Veganist: Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World (20 page)

The spiritual traditions originating in India, which today have almost 2 billion followers worldwide, have dealt thoughtfully with violence and have taught that killing and consuming animals goes hand in hand with violence to other humans. A guiding principle of all three traditions is ahimsa, literally “nonviolence,” the doctrine that all living beings are sacred and that we should avoid injuring them. Many Americans know of ahimsa through the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, the “father” of modern India and a key inspiration to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, was vegan until her death, and his son, Dexter King, still is).

The principle of ahimsa exposes the disconnected relationship that many of us have with our food. It is difficult and shocking to look at a piece of meat on your plate and visualize the violence that brought it there. Most of us, if we really thought about it, would find it repellent to personally commit such a violent act when so many nonviolent (and healthier) alternatives exist to nourish us. This kind of reasoning has led countless practitioners of Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, and others inspired by these teachings to become lifelong vegetarians.

And ahimsa isn’t the only reason given for a vegetarian diet in these traditions. Meditative discipline and traditional Indian medicine, Ayurveda, teach that meat can harm health and reduce life span, something Western science has also confirmed, as we have seen. Indian traditions also teach that vegetarian diets modify the chemistry and hormonal balance of our bodies, promoting calm, focus, and increased energy. For many spiritual practices, vegetarianism is seen as a basic prerequisite, opening human possibilities closed to those who cannot curb the desire for flesh.

The Buddhist scriptures relate that the Enlightened One advised that “those who keep close company with me must not eat meat. Even if, in a gesture of faith, almsgivers provide them with meat, they must shrink from it as they would shrink from the flesh of their own children,” because “eating meat destroys the attitude of great compassion.”

Thich Nhat Hanh, a world-famous Vietnamese Buddhist monk who has inspired millions of Westerners, strongly advocates becoming vegan or at least significantly reducing the amount of meat you eat. Hanh likes to emphasize just how many wonderful reasons there are to motivate this diet: among other things, he says, it is a way to stand against global warming, land degradation, and water pollution.

Perhaps Thich Nhat Hanh’s major teaching is “mindfulness,” a practice of deep awareness of how we are living in the world from moment to moment. Hahn encourages mindfulness in all areas of our lives and, since eating is something we do multiple times every day, eating mindfully is especially important. Hahn explains that we don’t need any special teaching to realize the spiritual advantages of vegetarianism. All we need to do is eat mindfully.

Hanh teaches that by eating mindfully, for example visualizing for a moment how that meat on your plate
really
got there, will make us realize that by eating meat “we are eating the flesh of our own children.”

Hanh doesn’t mean that literally of course, but if we think about the impact of the meat we eat, we will realize how we are harming the entire planet and ultimately hurting ourselves, especially the young among us. By our indifference to cruelty and our direct harm to the environment, we create a worse rather than better world for our children. In essence, Hanh is saying that if we listen to our better instincts, they will naturally guide us toward vegetarianism.

Try a thought experiment yourself. Imagine what it takes for a piece of chicken leg to end up on your plate (confinement, transportation to slaughter, slaughtering, defeathering, skinning, butchering, slicing up, and cooking). Now imagine the process involved in eating an apple (pluck it off the tree) or loaf of bread (harvesting the grain, milling it ino flour, baking). Would you rather have your energies contribute to a world of slaughter or one of harvest? It’s a decision we make every day.

I came away from my research and soul searching with the clear perception that a shared directive runs through all the major religions and wisdom philosophies, and it is this: cultivate compassion, and do so actively. If we do nothing else but this, our lives will be spiritually successful.

I’
M SO GLAD YOU ARE STILL WITH ME
. I
HOPE THAT AS YOU HAVE
read along you have made some new connections and seen the immense promise and possibility that lies in the choice to become a veganist. I think it is safe to say that whether we are talking about healthy trimming down, living longer and better, reducing animal suffering, helping the global poor, or shrinking your carbon footprint, there are few things you can do that have the broad impact of a plant-based diet. This is why I’ve spent so much of this book documenting these benefits and telling the stories of those for whom a vegan turn has been transformative.

Perhaps the greatest promise of a plant-based diet, in my view, is that it can help us evolve. A plant-based diet gives all of us an opportunity to be transformative agents in the task of creating a more perfect world. This isn’t hyperbole. If our intentions are to have peace, happiness, kindness, and abundance, we have to put those intentions into action. Beyond wanting peace, we have to sow the seeds of peace. There are only so many ways to do this, and each one is of great consequence. It’s really amazing when you think about it: each time we eat we are given an opportunity to make the world kinder and to reduce the harm we cause.
And
to benefit our own health and vitality as we do so!

