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Episode 2. Why Eat Mostly Plants?

Episode 2. Why Eat Mostly Plants?

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 The World’s Finest Diet. Episode 2. Why Eat Mostly Plants? Let's begin with the basics. We need fuel for our bodies and this includes three major nutrients; carbohydrates, fat and protein. Yes, we need all three to live and eating them in the right proportion. In addition we need micronutrients such as vitamins, minerals, fibre and phytonutrients. A whole plant-based diet contains all the above nutrients in the right proportions so long as it is sufficiently varied and balanced. A whole plant diet offers roughly 80% carbohydrate 10% fat and 10% protein with plenty of vitamins, minerals, fibre and phytonutrients, the perfect diet. The typical Western diet as found in America and largely now in the UK is composed of a combination of meat, dairy, eggs, fish, and processed foods and provides approximately 40% carbohydrates 40% fat and 20% protein. Besides this it provides very little fibre, vitamins, minerals or phytonutrients. As you see, it does contain an excess of fat, cholesterol and animal proteins which are all linked to major health problems. So why should you eat a whole plant diet? Here are just a few of the possible reasons for this advice. A whole plant diet will provide you with the balance of all the nutrients body requires.There is sufficient evidence now to suggest that a whole plant diet not only can protect us from major chronic diseases, but may reverse many of these serious ailments.International studies of cultures that subsist mainly on a whole plant diet demonstrate excellent health and great longevity with little or no chronic diseases found in the West.Observation of people migrating from countries that predominantly eat a plant diet to America or other countries in the West show they develop the same frequency of chronic disease that we experience, the major change causing this being their diet.There is a widespread concern that the whole plant diet will not give adequate protein for our needs, in fact a whole plant diet provides all the protein we need.Detailed scientific research by Dr. T Colin Campbell, the author of the China Study has suggested that animal protein consumption along with insufficient whole plant food is a key reason for most of our chronic diseases.Finally our typical Western diet is now demonstrated to be unsustainable, we do not have sufficient water or land to provide such a diet for the entire world. Some estimate we would need the nine planets to have sufficient land and water to allow everyone to eat the typical western diet. The United Nations have reported that we require a shift towards a plant diet to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change.You may have other reasons for wanting to move in this direction with your diet, they may include wanting to lose weight, protecting yourself from health problems which run in the family, a desire to reduce the need for animal farming, as an alternative to drug therapy or any other possible reason. What you can be assured of is that such a move to a whole plant diet will probably meet all your requirements and more. There is a growing acceptance of the urgent need for a shift from our traditional western diet, towards more vegetable, fruit and grain diet for global survival reasons that include a few of the following problems. World Hunger and Starvation. There is insufficient land and natural resources to provide a typical Western diet to the entire world this is largely because it requires on average more than ten times as much land water and energy to produce a diet based on animal foods rather than one based on plant foods.Healthcare Costs Escalating. Our current dietary regime in the West is in fact generating ever-increasing health-care costs to all the Western economies. It has been estimated that 80% of medical costs are lifestyle related with diet being a huge part this, a shift in our dietary choices will bring this unsustainable cost under control.Water Scarcity. Freshwater supply will be the key problem for our future. Freshwater will be more valuable than oil. One of the main reasons for this is that it takes an excessive amount of freshwater to provide animal-based food compared with plant-based food and that the supplies globally of freshwater are not only limited but are currently being exhausted at a severe rate.Environmental Damage. Valuable fertile land is a limited resource on the planet and due to soil erosion and deforestation this is being rapidly depleted. The destruction of rainforests is another factor in the problem that not only reduces the biodiversity found in such forests but impacts severely on climate change.Climate Change. This is now recognized as a reality that is a problem that has to be addressed with urgency, but the fact that the raising of livestock generates more greenhouse gases than all transportation combined has not been brought to the fore as a key issue. This may be partly due to the fact that any organization suggesting the...
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