Relevant

The scientific evidence supporting a plant-based diet is so overwhelming that the meat and dairy industries have resorted to billion-dollar image campaigns to boost sales. But slick ads and misinformation cannot fool us forever. Americans are turning away from drug-and-cut medicine, as they learn that vegetarians need it less.

The scientific evidence supporting a raw diet is less extensive, but growing. For example, scientists have known for years that cooking destroys nutrients (vitamins, antioxidants, enzymes) and creates toxins (trans fats, cross-linked proteins, heterocyclic amines). But new studies show that cooking starchy foods creates acrylamide, a potent carcinogen.

Think about it. Our species is the only one on Earth that chemically alters its food with heat. Animals that eat and live naturally don't get our epidemics of chronic disease.

Your Earth
If everyone shifted to organic plant food, the destruction of our planet would slow to a crawl. Chemical agriculture causes massive erosion, water and air pollution, and fossil fuel consumption. Animal agriculture is the number one cause of vanishing aquifers, poisoned groundwater, huge coastal "dead zones", vanishing rainforests, mass extinction, and is a major cause of global warming (floods droughts, ecosystem collapse).

Many people are concerned about our fragile blue-and-green home. They want something left for their children and grandchildren. They don't realize that the most powerful single action they can take, according to environmental scientists, is to change what they eat.

Your fellow creatures
Modern factory farms are not like the idyllic barnyards in storybooks. Billions of cows, pigs and chickens are now treated very badly, and suffer greatly throughout their lives. Overcrowding, filth, mutilation, appalling diets, drugs and hormones, sped-up production, and other abuses (even of "free-range" animals) make them sick and constantly terrified. Roughly 50% of dairy cows have mastitis (infected udders). When slaughtered, 70% of pigs have pneumonia, and 90% of chickens have leukosis (cancer).

Some people say that bringing the flesh of tortured animals into our bodies brings misery into our spirits. We can't prove that, but animal food definitely brings greater risk of infection with deadly bacteria, cancer-causing viruses, and prions (Mad Cow disease).

It's no fun to think about the suffering in the world, especially when you can do nothing about it. But you can do something about this. You can satisfy your needs for nutrition and eating pleasure with plant foods, and reduce the torture of creatures with nerves and feelings much like yours.

Joy
Around the world (Europe, Asia, Australia) and across the country (New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and now Minneapolis), people are waking up to the benefits of a natural diet-including the joy. There is deep satisfaction in giving your body the highest-quality fuel for which it is well designed . . . aging slower instead of faster . . . getting healthier instead of sicker . . . and making the world a little better instead of a little worse.

You need not sacrifice taste. Over time, people shifting to a raw vegan diet grow to love Nature's vast bounty of different flavors. But beginners can enjoy them too. We hope your experience at Ecopolitan gives you a glimpse of the possible.

* Main reference: John Robbins, The Food Revolution, Conari Press, 2001