The Benefits of Eating a Plant-Based Diet

Most Americans have been raised on meat, poultry, and fish.  As soon as we are old enough to chew our food, our caretakers typically begin to introduce foods to us that come from the animal kingdom.  We’re not really given a choice; in fact, I can remember many times over the course of my childhood and adolescence being told that I would not be able to go out and play after dinner unless I finished the food on my plate.  We’re trained to eat what is put in front of us from an early age and to refrain from actually putting much thought into just what we are eating.  But what if all we thought we knew about food were stretches of truth?  What if beef, poultry, and fish weren’t really that good for us, or for our environment, after all? 

I want to say right up front that I am by no means a strict vegan or even a strict vegetarian.  I spend a lot of time on boats at sea with the Coast Guard and, well, let’s just say that they, like most other institutionalized food service organizations, serve a lot of meat and I’d probably go crazy if I limited my food intake to plant-based foods every day.  But I do have a greater awareness these days of what I am eating and I do eat many meals where I forego meat in favor of foods that are not produced from the animal world.  As a result, I feel that I may be lengthening my life a bit, and I truly believe that eating less meat has given me more, not less, energy as I work my busy days.  In addition, I also believe that eating less meat contributes to a global cause that could ultimately have many positive impacts on our world.  Some of you may read this and think that I’m simply a crazy liberal for thinking this way, but I hope that you’ll keep reading so you’ll understand where I’m coming from here. 

Consider how animals are processed for food in this day and age.  The techniques aren’t really publicized because if the practices involved in factory farming were well-known, there would be a whole lot less meat sold.  Sixty or seventy years ago, animals that were raised for food grew up on farms and were treated more or less humanely before they were sent to slaughter.  However, as our population has boomed since the 1950s, farming has moved from family enterprises to big corporate business.  Today, many animals raised for human consumption never see the light of day and are raised without ever moving out of their cages except when they are being prepared to be killed for food.  That means they stand around in their own waste for their entire lives.   In addition, they are given drugs so they grow quicker because time, after all, is money.  Animals raised under these conditions have no quality of life and may well be spreading viruses they incur while they are alive to the humans that consume them.

Despite what most of us have been led to believe, one doesn’t need to consume animal-based foods to obtain enough protein for their bodies to be strong and healthy.  There are plenty of plant-based foods that may be eaten that will provide more than enough protein for even the most active athlete.  In fact, animal-based foods can elevate bad cholesterol levels and cause other health issues for humans, including heart disease and stroke.  Studies have demonstrated that as people living in developing countries are better able to regularly add meat to their diets, their general health deteriorates.  They become obese and they develop the same sorts of diseases we Americans have been dealing with for the past fifty years.

A third benefit of eating plant-based foods is that they take less of a toll on our environment.  It takes a lot more grain to feed a cow every day in order to fatten it up so that it can be steak one day than it does to simply feed that grain to people.  Every day, animal food manufacturers are deforesting land all over this planet in order to create more room to grow plants that will be fed to animals that we will eventually eat, rather than feeding those plants to us directly.  Many view this practice as an inefficient use of resources that could be utilized to better feed all of the people of the world instead of just the ones in developed countries. 

I don’t expect you to read this and suddenly change your mind about how and what you eat.  Even if the information contained here does cause you concern, old habits die hard and I would be the first to tell you that it’s damned difficult to give up food that one has grown up with his entire life.  I would invite you, however, to do your own research so you can at least be informed about how animal-based foods are ultimately harming our planet and how greater consumption of plant-based foods can ultimately make us, and our world, a healthier place.