A Plant Based Diet

President Clinton recently said that he lost 24 pounds by giving up meat completely, giving up all dairy, and once in a while having fish, and having a plant based diet with almond milk for protein. Though not everyone is disciplined enough or intelligent enough to do this it is possible to add 20 or more years onto your life by doing something like this either temporarily or permanently. In other centuries people ate a lot less food than now. It is said that people in this century alone eat 5 to 6 times as much every day in the U.S. than say, during the civil war period of the 1860s. So if one increases about 5 times the meat and fat in meat, especially pork and bacon into the bloodstream then it is no wonder why so many meat and potato men die in their late 30s, 40s, 50s from heart attacks while thinking they are healthy and even excercising regularly.

I was raised a Lacto-Ovo vegetarian from birth to about 32 years of age where I added things like turkey and crab and some fish into 5% of my diet. For me the reason was that it was 1980 and I was worried for the same reason people are worried now: 10% unemployment nationwide. So learning to eat a little meat was me thinking, "If I can eat meat I can always hunt deer and other animals to survive if it came to that and become a fisherman." So, for me it was just about being prepared for anything just like now.

However, when I got a heart virus and went to Stanford Medical here in Northern California and had an angiogram the doctors said they had never ever seen anyone with arteries and vein perfectly clear with no buildup whatsoever like mine. The down side for me as a child was I couldn't go to any restaurant and order stuff like most people because I was limited to salads, tomato or mushroom or vegetable soup, grill cheese Sandwiches, and Baked Potatoes and French fries. So unless I was going to a Chinese Restaurant or vegetarian restaurant the choices were always very limited back in the 1950s.

However, if you live in a metropolitan area like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, or many other metropolitan cities in the U.S. now there are many vegetarian and diet conscious retaurants of all shapes and sizes. And now with the Whole Foods Markets almost everywhere you can get organic food if you can afford to buy it almost anywhere too. So if you are intelligent and disciplined enough why not add 5, 10, 20 or more years to your lives if living is something you like to do.