Our food choices affect others like virtually nothing else we do, rippling outward and multiplying their impact day by day, year by year, meal by meal. Every time we choose what to eat we vote in the most important and most democratic election on the planet. And after each breakfast we cook and each lunch we order, the results are calculated and the world is inched in one direction or the other. In 2006, for example, the percentage of the world’s population that was clinically obese quietly surpassed the number of people afflicted by hunger, a clear result of the growth of high-meat diets. Talk about ironies.

As we’ve seen, every plant-based meal helps heal this sad situation. Every time we eat we affect what foods our supermarkets carry, what our neighbors eat, and what future generations will eat. Each food choice ripples out into the world and into the future in ways that few if any other daily decisions do. Eating is
the
paradigmatic social act, breaking bread the most elementary gesture of hospitality. One thing you can be sure of is that even if you are the first among your family or friends to lean toward veganism, you won’t be the last. You will influence others. Even if you don’t talk about it you’ll find that people will come to you with questions. You will be a part of helping society reach a higher level of consciousness. A plant-based diet is the promise that keeps on giving.

What’s Stopping Us?

In my experience once people learn the facts and hear real-life stories, the old-fashioned idea that animal foods are necessary quickly becomes as persuasive as stories about the tooth fairy. Winning “the argument” for plant-based diets, with your conscience or your neighbor, however, is an important but in the end relatively easy victory. The more challenging part is putting it into practice (much advice on that in the afterword)!

So, what to do about that?

Openness to new ideas is one of the things that I love about Americans—we’re always ready to hear about another, better way to do things. And while we have no doubt enjoyed meat with our potatoes for some time, we are above all a practical people, especially when it comes to the food we eat. Even back when Americans first won independence, writes the Texas State University history professor James McWilliams, they made a “concerted turn back toward culinary simplicity.” Whereas in Europe eating was often an elaborate affair, Americans worked “under the assumption that eating was more of a practical activity… than a ceremonial one. Just as American culture had become more pragmatic, so had its food.”

Practically speaking, there are too many commonsense advantages of a plant-based diet to ignore. Still, when our hearts and minds open to the promises of a plant-based diet, there is often another part of ourselves that is busy scripting “top ten” lists of reasons why we can’t do it. It’s human nature to throw up resistance to important change. Despite all the common sense a vegan diet makes, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed instead of inspired by its promises. We can know everything there is to know about how changing our diet could lead to personal growth but still falter, at least at first.

Yet, as with other important changes, persistence pays off, and it’s by overcoming these internal obstacles and putting the changes that we know are right into practice—perhaps by leaning in to them gradually and at a pace that is comfortable—that we reap the biggest rewards. As we realize our capacity to listen to our better instincts, this powers us on even further. And once we get that momentum going, a quantum leap becomes possible, and we transform not only ourselves but our families, communities, and nations along with us.

What is it that makes that leap possible? And what is it that’s stopping us from doing what we know is a good move all around?

Lifting Out of an Addiction

Knowledge itself is pretty inspiring. For many people, just learning about all the benefits of plant-based food is enough to prompt a leap of action. And for most, once they ease animal products from their diet, they quickly experience the personal benefits and their commitment to the diet grows.

As I’ve emphasized from the beginning of this book, though, for many of us the switch can be much harder (I certainly didn’t transition easily or overnight). Knowledge may inspire, but it’s not the only ingredient needed to make a substantial and lasting change. Remember Natala’s story in Promise 2? “I would sit in my car and cry outside of sub shops, just wanting a tuna melt.” Some folks sincerely want to make the change but struggle against their bodies’ cravings for animal products. It’s important to remember that these cravings
will go away if they are not indulged
. That said, many people find that their knowledge of the benefits of a vegan diet isn’t enough to resist a meat or cheese itch.

If you find it’s hard to give up meat, dairy, or eggs, there is a good reason for that: medical doctors like Neal Barnard have long talked about how animal products are habit-forming. Giving them up is not as hard as breaking a smoking or alcohol addiction, but it poses many of the same kinds of challenges, especially psychologically. Getting off animal products can involve breaking what medical professionals have begun to call a “food addiction.” In speaking with medical students, Dr. Barnard invites them to imagine the following scenario:

Can people really be
addicted
to meat or cheese? “An increasing body of evidence,” explains Dr. Barnard, “suggests that they may well be.” That isn’t all bad news. Once we see that we are facing an addiction, the possibility of making a profound shift is opened.

