By Luanne Pennesi, RN, MS, CNAT

Why do we eat the foods we eat?  Once we have a set pattern of when we eat, under what circumstances we eat and what “foods” we put into our bodies, can we change our eating habits?  If you’re interested in getting healthy, having more energy and stopping the aging process you will spend careful time examining these questions and pondering the answers.  Better yet, ponder the answers and then integrate the changes into your life.  See how unreasonable the Standard American Diet (SAD) is with regard to actually feeding your body and mind.

Let’s start with meat.  A long time ago your social “status” was often equated with your diet.  Only kings and their courts ate meat.  As the middle class emerged the “illusion” of wealth was supported with eating meat and having other impressive material “stuff”.  So today if someone is a vegetarian, we see them as “poor” or of a lower status compared to us.  Now, we needed some more rationale for killing our brethren mammals.  So we rationalized these homicides by suggesting that “if you don’t eat meat, you won’t have enough muscle or protein” (as if meat were our only source of protein).  As you can see, there is a lot of silly myth behind our present day habit of eating meat and poultry.

For starters, the human digestive system, from teeth to anus, is not designed to ingest meat.  We don’t have incisors to rip flesh, nor do we have a short, muscular digestive tract to effectively digest the meat like the carnivorous mammals and birds.  Second, because of the length and tortuous bending of the small intestines, the dead carcass often gets stuck in the flexures of the intestines.  Now imagine road kill sitting in 98.6 degree heat with a high humidity for a few days.  Imagine the stench and disease forming bacteria that multiply.  No wonder why the odor of your bowel movements heavily resembles that same odor if you ingest meat!  Also, in order to make the dead carcasses of these tortured creatures attractive to us, the illusion makers add nitrates and food colorings to make it look like a fresh kill (are we that gullible??).  These food additives and preservatives are known carcinogens to the human body, which become doubly toxic when we throw in a little alcohol with our processed dead emotional creatures.  Energetically, by the way, when you ingest dead things, the body reads “death”, not to mention the fact that it takes so much energy to digest meat that the nutrients we can glean from it are already used.  Add to that all of the bad dietary fat from meats and poultry, and you realize that it may be time to rethink our ingestion of meat.

To take it one step further, understand that mammals and birds are very emotional creatures whose survival depends on our actions.  They are literally at our mercy.  If you read the book by John Robbins, Diet For A New America, he shows you graphic depictions of how these animals are slaughtered alive and how they die in sheer terror.  And milk fed veal is from a baby calf taken from its mother and made anemic via poor diet so its muscles are paper thin.  But see, if we are ignorant of this, we excuse ourselves from the emotions.  Would you slaughter your dogs and cats and other pets for food?  I doubt it.

And now for the good news.  We can ingest high quality protein foods that are delicious and do not impose pain and destruction.   Fish actually hold on to their life energy even after they are caught and “cleaned” (Gary Null, Ph.D., did an 8 year study called “The Egg Project” during the 1980’s).  And while fish have consciousness, they do not carry emotional energy. So fresh caught, low mercury fish (Alaskan wild salmon, sardines, mackerel, cod) are an excellent source of protein and they can be prepared deliciously.  Just be careful not to eat fish from our local waters, as they are heavily polluted.  As well, there are nuts, seeds and nut butters, which are extremely high in the building blocks of proteins called essential amino acids.    There are also soy products (not the genetically engineered ones) like tofu, soy beans,  miso and tempeh, and organic eggs from free range hens that provide excellent sources of protein for the human body.  Combining grains and beans create amino acids as well.  Hey, if other animals like horses and giraffes don’t eat meat how do they get such awesome muscles?  Think about it.  Do some reading (you might want to check out Gary Null’s Ultimate Lifetime Diet).  Then decide for yourself.  You may discover that the only people benefiting by your consumption of meat is the meat industry.

Luanne Pennesi, RN, MS is the Executive Director of Luanne Pennesi, RN, PLLC and Metropolitan Wellness,  a revolutionary new company dedicated to expanding the awareness of the general public about health care options other than what traditional health care offers us in order to maximize our health and raise our self esteems.  Through individual consultation and public speaking she is a catalyst for self realization and a vehicle for positive, deliberate decision making in a fast paced, rapidly changing world  filled with stress and potential for illness.