You are what you eat

 

You’ve certainly heard the expression many times, “You are what you eat.”

Have you ever really thought about what it means?

And do you think about it when you’re making food choices?

In some ways, we do become what we eat, literally.

 

 

Have you ever seen an example of your blood plasma after eating a fast-food hamburger?

What was previously a clear liquid becomes cloudy with the fat and cholesterol that’s absorbed from eating a high-fat hamburger.

 

And when you think about it, we also become what we don’t eat.

When we switch from eating meat to a vegetarian-based diet, we become less fat, less prone to many types of cancers.

Our cholesterol can improve.

When we’re leaner and eating fewer animal products, then many other health and fitness issues are reduced.

The incidence of Type II diabetes is reduced.

Blood pressure falls into normal ranges.

When you’re healthier, you’re taking fewer medications.

Even if you have a prescription drug benefit in your health plan, you’re still saving money with fewer co-payments on medications.

 

If you have a family history of high cholesterol or high blood pressure, then it’s particularly incumbent on you to revise your eating habits.

Moving towards a more vegetarian diet has been shown statistically to reduce the incidence of so many of the diseases of industrialized countries.

Vegetarians are statistically healthier than omnivorous persons; they’re leaner and live longer.

 

Isn’t it time to think about what you want to be and to eat accordingly?

Do you want to be sluggish and fat?

Do you want the risk that goes with eating animal products, with their high-fat content?

Or do you want to look like and be what vegetarians are?

Leaner and fitter with a longer anticipated lifespan.

It’s never too late to change what you’re doing and increase your chances for a longer, fitter life.

 

Humans did not always eat meat.

 

 

Do you ever think about how far we’ve diverted from the path of our pre-historic ancestors and their eating patterns?

Consider how the earliest humans evolved, and what they ate.

They were hunter-gatherers and did not evolve with the characteristics of carnivores.

Humans aren’t made to tear animals apart and eat their flesh.

When you look at carnivorous animals, such as wild cats, you can see their teeth are designed to rip and tear, not chew.

Humans evolved from vegetarian creatures.

Even our digestive systems are not particularly suited to eating meat.

Eating meat is a relatively recent development in human history, most likely born of opportunity and necessity.

Perhaps the earliest man observed carnivores eating meat, and if they couldn’t find any of the natural foods they were used to eating, such as vegetables, berries, nuts, and grains, then they might have assumed that eating meat would at least sustain life.

But initially, we emulated the creatures we evolved from, herbivores like apes.

Even to a prehistoric mind, apes would have looked similar to man, walking primarily upright, with arms and hands.

We naturally would have foraged for our food, eating roots and berries, fruits and nuts.

We would have watched the apes peeling bananas, or crushing nuts on stones to get at the meat of the nut.

We would have been living more moment-to-moment, constantly foraging for food.

Hunting, after all, requires thought and planning.

Eating meat requires preparation and most importantly, fire.

Until man discovered fire, he was primarily vegetarian, living in what was the natural order of things.

Vegetarian eating is a more natural way of eating, in addition to being healthier.

It’s a way that’s in balance with the planet and doesn’t seek to dominate it and conquer it.

 

Why did humans start eating meat?

 

It must have felt unnatural at first, to eat animal flesh.

After all, we’re not so far removed from animals ourselves.

Perhaps it even felt cannibalistic.

There might not have been that much intellectual distinction between humans and other animals.

When humans were pure vegetarians, they were living in harmony with the earth and with the other creatures cohabiting the planet with them.

Their closest animal relatives, apes, were vegetarians.

Eating the products of the earth, like plants, grains, and fruits that they could gather and eat would have seemed the natural order of things.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Prehistoric men who lived in frozen geographies, or who lived in an area that became devastated by fire, would have eaten anything to survive.

Just like the soccer players whose plane crashed in the mountains of Chile, and were forced to eat the flesh of other players who died in the crash.

The earliest man at some point had to make the choice for survival, and that could have consuming meat for the first time and changing human history – and health – forever.

 

We can imagine that men first ate meat that had been charred or cooked by virtue of being caught in a natural forest fire.

They might have subsequently eaten raw meat, if necessary, but we can also imagine that our earliest digestive systems rebelled against eating raw meat.

 

Imagine having eaten raw foods and vegetables for eons, and all of a sudden, incorporating meat products into your system.

You may have heard friends who were vegetarians tell stories of trying to eat meat and becoming violently ill afterward.

Biologists will tell you we’re really not designed to eat meat, but we adapted to it.

However, in the timeline of human history, eating meat is a relatively recent evolutionary development.

 

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