You know you are addicted to a food if despite knowing it is bad for you and despite wanting to change, you still keep eating it. Addiction means that a craving has more control over your behavior than you do. Almost by definition an addiction takes some effort to overcome, but in more than a few ways, those that struggle the most with going vegan are those who benefit the most. Only challenges make us stronger. How we respond to our addiction to animal products is an opportunity. A vegan diet is a meaningful victory that anyone who sets their mind to it can achieve.

If you want to read more on how to break through addiction, there is a whole section on it in my book
Quantum Wellness
. I will tell you one thing, though: whatever your fatal attraction is, at best it keeps you in a holding pattern and at worst it puts you in a downward spiral. In the case of being addicted to certain foods like meat or cheese, that downward spiral can be obesity, disease, or loss of sex drive, energy, or self-esteem. It can also involve a deadening of your awareness and empathy. When you know what the end results of poor food choices are (and you definitely know by now!), you can challenge yourself to break free in much the same way you leave off other addictive substances. The more you get the addictive foods out of your diet, the less you will actually crave them. Consider that when we eat uncontrollably like drug addicts, it is probably because we have grown desensitized to the tastes of healthier foods, and need more and more of fatty, rich junk food for the same rush of pleasure. Nothing—no habit or food or substance—should ever own us, so it’s worth gently pushing ourselves into a new way of eating. Just keep leaning in to healthier choices, and soon enough your body will reject the bad stuff. You simply have to get used to good food; give yourself the time to adjust—it will happen.

A Tipping Point with Food?

When we overcome our cravings and let the better side of our nature prevail over this decision about food, we aren’t just changing any old habit. Food shapes us inside and out. If we can turn our glimpses of a better way to eat into a new way of eating, then we take a quantum leap forward. What kind of people would we become if we exercised the muscle of awareness and compassion every time we ordered a meal?

We’ve all noticed that the benefits of a plant-based diet have been discussed more and more prominently in the last decade. Movies from
Food, Inc.
to
Earthlings
, and books from Jonathan Safran Foer’s
Eating Animals
to Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin’s
Skinny Bitch
have brought the latest facts about food to new audiences. The U.S. market for vegetarian specialty foods exceeded a billion dollars for the first time shortly after the new millennium and continues to grow. When an activity attracts a critical mass of participants, the point at which its expanding influence is nearly unstoppable, that is known as a tipping point. Diseases, hobbies, fashions, tastes of all kinds have experienced this tipping point phenomenon. Many signs now suggest that as a society we may be about to reach a tipping point in our relationship with food. I have no doubt we are at a threshold.

Consider some of the things that have happened since the beginning of the twenty-first century. Working in association with the Monday Campaigns, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has advocated for “Meatless Monday,” becoming the first major U.S. public health institution to endorse a program that explicitly sets out to reduce meat consumption. The Meatless Monday initiative pursues the modest goal of a 15 percent reduction in meat intake by encouraging people all over the world to make their Mondays vegetarian.

Just recently we saw two firsts for this strategy of reducing meat consumption: Baltimore became the first city to start serving 100 percent vegetarian meals one day a week in public schools, and across the pond the city of Ghent in Belgium has become the first to officially endorse meatless Thursdays. The momentum continues to build. As well, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution urging restaurants, stores, and schools to join in Meatless Mondays, and the state of Michigan declared a “Michigan Meatout Day.”

More and more health-care institutions and concerned people are listening. The prestigious medical journal the
Lancet
has called upon the Western world to reduce its meat consumption by 10 percent, and thirty-two U.S. hospitals have committed to reduce their meat purchases by 20 percent through their participation in the Balanced Menu Challenge, an initiative of the nonprofit group Health Care Without Harm.

Today fully ten percent of adults in the U.S.—well over 20 million individuals—say they largely follow a “vegetarian-inclined” diet. More importantly, 12 million others are “definitely interested” in going veg in the future. Perhaps most promising are the changes evident among young people: multiple studies by the dining service giant Aramark have shown that approximately 25 to 30 percent of college students consider vegetarian meals at dining halls “very important” to them.