You Are What You Eat

Sanjeev posted this in Vegetarian Benefits on September 10th, 2009

I am sure most of you’ve certainly heard the expression many times, “You are what you eat.” Have you ever really thought about what it means? And do you think about it when you’re making food choices? And why is it that such an expression came about?

 

Human body or for that matter any living body is like a flowing river – it is always changing. What a person’s body was a few years, months, days or even hours or minutes ago is not the same as it is NOW. The entire body changes and becomes new every 3-4 years. Cells die and new ones take their place – some cells are replaced in minutes and others take some years. But they all get replaced within the same body. Actually person – so every person gets a new body every few years.

 

And what is our body built from? Simple – it gets built from what we eat. I am sure there is no quarrel on that?

 

When one eats a king size hamburger with all the fat by way of red meat topped with cheese, the blood plasma which was previously a clear liquid becomes cloudy with the fat and cholesterol. You keep eating fat laden meat day in and day out and eventually you will be high on cholesterol, fat or worse obese, and closer to the grave than your vegetable eating cousin.

 

On the other hand, a person who is a vegetarian or even a meat eater who switches from eating meat to a vegetarian-based diet has many health advantages. Some of them are:

 

ü      Eating vegetarian meals makes you less fat.

ü      You are less prone to many types of cancers.

ü      The cholesterol level is better or improves.

ü      When we’re leaner and eating fewer animal products, then many other health and fitness issues are reduced.

ü      The incidence of Type II diabetes is reduced.

ü      Blood pressure falls into normal ranges.

ü      When you’re healthier, you’re taking fewer medications.

ü      Even if you have a prescription drug benefit in your health plan, you’re still saving money with fewer co-payments on medications.

 

Many of the health problems indicated above like high cholesterol, diabetes and even cancer in some cases are highly genetic in nature. It therefore stands to reason that if you have a family history of high cholesterol, high blood pressure or diabetes, then it’s particularly incumbent on you to revise your eating habits –become vegetarian.

Moving towards a more vegetarian diet has been shown statistically to reduce the incidence of so many of the diseases of the industrialized countries. Vegetarians are statistically healthier than omnivorous persons; they’re leaner and live longer.

 

The cells that I spoke about will be healthier if they are not fed a diet of animal fat. And that will also make you healthier. You become healthy if you eat healthy.

 

I have heard meat eaters say sarcastically – “vegetarian do not live longer, they look older.” The statement is a clear acceptance of the well known fact – vegetarians and more healthy and live longer.

 

There is another factor that we need to consider in this meat versus vegetable health debate – which of these two decay faster in the absence of refrigeration? The answer is quite obviously meat. Now there are only two things that can happen when you eat meat:

 

  1. You end up eating harmful bacteria, virus etc if the meat is not cooked properly leading to more health issues, or
  2. You end up consuming more fuel to cook meat properly so that the organisms responsible to accelerating the rot of the meat are killed and made harmless. 

Both of the above hit human beings on the wrong side – you are worse off on two counts – health and environment.

 

Some of my questions to all the meat lovers of the world are:

 

  1. Isn’t it time to think about what you want to be and to eat accordingly?
  2. Do you want to be sluggish and fat?
  3. Do you want the risk that goes with eating animal products, with their high fat content?
  4. Don’t you want to look like and be what vegetarians are? Leaner and fitter with a longer anticipated lifespan.  

Meat eaters of the world, you have nothing to lose except your FAT and SHORTER LIFE!

 

It’s never too late to change what you’re doing and increase your chances for a longer, fitter life.

 

If you like the content, please vote for it. Thanks.
[del.icio.us] [Digg] [Facebook] [Google] [LinkedIn] [Mixx] [MySpace] [StumbleUpon] [Technorati] [Windows Live] [Yahoo!] [Email] More »
2 comments

Why One Should Be A Vegetarian – Some Statistics

Sanjeev posted this in Positive Reasons to be a Vegetarian on September 8th, 2009

I am a vegetarian by choice and would continue to be one to the end of my days because I strongly believe that the modern diet that relies heavily on meat and animal products is wasteful of the earth’s resources. In this article I would like to discuss in brief some of the wastages that we indulge in when we eat meat. In the later posts I’ll take up each of these in greater detail.

 

I firmly believe that by becoming a vegetarian you can contribute to the preservation of scarce resources of this planet and ensure that all have enough. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “The earth has enough for everyone’s need, but not for everyone’s greed”.

 

Sample some of our wasteful indulgences to indulge in meat!

 

1.     Meat production is a large scale industry that consumes vast amounts of grain and soy beans. The amount of grains that we feed the animals so that we can then consume them is enough to sustain 5 times the human population! Don’t believe it? Well it is a fact and I plan to prove it by the first principles in the coming days. Just watch out for this space.

2.     Great tracts of forest have been cut down to provide grazing land for cattle contributing to the problem of global warming. Plants and trees are “sink” for carbon dioxide and what do we do? We eradicate trees and plants so that animals can graze! And animals produce more CO2. So the earth’s store of CO2 gets to grow in geometrical progression.

3.     This resource hungry industry provides more food to the rich world than ever before at the cost of poorer nations. Result is that many people go hungry while those in the rich industrialized world suffer from a whole range of diseases that are caused by eating too much meat and animal fat. Again a double whammy of sorts.

4.     An estimated 800 million people live in the shadow of hunger. World hunger is increasing at a rate of 4 million a year. If all the farm produce that is used to feed animals was used to feed people a vegetarian diet then no one in the world would need to be hungry. It takes 7.5 pounds of animal feed to produce 1 pound of pork and 5 pounds to produce 1 pound of chicken.

5.     The American pork industry consumed 1.08 billion bushels of corn in 2004 and 265 million bushels of soybeans. This creates competition between humans and animals. And which animals at that? Ones that do not exist naturally but are “artificially” reared so that we can eat them!

6.     When we factor in the use of fossil fuels in the livestock industry for heating, lighting and transportation then the modern meat based diet begins to look totally unsustainable. Not to forget the fact that the quantum of fossil fuel that is also needed to make meat edible – after all you need to cook it and make it soft enough to be eaten!

7.     It takes one sixth of an acre of land to produce enough food for a vegan but more than three acres to feed a meat eater. That is a factor of 18!

8.     The high price of meat has encouraged many farmers in poor countries to shift away from their traditional crops that provided a largely vegetarian diet. They are increasingly producing livestock that they can sell to richer countries. Two-thirds of the grain that is exported from America goes to feed livestock.

9.     Fishing does not use up grain. But it does not really provide a sustainable alternative to meat. Most of the world’s major fisheries are in decline because of over fishing.

10. Fish farming is as costly in terms of feed as other forms of livestock farming. It takes 5 pounds of feed to produce a pound of fish.

 

The only real alternative to this waste of resources is for vegetarianism to become the diet of more people – far more than the current 3% of the human population.

 

This vegetarian is taking a stand against the wasteful use of resources.

 

Are you with me or against me?

 

If you like the content, please vote for it. Thanks.
[del.icio.us] [Digg] [Facebook] [Google] [LinkedIn] [Mixx] [MySpace] [StumbleUpon] [Technorati] [Windows Live] [Yahoo!] [Email] More »
One comment
 Page 2 of 15 « 1  2  3  4  5 » ...  Last » 
ss_blog_claim=4e1fafa9d745e267974a66743bf6de22
 Page 2 of 15 « 1  2  3  4  5 » ...  Last »