Recently I have started to think more and more about my own diet. The reason for this is that I have been spending time watching a bunch of documentary movies about the food industry. The three best ones, in other words, most interesting for me have been, Forks over Knives, Food Inc. and Fat Sick and Nearly Dead. These movies are all factual and while their stories are quite different, the all tell us the same message – we are what we eat.
This is quite a simplistic way of summarizing these films but essentially, that’s what they are saying. The conclusions of all three point towards a whole foods, plant based diet as being the optimum diet for long term health, well being, disease prevention and vitality. However, this is a conclusion that many of us are reluctant to go along with. The funny thing is that it has a lot in common to our mothers telling us to eat our greens when we are young. The fact of the matter, whether we agree on an emotional level or not is that vegetables are good for us. Eating a diet high is meat, dairy and processed foods is bad for us.
Whether you want to believe that dairy could have a direct detrimental effect upon our health is for you to decide. There is certainly evidence to suggest that it does. But even without this evidence, we can see that by consuming dairy products, we are going to be eating less plant based foods, e.g. a 100% plant based foods diet is best for health while an 80% plant based diet with 20% dairy obviously means we are eating less plant based foods, which means it is less good.
The movie Fat Sick and Nearly Dead is made by an Australian film maker named Joe Cross. He was a high flier in the financial industry in Australia and lived a life of excess. His drug of choice was not cocaine but rather, fine foods. Over his 20s and 30s he changed from an athletic university student into an overweight middle aged man. The movie documents his journey, both geographically and physically, as he travels across the U.S. drinking nothing but fresh juice for 60 days. This is commonly known as a juice fast. Just to be clear, Joe was under medical supervision for the duration of his fast. This sort of extreme diet is not to be taken lightly.
The opposition to whole foods, plant based diets often comes from the fact that many of us love eating meat. It tastes good. How could something that we have been brought up on, as Americans, be so bad for us? To this I’d say, look at the research. The China Study which Forks over Knives is a great place to start for some serious scientific discussion.
Getting back to Joe Cross, his idea was so simple, drink juice. Anyone can do this. We don’t have to go on a juice fast though. We can simply start drinking a fresh home made juice with our breakfast. This is a great first step towards better health. Best of all, home made juices taste amazing! If you search for the best juicer reviews you’ll be able to gather more information about which style of appliance would be most suitable for your own lifestyle. Health doesn’t have to be boring.