Plant-Based Diet
About 2-3 months ago we, my partner and I decided to try plant-based diet, primarily for our health: We both had annual physicals recently. On one test my partner presented osteoporosis in the spine! My doctor found my blood pressure elevated. We already ate no red meat and small amount poultry sticking to 2-4 OZ portions depending on the meals. I did not think it would be a big change until I saw not only how much meat was in our freezer but also the amount of cheese! This is called plant-based because nothing in our meals comes from animals: no eggs, no cheese, or any products made with eggs, egg white or cheese.
Little by little we consume what meat products we have and do not replenish them. As Lacto-Ovovegetariansa few years back we ate cookies, gelato and ice cream. As plant-based consumers, cookies, gelato & ice creams made without eggs and butter are not easy to find. Most of our meals start with produce from local farmers markets or produce isles at local grocery stores. We are conscious of how much processed foods we consume.
Plant-Based Meals
That includes bread, olive oil (I am Italian, Urgh!) and anything not in produce isles. It is a constant learning game, for example what is difference between virgin olive oil and cold pressed! Keep tuned in! LOL. In the almost 3 months I’ve subscribed to plant-based (I am 85-90% plant-based because I still consume cheese we have in there frigerator & freezer) I’ve lost10-1 2 pounds. More importantly my blood pressure went from 123/80 to114/62. A lot of professional promoting plant-based meals use blood pressure as the biggest indicator of health. Maybe this is working! Honestly, even I want to see a trend much bigger than 3 months!
The 2nd biggest factor to try plant-based meals is our environment and climate change. I’m trying not consume animals so not so many of them stay packed in pens where they get sick and need antibiotics and cannot move so they get hormones to build muscle that gets cut into steak and breast meat! We really are what we eat and the drugs injected into cows, pigs and chickens is consumed along with the meat and fat in their tissue! I exercise daily, love southern California weather because I can get activity outside.
Eating Clean and Healthy
In part I do this in combination with eating clean and healthy. Over the past 3-4 years I noticed a trend that I do not get annual common cold or the flu! Hmmm why can’t animals get their exercise? They might not need all the extra drugs! Amazon forest in Brazil is an enormous consumer of C02, 2 tons of CO2removed from our atmosphere and that capacity is diminishing as the fires destroy more and more of the vegetation! It is what nature’s plants do naturally! Plants take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen.
Currently the Amazon is being burned by farmers and ranchers who want to increase are to grow food for animals and expose more land to build bigger ranches! There is a lot of talk about the impact of lost vegetation in the Amazon. But what about indigenous people who lived in Amazon, or animals being displaced? They all will be looking for food outside the rainforest now that it has been destroyed by fire! Bye-bye oxygen and hello python! What I admire most about today’s kids (18 and younger) and a small but growing number of adults is the consciousness of global environment climate crises!
Clean Environment
Many people advocating for plant-based diet also support a cleaner environment! It takes enormous amounts of energy to keep farm animals. It takes 10 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce 1 calorie of animal protein. Kate Good at One Green Planet explains fossil fuel and commodity consumption in a very digestible fashion. Earlier I said we are what we eat. Farm animals’ food production consumes 75% fossil fuel production. It takes big machinery to grow fields of corn and soy bean used for farm animal feed. Add in the pesticides made from petroleum to kill bugs growing in mono crops! Are you hungry? It is estimated that one steer takes up almost 300 gallons of petroleum in a lifetime…. YUM! This article also describes the water required for milk production. Cows like most farm animals are penned up so they cannot move for any reason. The feed trough is hung in front of them. What goes in must come out. Power flushers are employed to keep the pens sanitary.
Water to Cow
150 gallons of water per cow, per day remove waste, excess dirt and milk from the floor. Can you imagine how slaughter houses are kept clean? Consider how much additional energy it takes to keep cows &pigs warm in the bitter cold winters ¾ of the US experiences recently! Chickens are kept cool in the increasing sweltering heat…oh did I say the chicken coops on factory farms hold about 20,000 chickens? Factory farms are known to keep in one big pen holding up to 30,000 pigs! That’s serious energy! The weather conditions occur because we are consuming so many natural resources and our current diets to consume predominately meat means more and more resources used to produce animals!
It is a cycle and our daily decisions can alter this cycle drastically! This is my small contribution to alter the cycle of energy consumption and trajectory of changing climate.
Diet for Health
Plant based diet is contributing to my healthy body and ability to play long and hard! This leads me to my 3rd reason for transitioning to plant-based meals! I am fascinated and inspired by the vegan body builders! These stories caught my attention when many friends and family asked pointedly, “…where is your protein?” First let me point out plant-based animals:
Oxen, Gorilla and Horse…you can debate their power up front and personal if you dare! Derek Tresize writes in website called Breaking Muscle. Derek’s lean, cut body is the example of vegan body builder I picture when I say inspiration. His philosophy is to eat a variety of plant foods to get all the amino acids your body needs. More importantly we know there is no specific combination of plant foods for optimal amino acid combination. If you are competing and need to bulk up eat more nuts, seeds and whole grains. Stay away from processed proteins, the keyword is PROCESSED. Look at the nutrition label for ingredients. If there are a lot of words you need to look up on Google you don’t want to put it into your body.
This is Lightlife Burger off their website: WATER, PEA PROTEIN, CANOLA OIL MODIFIED CELLULOSE, YEAST EXTRACT, ORGANIC VIRGIN COCONUT OIL, SEA SALT, FLAVOUR, AMINO ACID BLEND (I-METHIONINE, TRYPTOPHAN), POTASSIUM CHLORIDE, MODIFIED CORN STARCH, BEET POWDER, ONION POWDER, ASCORBIC ACID, SPICE, ONION EXTRACT, GARLIC POWDER, GREEN TEA EXTRACT, ACEROLA CHERRY EXTRACT, VITAMIN AND MINERAL BLEND [NIACINAMIDE (VITAMIN B3), FERRIC ORTHOPHOSPHATE, ZINC OXIDE, D-CALCIUM PANTOTHENATE PYRIDOXINE HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMINE B6), THIAMINE HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B1), RIBOFLAVIN (VITAMIN B2) CYANOCOBALAMIN (VITAMIN B12)].
This is Beyond Burger ingredients as listed in a Good Housekeeping article: water, pea protein isolate, expeller-pressed canola oil, refined coconut oil, rice protein, natural flavors, cocoa butter, mung bean protein, methylcellulose, potato starch, apple extract, salt, potassium chloride, vinegar, lemon juice concentrate, sunflower lecithin, pomegranate fruit powder, and beet juice extract.
As a researcher I am very familiar with 99% of all words in the ingredient list of each burger. What is scarier: A person with few years of chemistry knows most of the ingredients or that same person needs to look up a few words? What about the rest that did not study chemistry? I hope you will trust me to find the sources to guide you to smarter choices. In the Good Housekeeping article another professional points out that if you load a plant-based burger with veggies on it and eat healthy veggies on the side you are better because the saturated fat in beef burger is very dangerous for our bodies! I know I am not going to be a body builder; not sure I want to any longer but I do like my health statistics.
This is my journey continued!
