Mark Bittman, a NY Times food and cooking columnist and best selling cookbook author spoke at TED last year about the link between our food and global warming, environmental degradation, and human health problems. His talk is really well done and is worth watching.
YOUR DIET.
I came across this blog post recently on greenlivingbuilding.com that is something I’ve been thinking a lot about myself since I’ve gone raw. This person said it so well, I thought I would list some of their facts from the post in italics with my comments on this thrown in as well.
Raising food for human consumption creates 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, more than 130 times the total of human generated greenhouse gas emissions. The amount of pollution created just to grow and deliver animal food to our tables is extraordinarily high.
And water used to raise animals for human food is equally high. Here are some of the worst offenders:
Compare that to 70 liters of water used to deliver one apple.
These stats are so shocking when you read that in black and white. 4,500 liters of water for one steak? That’s not even 1% of the cow! It’s crazy, really. Plus, all of the grain to feed the cows stuck on those cruel, barbaric factory farmed feedlots. It gets expensive so the feedlot owners went the cannibalism route – it gets the cows weight up faster so more money for them. You do know that they feed cows, who are herbivores, rendered dead cows and other animals including cats and dogs, don’t you? Mad cow, anyone? I wonder how much water is wasted on that heinous act. If you eat red meat, at least buy pasture raised (grass-fed) beef from companies you can trust!
Reducing the percentage of animal foods in your diet is one of the most effective ways to help our environment. It’s also one of the best things you can do for your health at the same time. Two benefits in one!
Eating a diet of mainly raw fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds and living grains is also:
Since I’ve gone raw, even when I was only 80% raw in January, I realized that I make so much more compost everyday and that I myself hardly throw away anything and only have to recycle a few things. I make very little garbage now. It feels so good to know that whatever I’m eating, if there is any waste it can go feed the squirrels outside or go on the compost pile. My little Bio Bag compost bin and bags we have been using the past several years is way too small for what our needs are now. I need a trash can sized compost bin nowadays!
Another benefit (to me, anyway) is that my child sees me eating all these different veggies, fruits, nuts and sprouts prepared in different ways and is very intrigued. He calls me “the cooking guy” since I’m always whipping up some new recipe and oohing and ahhing over it to him. Even though he is very picky about eating combination foods, his intake of simple fruit and veggies and raw nuts and seeds has gone up so much everyday now. This is huge for me. I can put a pile of spinach leaves in front of him and he will eat it. An entire apple or pear, he eats all of it and bananas, forget it. He can eat 3 or 4 in a day (and no, they are not constipating). Tonight, he tried some raw asparagus we got from the farmer’s market (which was so delicious!). He even drank some of a green juice I made last night which consisted of: collard greens, cucumbers, celery, wheatgrass and an entire lemon and he drank at least 2 ounces of it. That’s so amazing!! He’s really trying out new foods in the plant world and I couldn’t be happier.
And, my husband, a determined omnivore, well his increase in vegan meals and raw vegan foods (he’s so into juicing now) has gone up greatly and the cooking of flesh foods has dropped tremendously. All his choice, I don’t push my food on him but I do ask for him to taste the recipes I make and give me his opinion because my taste buds have definitely changed from detoxing these past 5 months. I have sampled some bites of cooked vegan foods recently when I was cooking for them and I thought, “yuck”. It felt heavy and dense and slow. I know that sounds weird but that’s how it felt and it was some of my favorite cooked foods like couscous and quinoa. I can just imagine what I would think if I ate some chicken or red meat now.
I am so into the high frequency I feel off the living foods. It’s kind of hard to describe but it feels like this total connection to the plants and the earth and to being part of the cycle of life itself. Raw, living foods took the blinders off my eyes and my mind and I feel re-awakened, balanced and more clear again.
And do you know what is the original raw food we mammals get to eat? Breastmilk!
The third Friday of every May has been declared Endangered Species Day. It is a day to educate yourselves and your children about what animals and plant life are on the list and what simple actions you can take at home to help make a positive change for endangered species and other wildlife and fauna all around you.
One of the animals listed, the Grey Wolf, has technically been “delisted” several weeks ago. This, in my opinion, is a travesty. They need the protection from our government because it is now open season on hunting these wise and beautiful creatures who help to keep the balance of the forest and the health of the herd of other species such as elk.
