NOT YOUR FATE
"When we become more aware of how powerfully our choice in diet and lifestyle affect us -- for better and for worse -- then we can make different ones." --- DR. DEAN ORNISH
Sorry if I've been painting a bleak picture in this section. This was supposed to be the happy vegan, right?
It might seem hard to feel happy thinking about how almost half of our adult population is obese. About how our children are developing diabetes at an alarming rate. About how young people are on course to die before they ever get to grow old.
There is some happy news, however. And it is that we can turn the situation around. Without drugs, shots, or pills. By doing nothing more than cutting out meat and dairy from our diet and eating more vegetables.
Whether you are a former president or a single mother is a housing project, you have a very large say over whether or not you will fall victim to these diseases.
Despite what you might be told, there is no pill and on hospital procedure that will help you live longer or healthier than simply eating a plant-based diet. Let's be real: If there were, you know former US President Bill Clinton would have gotten it a long time ago.
Luckily, when it comes to diet, we're all on the same playing (or eating) field. If you cut out animal products and build you diet around plants, you are giving yourself much better odds to not be that one-in-three American who is going to get cancer in their lifetime.
For me, that person was my mother. Every son loves his mother, but my mother and I had an especially close bond. I wasn't an easy child to raise --- I was a dreamer with ADD. My constant hustling used to drive my parents nuts. But no matter what sort of trouble I'd gotten myself into, my mother always had my back. I've told this story before, but when I was in college I lost all my money trying to promote a rap concert, and most of my family was ready to give up on me. It was my mother who took some money out of a secret stash she kept, gave it to me, and told me to try again. I've never forgotten that love and faith she showed in me in that moment.
So it was very hard for my brothers and me when my mother came down with throat cancer. We made sure she got the best doctors and we would go back to Queens to sit beside her when the chemotherapy made her too weak to get out of bed. Ultimately, there was very little we could do. As a father to two girls, I can't help but sometimes think about what a great presence my mother would have been in my daughters' lives. The cancer cut that relationship way too short.
If I had know what I know now about the connection between diet and disease, I would have encouraged my mother to switch to a plant-based diet before the cancer showed up in her throat. Just as I would have encouraged my father to make that switch to a plant-based diet before Alzheimer's disease turned an incredibly dynamic and charismatic man into a shell of his former self. And yes, studies have shown that there is a link between meat and Alzheimer's too.
It is too late for my parents. But it might not be too late for yours. Or your children. Or your relatives. Or your friends.
Or you.
"When we become more aware of how powerfully our choice in diet and lifestyle affect us -- for better and for worse -- then we can make different ones." --- DR. DEAN ORNISH
Sorry if I've been painting a bleak picture in this section. This was supposed to be the happy vegan, right?
It might seem hard to feel happy thinking about how almost half of our adult population is obese. About how our children are developing diabetes at an alarming rate. About how young people are on course to die before they ever get to grow old.
There is some happy news, however. And it is that we can turn the situation around. Without drugs, shots, or pills. By doing nothing more than cutting out meat and dairy from our diet and eating more vegetables.
Whether you are a former president or a single mother is a housing project, you have a very large say over whether or not you will fall victim to these diseases.
Despite what you might be told, there is no pill and on hospital procedure that will help you live longer or healthier than simply eating a plant-based diet. Let's be real: If there were, you know former US President Bill Clinton would have gotten it a long time ago.
Luckily, when it comes to diet, we're all on the same playing (or eating) field. If you cut out animal products and build you diet around plants, you are giving yourself much better odds to not be that one-in-three American who is going to get cancer in their lifetime.
For me, that person was my mother. Every son loves his mother, but my mother and I had an especially close bond. I wasn't an easy child to raise --- I was a dreamer with ADD. My constant hustling used to drive my parents nuts. But no matter what sort of trouble I'd gotten myself into, my mother always had my back. I've told this story before, but when I was in college I lost all my money trying to promote a rap concert, and most of my family was ready to give up on me. It was my mother who took some money out of a secret stash she kept, gave it to me, and told me to try again. I've never forgotten that love and faith she showed in me in that moment.
So it was very hard for my brothers and me when my mother came down with throat cancer. We made sure she got the best doctors and we would go back to Queens to sit beside her when the chemotherapy made her too weak to get out of bed. Ultimately, there was very little we could do. As a father to two girls, I can't help but sometimes think about what a great presence my mother would have been in my daughters' lives. The cancer cut that relationship way too short.
If I had know what I know now about the connection between diet and disease, I would have encouraged my mother to switch to a plant-based diet before the cancer showed up in her throat. Just as I would have encouraged my father to make that switch to a plant-based diet before Alzheimer's disease turned an incredibly dynamic and charismatic man into a shell of his former self. And yes, studies have shown that there is a link between meat and Alzheimer's too.
It is too late for my parents. But it might not be too late for yours. Or your children. Or your relatives. Or your friends.
Or you.
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