Veganist_ Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World - Kathy Freston [80]
Our food choices affect others like virtually nothing else we do, rippling outward and multiplying their impact day by day, year by year, meal by meal. Every time we choose what to eat we vote in the most important and most democratic election on the planet. And after each breakfast we cook and each lunch we order, the results are calculated and the world is inched in one direction or the other. In 2006, for example, the percentage of the world’s population that was clinically obese quietly surpassed the number of people afflicted by hunger, a clear result of the growth of high-meat diets. Talk about ironies.
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Every time we choose what to eat we vote in the most important and most democratic election on the planet.
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As we’ve seen, every plant-based meal helps heal this sad situation. Every time we eat we affect what foods our supermarkets carry, what our neighbors eat, and what future generations will eat. Each food choice ripples out into the world and into the future in ways that few if any other daily decisions do. Eating is the paradigmatic social act, breaking bread the most elementary gesture of hospitality. One thing you can be sure of is that even if you are the first among your family or friends to lean toward veganism, you won’t be the last. You will influence others. Even if you don’t talk about it you’ll find that people will come to you with questions. You will be a part of helping society reach a higher level of consciousness. A plant-based diet is the promise that keeps on giving.
What’s Stopping Us?
In my experience once people learn the facts and hear real-life stories, the old-fashioned idea that animal foods are necessary quickly becomes as persuasive as stories about the tooth fairy. Winning “the argument” for plant-based diets, with your conscience or your neighbor, however, is an important but in the end relatively easy victory. The more challenging part is putting it into practice (much advice on that in the afterword)!
So, what to do about that?
Openness to new ideas is one of the things that I love about Americans—we’re always ready to hear about another, better way to do things. And while we have no doubt enjoyed meat with our potatoes for some time, we are above all a practical people, especially when it comes to the food we eat. Even back when Americans first won independence, writes the Texas State University history professor James McWilliams, they made a “concerted turn back toward culinary simplicity.” Whereas in Europe eating was often an elaborate affair, Americans worked “under the assumption that eating was more of a practical activity… than a ceremonial one. Just as American culture had become more pragmatic, so had its food.”
Practically speaking, there are too many commonsense advantages of a plant-based diet to ignore. Still, when our hearts and minds open to the promises of a plant-based diet, there is often another part of ourselves that is busy scripting “top ten” lists of reasons why we can’t do it. It’s human nature to throw up resistance to important change. Despite all the common sense a vegan diet makes, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed instead of inspired by its promises. We can know everything there is to know about how changing our diet could lead to personal growth but still falter, at least at first.
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Perhaps the greatest promise of a plant-based diet, in my view, is that it can help us evolve. A plant-based diet