I have a deep, personal connection with the grey wolf. One summer, when living on a ranch in the mountains of CO, (the same location where I met my husband and got married), I had the chance to live with and bond with a 3 year old grey wolf named Cloud that was the pet of one of my housemates. The wolf and I bonded immediately and he soon started following me around everywhere and even wanted to sleep in my room at night instead of with his dad. This did not go over well with my housemate but he worked a lot and different hours than me so I soon became Cloud’s surrogate mom.
This wolf was so smart, loving and playful and really acted as my protector, too. One day, Cloud and I went for a hike down to the creek nearby which was about 1,000′ lower in elevation so I could harvest some plants that grew there to make medicine. I got caught up in the plant world, kept wandering and wildcrafting and when I was finally done we started hiking back up and I realized, I was lost deep in the forest! I had lost the small animal-made trail we followed down. It was late afternoon, it would be getting to be dusk soon and I was worried because of the bears and mountain lions that also lived in the forest and I had seen them on occasion on the ranch property before. I started running up the mountain since I was more than an hour away from home.
Cloud wasn’t worried, he was happy being out on our adventure running with me like one of his pack and I kept saying to him, “we need to go home, where’s home?” He was the one to eventually lead me back towards the ranch, running off in one direction and stopping to look back at me as if to tell me “this way”, with his sense of direction being much better than mine!
My housemate and Cloud eventually moved out of state, I offered to adopt Cloud and my housemate said no way. I was very sad over them leaving but what a gift I got in spending so much quality time with such a magnificent animal. I will never forget him.
The northern rocky mountain states such as Montana, Wyoming and Idaho have it out for the grey wolf. The plan is for killing off 39% of the 732 total wolves that live in the wild. Many are the collared, reintroduced to the wild adults and are highly tracked and studied since wolves were exterminated to extinction in the wild.
Earthjustice and 11 other conservation groups* filed a federal court lawsuit challenging the federal government’s decision to remove the northern rockies gray wolf population from the list of endangered species. They also filed a request for a preliminary injunction in order to reinstate Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves until the court issues a final decision on the merits of this case.
The injunction states:
“We maintain that wolves should not have been stripped of federal protections so soon because they are not yet recovered in the Northern Rockies region and the state management plans currently in place are woefully inadequate, not based on current science, and do not ensure the long term survival of the Northern Rockies gray wolf.”
“Since delisting, a spate of wolf killings by a variety of methods—pursuing wolves long distances with snowmobiles, shooting wolves from the roadside, and lying in wait for wolves at state-run elk feedgrounds—demonstrates the need now, as much as ever, to protect wolves under the Endangered Species Act.”
In Native American teachings, the wolf represents the supreme guardian, the teachers, the wisdom keepers. They are loyal, family oriented, playful, loving, wise beings. They kill to survive and feed their children as other carnivores do. They don’t take more than they need and keep the sick, old and frail animals they prey on from suffering a long, strung out death of illness or starvation.
I hope you can take action and give some support – even just signing an online petition to help protect this amazing animal from cruel, senseless murder.
*Earthjustice filed the lawsuit on behalf of Defenders of Wildlife, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, The Humane Society of the United States, Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, Friends of the Clearwater, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Oregon Wild, Cascadia Wildlands Project, Western Watersheds Project, and Wildlands Project.
From KentuckyFriedCruelty.com:
If you can’t see the video above, click here: http://www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com/swf/pam_kfc_320.swf
Watch more videos at KentuckyFriedCruelty.com.
“KFC suppliers cram birds into huge waste-filled factories, breed and drug them to grow so large that they can’t even walk, and often break their wings and legs. At slaughter, the birds’ throats are slit and they are dropped into tanks of scalding-hot water—often while they are still conscious. It would be illegal for KFC to abuse dogs, cats, pigs, or cows in these ways.
KFC’s own animal welfare advisors have asked the company to take steps to eliminate these abuses, but KFC refuses to do so. Many advisors have now resigned in frustration.
Please join Pamela Anderson, Sir Paul McCartney, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, The Rev. Al Sharpton, and countless other kind people worldwide by not eating at KFC.”
Remember people, “You Are What You Eat”. I’m not against eating animals but I am against inhumane treatment and execution of ANY animal. You know energetically you will absorb the pain, suffering, sadness and anger through your food if you eat this kind of factory farmed food. It’s not worth it and it should be outlawed. Think about this the next time you want fast food. Almost all fast food restaurants buy from cruel, inhumane factory farms. It’s bad for your body and mind and it’s really very inhumane to treat any animal to this kind of life.
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