Veganist_ Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World - Kathy Freston [83]
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Many signs suggest that as a society we may be about to reach a tipping point in our relationship with food. Today fully 10 percent of adults in the U.S.—well over 20 million individuals—say they largely follow a “vegetarian-inclined” diet. More importantly, 12 million others are “definitely interested” in going veg in the future.
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More and more health-care institutions and concerned people are listening. The prestigious medical journal the Lancet has called upon the Western world to reduce its meat consumption by 10 percent, and thirty-two U.S. hospitals have committed to reduce their meat purchases by 20 percent through their participation in the Balanced Menu Challenge, an initiative of the nonprofit group Health Care Without Harm.
Today fully ten percent of adults in the U.S.—well over 20 million individuals—say they largely follow a “vegetarian-inclined” diet. More importantly, 12 million others are “definitely interested” in going veg in the future. Perhaps most promising are the changes evident among young people: multiple studies by the dining service giant Aramark have shown that approximately 25 to 30 percent of college students consider vegetarian meals at dining halls “very important” to them.
Demographic statistics are helpful in understanding the potential for change, but it’s important not to forget that no matter how big a social phenomenon gets, change happens one person at a time. Take someone like Jack. A few years after finishing his law degree, Jack was at a dinner party with friends of friends. His hosts were in a “mixed marriage,” an omnivore and a vegan, and the conversation went to food and problems in factory farming. Jack didn’t have much to say (his hosts never knew the chain of events they initiated) but when he got home that evening he put three words into his Internet browser search field: factory, farming, and video.
It didn’t take long for Jack to realize he didn’t want to support what the meat industry had become. It was a gut response for Jack. The suffering he saw made him terribly uncomfortable, and he made a resolution: tomorrow I will eat no animal products. Soon it was a week animal-product-free, then a month. By the end of his vegan month Jack was not only feeling more energetic but was feeling like his life, his choices, had a new meaning.
Co-workers began complimenting him on his having lost weight. Jack’s recurrent problem with back pain, which had been getting worse for years, stopped for good. The biggest fan of his new diet was his new girlfriend, Melissa. Vegan diets tend to promote better circulation, which is likely why Jack’s back pain subsided, but as Dr. Ornish explained in Promise 3, the benefits of greater circulation don’t stop there.
Fast-forward a few years: Melissa and Jack are married, and their vegan cooking has earned them a reputation as excellent hosts. Jack and Melissa had always been well-liked people in their community and decided to have a dinner party of their own one night, all vegan. It was the first of many. One friend confessed to Jack that the first time Jack invited him over for dinner, he made a point of grabbing a burger before arriving (not a veggie burger). That same friend is now a committed Meatless Mondays man and makes sure to eat a light lunch if he’ll be eating dinner at Jack and Melissa’s. “If I could have vegan food like this every day,” guests would invariably report, “it would be easy to go vegan.”
Jack never preached. He just dished up the best food he could and shared his story and knowledge when others asked.
Five years after Jack went vegan, a handful of people in his social circle had joined him in adopting a plant-based diet. Most people he knew didn’t make a complete switch, but virtually everyone in his social circle had acquired a new perspective on food. Just by knowing a vegan couple for a few years, the idea of a