Daily Musing: Plant-Based Diets

Good Morning.

Much to my surprise, I’ve eaten vegetarian for the past four days, and if you know me, this may surprise you too. I’ve been doing some watching and reading about plant-based diets lately, and it’s been pretty convincing.

It began when I went down to hang out with my sibling Matty in Massachusetts prior to picking Callie up from the airport. We watched a documentary called The Game Changers on Netflix, and if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it (especially for men).

It is presented from the perspective of athletes, and a man who trains special forces units in hand-to-hand combat. Several presenters, athletes, scientists, and world-record breaking humans are featured, and it’s really powerful stuff.

The facts and figures are staggering, and it’s not easy to refute the findings that they show you, as clear as day. They do live testing, feeding small groups of people burritos with animal-meat, and then plant-based burritos, and they show you their blood. One of the most interesting mini-experiments they conduct is on a group of three college athletes on the effects that a plant-based diet has on the “hardness/size” and “duration/frequency” of their erections in their sleep, and that alone was enough to make me think, Well, that’s a damn good reason to eat less meat if I ever did hear one. Seriously, it’s massive percentage increases. Go watch it.

I’ve been somewhat health conscious for years now thanks to my mother going through a few, what we not-so-lovingly called “food-nazi” phases when I was a teenager. It’s a hard thing to understand at that age, and I’ll be honest, she didn’t explain things clearly using peer-reviewed science. I’m not sure I would’ve cared at that age, it was just frustrating to not be able to eat the things I wanted, which I’m sure plenty of adults even feel like.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is in the documentary, and has some very high-quality points. You can’t tell people what to eat, they’ll be pissed off, but you have to explain things, and suggest to at least cut back until they reach a point of understanding where they can be more accepting. He articulates this excellently, and in a “real” manner.

Anyways, my mom was always looking out for us as adolescents. Food is a massive part of your health, and mom did her best to stay informed and cut out stuff with high-fructose corn syrup and other processed sources of sugar. As an adult, I’m conscious of what I’m eating, and I’ve become someone who looks at ingredients in the grocery store.

Callie and I do our best to eat and be healthy. We did Sober October, and as a result of that I’m indulging less in general (something I should probably write about in more detail soon). While she was at her training, she was vegan, as that’s the food option they give you for the entire, nearly month-long training. She sent me pictures of some of the food, and claimed that it was delicious, and it looked it. I was already ready to try making some vegan meals.

Post-The Game Changers we’ve been trying it out for a little bit. As part of the documentary, a group of firefighters were asked to try a 7-day vegan challenge. The film tells us that the number one cause of death for firefighters in the line of duty is heart attacks. Many of the men they interviewed had high cholesterol (I do too, at age 25), and after the seven days, some of them had dropped by over 100 points. Knowing how bad heart disease is in my family, this was another major selling point for me.

I don’t exercise as much as I should. I’ve written about that before. I don’t like running just for running’s sake. I don’t like the gym environment. I don’t like feeling tired and exhausted. During Sober October, I did a week where I did a 15-minute circuit style home cardio workout, and it did not make me feel better at all. Now that it’s freezing out, running outside is even less appealing to me. So knowing that I could improve my cholesterol status with what food I ate (or didn’t eat) I figured it was at least worth a shot.

The day we picked Callie up we went out to brunch, where I had a vegan “Eggs” Florentine, that was actually really good. The “hollandaise” wasn’t quite right, but I’m not sure how you would make an accurate replica without eggs. Tofu apparently also tends to be squishy (so I’m learning) which was fine since I expected a soft squishy egg.

Normally after eating a large meal, especially brunch for whatever reason, I’ve felt a little, logy. You know the feeling, I’m sure you can think of it with Thanksgiving right around the corner. That “Wow that was delicious, now I need to unbuckle my belt and lie down for a little while” feeling. I didn’t feel that after this meal. I felt somewhat energized. I was full, but it felt good to be full, not exhausting.

Since then I’ve made such things as sweet potato fry poutine, homemade ramen with udon noodles from scratch, tomato soup with grilled cheese, skillet pizza, and vegetable stir fry. When I said vegetarian instead of vegan earlier, it’s because we have a hard time cutting out cheese. Especially since Callie had been missing it for so long, and pizza is my favorite food, I think that’s going to be one of the hardest things to cut back on.

Now, we’re not swearing off meat forever. We’ve got a freezer full that we’re going to eat, but we wanted to cut way back. If you get locally raised meat, I’m sure that helps, which we’re also going to start trying to do when we do eat meat. Some of the people who live longest in the world still eat meat including citizens of Okinawa in Japan, and those in countries/food cultures around the Mediterranean Sea.

It isn’t that meat isn’t nutritious for you, although all the protein you get from a cow? Where do you think the cow got it from? The grass and plants that they eat. It’s more what we as humans have done with the earth to make meat so readily available. The amount of fresh water that is used to produce the meat you find in the grocery store is disgusting. If you’ve ever been upset about Flint, Michigan (*raises hand*), then you probably shouldn’t buy meat in a grocery store until they get some of that clean water we’re using to keep our cows watered, but not our human beings.

I could keep talking about it, but sooner rather than later I’ll need to start using citations and actual quotes, so go watch The Game Changers on Netflix. Just do it. Worst case scenario is you spend ~80 minutes to learn something new, which is a pretty fantastic worse case.

I don’t think I’d ever ask people to stop eating meat. I don’t think it’s right to tell other humans what they can and cannot put into their own bodies. However, I do think it’s right to provide people with the education that our very broken education system has failed to. Really, you can’t be hurt by learning more about it. Even if you decide that it isn’t for you, maybe you’ll be able to understand more where someone in your family, or a friend is coming from when they talk about their eating habits.

Everything we do should come from a place of understanding. Why would you do something if you didn’t know what it was, or what it would do to you? I’m sure you’ve been told at one point in your life or another, “Hey try this!” by an excited friend or family member as they hold out a cup, or a plate with something weird on it that you just don’t know what is. You’re hesitant to try it, as you should be. Maybe you do try it, because you trust the person and the worst case is that you spit it out. Maybe you don’t because you’re too afraid, or you have a vague idea of what it is and have convinced yourself that you don’t like it. If it’s not going to kill you, just try it.

Open your mind to new experiences, especially those proposed by those you care about. You don’t have to make drastic changes in your own life, but it may help you to understand the choices of those around you. It is thought that the fear of the unknown, or xenophobia, is the most common fear amongst humans.

In the immortal words of Master Yoda, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

Do you really want to suffer, or cause someone else to suffer because of what they chose to eat? My guess is no. So go watch the film, learn about that unknown, and make informed decisions.

I’m not trying to convince anyone one way or another, the documentary will do a much better job than me in that regard. I’m just sharing that I’ve learned a lot about plant-based diets recently, I’m ready to try to eat plant-based more often. I never thought that would be the case.