The case for Veganism and a Conscious diet plan, or at least putting an end to industrial farming.
If you have ever been to the woods and stumbled upon wild blueberries, blackberries or blackcurrants and perhaps tasted a ripe berry ready for the picking. You will be familiar with the distinction between mother nature’s harvest and the plastic packed, artificially nurtured supermarket variety which we have come to accept as the norm. The majority of us have no idea of the extent to which such foods are adulterated through genetic engineering, pesticide use and chemical infusion. This is just some superficial evidence of the whole deception.
Very few food products available in supermarkets are presented in their natural, pre-cultivated form. For example, broccoli, cabbage, kale, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts to name but a few; All descend from the wild cabbage which has been subjected to hundreds of years of artificial cross-breeding. All in order to develop novel varieties which yield more food per plant than the natural variety but have lower concentrations of micronutrients.
If any of the cultivated varieties were planted in the wild. They would have a low survival chance as they require an unnaturally high nutrient source, are less resistant to pests and would produce less food than if they were grown via methods to supply supermarkets. If they do survive to produce offspring in the wild, it’s unlikely that their genetic line would survive in its present state unless it crossbred with a wild variant to maintain hybrid vigour.
We have almost every element of the periodic table assimilated somewhere in our body. Even gold is found in trace amounts and its purpose in the body has now been determined to maintain joints and neuron (nerve cell) functionality. Other trace elements can be found in higher quantities in the human body but most of these have undetermined functions. The same is true for wild, and to some extent bio-organic crops. Unfortunately many of the trace elements appear absent or barely traceable in high yield crop plants grown for supermarket shelves. Perhaps some of these absent trace elements will one day be discovered to play an important part in human metabolism? Silicon for example is found in relatively high amounts in the human body considering that its metabolic function remains a mystery.
A problem with artificial selection over many generations to obtain desired traits for human consumption is that it reduces the gene pool. Thus genetic variance amongst the population is diminished. This reduces the survival advantage of the organism, making it prone to pests, parasites and genetic defects.Take cows for example. The average dairy cow possesses an udder 8 times the size of the wild cattle from which all domesticated cattle descend (unfortunately the wild cow became extinct in the mid 17th century). This modern dairy cow has such huge milk producing organs that it struggles with mobility. How would it fare in the wild against a range of natural predators? How much more food does it need to consume to maintain its grossly oversized mammary glands and milk yields? How much suffering does it need to endure to live a full life, crippled by mutations introduced in the genetic blueprints of its ancestors. And all to feed the insatiable appetite inherent in humanity for meat and dairy.
If the entire world suddenly became overrun with the human bred counterpart of wild animals there would be imbalance of catastrophic proportions. It has been observed that non-native species of WILD animals introduced into an ecosystem can totally decimate native wildlife populations. The local flora and fauna being unable to cope with such ravenous alien breeds for example rabbits in Australia and Lion Fish in the Carribean. How much worse would it be if these mutated domesticated forms were unleashed into the wilderness?
And yet the majority of humans on our planet, seem to accept this heinous, animal-mutation and torture program as a vital source of nutrition, which barely registers a ripple in the ocean of natural order.Ate meat more or less every day for my whole life.
Being vegetarian in my family which were Jewish on one side and Fillipino on the other, would have been a fry cry from normality whilst I was a kid growing up. Judaism has many strict, ancient biblical rules for the preparation of meat and dairy, but no mention of a vegetarian option. In the Philippines a typical family meal may consist of 10 dishes, with perhaps only one being vegetarian. And that would probably be down to a chicken getting snatched by a snake the previous night.
From the age of 25-30 I suffered from indigestion, bloating and constipation. Sometimes it got so bad that it became embarrassing; a constant troubling thought to have to deal with.
Being an ardent scientist, I felt I had enough knowledge and curiosity to experiment with diets and techniques in the hope to cure my digestive tract ailments without turning to pharmaceuticals. Occasional use of carbon tablets helped with the bloating but this was nothing more than a short lived preventative measure to bring about temporary relief. When it got real bad, I ate lots of papaya and natural yoghurt. The papaya contains papain, a powerful protein degrading enzyme, stronger even than the natural enzymes present in our stomach for breaking down proteins. The yoghurt would top up the healthy colon bacteria and help to return the microflora back to an effective balance. I even did a three day fast once or twice a year to return my gut to normal functionality. All of the afore-mentioned methods helped, however they proved only to be temporary solutions: The problems would always resurface.
At the start of 2015, I purchased a top end blender and began having daily green smoothies (made with cucumber, celery, kale or spinach, ginger and pear). This helped a lot with normalizing bowel functionality. But it was still not quite back to my youthful years of near perfect gut performance.
In the Summer of 2015. I decided to stop eating meat, quit lactose (except for the occasional ice cream) and give up on whey protein shakes. It was tough at first. I had a constant craving for meat; especially red meat. I would eat fish most days and noticed very soon that my gut problems almost completely disappeared. I was inspired to quit eating meat by a paper I read during my university years which stuck with me. I was studying Microbiology and stumbled upon a science paper in which dozens of cadavers were used for gut dissections and analysis. During a large part of their lives until they died, they had all suffered from severe IBS and/or other digestive tract discomforts and donated their corpses for research in this field. Upon observing the innards of their digestive system, the researchers reported that the majority were found to contain petrified faecal matter, which were infested parasitic worms and could well have remained stagnant and putrefying in the digestive tract of the host for several years. All the while this would have released toxic metabolic byproducts which would have poisoned the host from within. A pretty horrific ordeal. The song “Needles” by System of a Down immediately sprung to mind. The chorus contains following lyrics:- “My tapeworm tells me what to do. My tapeworm tells me where to go. Pull the tapeworm out of your ass….”. There are nematode worms which have a lifecycle in which they infect ants followed by cattle. When the ants are infected, the worm somehow manages to hijack their cognitive aparatus to some extent by mechanisms yet to be determined. This results in the ants switching to zombie mode, more frequently at dawn and dusk when cattle would be most likely to graze. Whilst in zombie mode, the ants are helpless to the controlling nematodal entity within and make haste for the tip of the nearest blade of grass where they lie in wait in to be consumed by a unsuspecting ruminant herbivore.
Perhaps there are parasites which affect cognitive/motor functions in humans? Perhaps even the lowly tapeworm affects us in ways which conventional modern medicine would deem as extending beyond the boundaries of possibility. The digestive tract does after all have the most number of neurons of any organ aside from the brain. Hence it is often referred to by the apt pseudonym “the second brain”.
Eating meat invariably introduces parasites such as tapeworms, nematodes, protozoa to name but a few, to the digestive tract of the host. Many animals have developed a symbiotic relationship with their gut flora. Herbivores for example rely extensively on their native microbial gut symbionts in order to release enzymes to digest their food, without which they would not have access to the vast majority of the nutritional potential of their diet.
Humans in this day and age, have a propensity for consuming excessive meat, alcohol, synthetic drugs and processed foods all of which create an imbalance in the digestive tract. Which has a knock on effect on our mental state. Up to 80% of all packaged foods in America contain FDA (food and drug administration) approved chemicals that are banned in many other countries. Perhaps its no surprise that Americans have the greatest amount of pineal gland calcification.
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