals for milk, stealing their eggs day in and day out (chickens are surprisingly quite protective of their eggs) and loading pigs on the truck to be taken away is a reality that not many people ever encounter. If you have the the slightest bit of compassion, you will feel for them and you may question your need to consume the food that is a result of their suffering. Sources: ~"The China Study" by T.Colin Cambell Ph.D. (Benbella Books, 2006) Click to return from "Becoming Vegan" to the "Diet for Longevity" page.
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