What Are We Supposed to Eat?
Friday, October 30th, 2009There’s absolutely nothing wrong with eating lots of fruit and vegetables in your daily diet. It’s advisable and I personally recommend it - highly.
But, people who choose to become vegetarians or vegans and give up animal meat, usually do so based on an emotional “belief” concerning health, religion, cruelty to animals, or damage to the environment, and unfortunately, often lack critically pertinent information.
Without a lot of knowledge and planning, trying to live exclusively on fruit and vegetables is sure to lead to nutritional deficiencies and the inevitable health problems. If only for that one reason, parents who force their children to become vegetarians may actually be practicing a subtle form of child-abuse.
In the grand scheme of things, vegetarianism, as a life-style, has existed for a long time but not with significant numbers of adherents. During the 20th Century, when prominent health experts, alarmed at the sudden increase in heart-disease, examined the diets of their patients and compared them with those in other “healhier” countries it seemed that an increase in the consumption of vegetables helped in disease prevention. The media, without any proof whatsoever, jumped on the band-wagon and trumpeted that “vegetarianism” was the cure-all for everything.
The cult-like vegetarian societies that existed at the time capitalized on the publicity and made (and continue to make) unfounded claims to persuade an unwary public that a “no-meat life-style” is the healthiest and “kindest” of all dietary options.
