I've had people react to my plant-based diet as if I'm being radical. I understand the concept, because that's how I used to feel about eating no meat or dairy products. I used to think it was a radical, unusual, off the rails type of thing. I figured at the time that it was a major deviation from a "balanced" diet, that all the authorities I'd ever heard from, like my mom and the FDA, taught. In short, it was how I'd grown up believing reality was.
That is the first reason many people would feel it is radical. Because that isn't how they were raised. All my life, I'd eaten meat at nearly every meal, save breakfast. We usually ate cereal as a kid. Strange that the "most important meal of the day," breakfast, was so carb and plant-based. Except for the milk we'd pour all over it, of course.
It is the "normalization" effect. I mentioned in my last article how in Genesis, when man was created, that he was given all the seeds and herbs for his food. Animals were not given to eat until Noah post-flood. The problem is that we all grow up in a post-fallen world, so we tend to think of the fallen condition as how we were created. So much so, that when we read an early saint's work that talks about how procreation happened differently than it did after the fall, we automatically think they were wrong, simply because we can't believe it was any different than it is now.
That is why people have a hard time with holiness. Because all that entails appears so "radical" to go against how things normally are and appear to be. It isn't "normal" to fast, or to be kind when someone is mean to you. It isn't "natural" to love your enemy. Actually, it is quite natural for a pre-fallen man, but very unnatural for a post-fallen man. But we're so used to a post-fallen state, that anything that suggest things used to be different and we have to change toward them, appears radical to us.
So too, people who have grown up all their lives eating meat at every meal, things that used to be reserved for kings and the nobility, a small percentage of the population except for special meals (remember the "kill the fated calf" statement when they wanted to celebrate the prodigal son's return?) They feel it is "radical" to return to a diet that most throughout our history ate. Except for recently, like the last 50 to 100 years.
That is the other reason it appears so radical, is the meat and dairy lobby has put so much money into gaining control over the government and academia, that any attempt to say that meat and dairy cause so much of our current chronic diseases, gets a lot of push back. They fund their own studies with the intent to show that meat and diary are actually healthy. They do this by comparing their unhealthy diet with an unhealthy vegetarian diet, which also includes a lot of fat. So they cause confusion in the scientific research by having studies come out with contradicting conclusions.
However, all major cohort studies have shown, without exception, that a diet rich in meat and dairy has all sorts of chronic diseases associated with them. There is a direct relationship between the increase of meat eating in this country and the chronic diseases. Historically, they are discovering, that starch-based diets sustained the world, and when people back then ate a lot of meat, they had the same problems we do today.
The problem is, we are eating like kings and the nobility on a regular basis, because the meat and dairy industry has massive farms of overcrowded animals grown only to be eaten. This has resulted in massive abuse of the animals. They are routinely injected with massive amounts of antibiotics to combat the diseases that would kill off large amounts of the meat we eat. The industry has found a way to make eating meat relatively inexpensive so that the average person is able to afford it. And since the 70s, when obesity was around 13% of the population, they have become more and more efficient at producing meat so that they can make a profit, that obesity has grown to around 30+% of the population. Some estimates have it at over 60%. During that time, it appears we are losing the "war" on chronic diseases like heart attacks, cancer, diabetes, as well as several others.
This has also been fueled by the fad diets that have been promoted since the 80s: mostly involving the Keto diet. These include the Atkin's diet, the Zone diet, the Wheat Belly diet, as well as several others. All you have to do is compare the health of their founders who have been on these diets with those who have been on plant-based diets for a long time to see who comes out on top. But the infusion of these other diets, claiming that the science is behind what they are suggesting you should eat, has confused the public so that you can now show some people all the radomized, clinical, control studies you want, and they will ignore it, saying, "Yeah, and science use to tell us eating meat was okay before, too."
Actually, it didn't. Science has always shown that eating meat and meat products have promoted chronic diseases. It is only the infusion of these other "rigged" studies that have produced confusion in the general public. It actually makes me a little mad to to think that if I had eaten correctly, if my parents had actually followed the real science and fed me starches as a kid, I might not have Parkinson's disease now. Milk has been implicated in Parkinson's Disease.
Do I know for sure that if I had avoided drinking milk would have prevented me from getting Parkinson's? No. The cause is still unknown. But knowing what I know now is a lot of evidence to that it very well could have. I'll never know for sure.
Anyway, it is the various diets that have promoted eating meat that have brought a lot of people claiming that we were meant to eat that way, and other falsehoods. The popular diet today that the experts say is the best is the Dash Diet. Actually, it is better than most, focusing on eating low fat and carb-based. It actually had as the head of their diet panel a plant-based advocate. However, they recognized that if people were going to follow a diet like that, that it had to include meat and dairy in the mix. So despite all the science to the contrary, they ended up also promoting meat and dairy as part of a healthy "balanced" lifestyle.
Even the FDA has recognized that eating meat and dairy is not healthy. They have changed their dietary guidelines to only include meat and dairy in small amounts toward the top of their food pyramid.
So, the science has remained the same through the last 100 years. Every study, without exception, that compares eating a low-fat, starch-based plant diet with a diet rich in meat and dairy, shows a dramatically increased risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other chronic diseases on a meat-based diet. The science is consistent.
So the real radical method is to ignore the overwhelming evidence that the most dangerous and unhealthy diet you can eat is meat based, and to continue eating a meat based diet. The natural and healthy route is to eat a starched-based diet.
But, that is why it "seems" so radical to go plant-based. To ditch eating meat and dairy appears a drastic measure. Maybe it will take a heart attack before people are willing to give up their meat and dairy. Maybe it will take realizing all the time you will potentially miss out on with your loved ones and grand kids, because you're dead or have to deal with a disabling disease to cause you to change your diet. Unfortunately, that is what it took for me. Now I have to pay the price into the future.
You, however, still have a chance to change. A chance to be radical, because the disease it will prevent will radically change your life for the worse if you don't.
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