It is possible for us to find a way out of the climate crisis, but it will require us to change the way we see and consume food.
Humans can design life and live intentionally to meet objectives. Every other animal species in the wild is rooted to a habitat and once that habitat is destroyed, the animal basically dies. Humans are so adaptive that we can rebuild or get up and move when our homes are destroyed.
Anytime we can design something, we design it towards objectives. Our primary objective is, of course, to keep living. Secondarily, it appears that modern, industrial humans have designed life towards the objective of momentary pleasures and maximum enjoyment. In doing so, we seem to have reached a sub-optimal solution for the primary objective – to keep living – and frankly, it is not even meeting our secondary objective of enjoyment much either.
Our planetary home is becoming filthier and filthier. The water is toxic. The air is so thick with contaminants that we can’t see the stars at night anymore. The trash is piling up. The ocean is polluted. Our bodies are filling up with micro plastics and other toxins. As our bodies degrade, we find that it is not very enjoyable to be living in piles of our own filth.
After centuries of steady increases, our life expectancy has begun to decline despite heroic medical measures. The last few years of our current life expectancy is certainly no fun as we rotate in and out of hospitals, while swallowing a cocktail of pills every day. Now, we are neither meeting our primary objective to “keep living,” nor our secondary objective of pleasure and enjoyment.
Meanwhile scientists tell us that we could be living up to 150 years, if we clean up our act. But to do so, I suggest that we need to change our secondary objective from momentary pleasures and maximum enjoyment to whole systems “ONE” health and steady enjoyment.
In order to optimize for ONE health, we need to begin with personal health. That is the oxygen mask rule – put on your own mask first before helping others. A sick or injured person usually does not have the capacity to help others, although it is only when we are sick or injured that we truly appreciate the incredible gift that Mother Nature had given us when we had a healthy, pain-free body.
Health is wealth. That is not just a cliche. A few years ago, the excruciating pain of an ordinary ankle sprain reminded me to be grateful for a healthy body. An uncle of mine, who was fabulously wealthy, once told me that he would give everything he had if only he could have his painfully arthritic legs returned back to health.
Just imagine – tens of millions of dollars for a healthy, pain-free leg! When we count all the other healthy limbs and organs we have, then we realize that living in a healthy, pain-free body is actually priceless. By that token, living in a healthy, non-toxic environment is even more priceless.
We have been trashing this priceless environment. In response, and especially over the past few years, Mother Nature has been whacking us on the head with numerous calamities, so-called hundred-year events. If these are hundred year events, then we have lived through five hundred years in the past five alone.
It’s well past time to wake up and redesign life with the correct secondary objectives for ourselves and for all life on earth so that we can meet our primary objective, to Keep Living. There is no debate in the medical community about what is the number one thing to do if we wish for optimum health – eat right. And there is no debate in the nutrition science community about what it means to eat right – a whole foods, plant-based vegan diet. This is almost the exact opposite of the Standard American Diet (SAD) today.
It is also irresponsible of us not to take care of our own health, because our sicknesses impact our loved ones the most. At some point, they will stop rushing to our side when we fall sick for the umpteenth time, because we couldn’t be bothered to take the most elementary step to get better, to eat right.
If it is “taste” or “mouth feel” that is holding Americans back, Glen Merzer and Tracy Childs have just published a book, “America Goes Vegan,” that may be just what the doctor ordered. With his inimitable writing style and characteristic deadpan humor, Glen Merzer has written this indispensable book to help all Americans to not only go vegan, but also regain their health at the same time. As the fattest, sickest country among all the 40 OECD ‘developed’ countries, consuming almost half of the pharmaceuticals manufactured in the world, America desperately needed an intervention and Glen Merzer has provided it.
Glen Merzer is ably assisted by a culinary magician, Tracy Childs, who has created healthy whole-foods, plant-based vegan versions of all the classic American dishes, making this a joyous transformation for all Americans. Now, rather than leading the world on a path to mutually assured self-destruction, America can humbly join the world, healthy, wealthy and wise.
Given that there seem to be equally skilled culinary magicians as Tracy for almost every world cuisine on Youtube (for any dish you can think of, please append “whole foods plant based” to the name of the dish and run an internet search and you will see what I mean), we don’t even have to sacrifice much of taste, or mouth feel, while we redesign life and keep living!
Isn’t that the best news ever?
Original source: Million Vegan Grandmothers Podcast
