The Earth and its inhabitants are in grave danger. Every day in my inbox I receive all sorts of information from scientific research on exactly how we are destroying this planet, and it doesn't take much to look around to see that we've already succeeded. Antarctica ice melting, catastrophic weather events around the world, the UK having its first heatwave this year, and so forth.
Then we have us: humans. We are getting sicker than ever, from an obesity epidemic, to chronic diseases like Type 2 diabetes, devastating hormonal imbalances, neurodegenerative disorders, heart disease, infertility, mental disorders, psychological disorders, cancers, etc.
About 689 million people in the world are starving, while the rest are slowly eating themselves to death with an endless amount of junk food.
Why cutting down the meat is pointless
Vegans tried to put a dent to that by saying "oh if we just cut down on meat and preach others to do the same, it will be alright". Unfortunately, that won't do any good if:
- your imported fruit needed a plane, a ship and a truck to get to your table
- you like consuming a lot of tofu (the processing of soy for tofu is more damaging for the planet than meat (according to the farmers)
- you're still keen on using a car as your main daily transport vehicle, and have your home / office / factory powered with electricity.
- you're still overindulging in thousands of empty calories all day long from highly processed foods that ALSO damage the environment, but also make you more hungry so you have to KEEP consuming more and more food and then more oxygen-giving, carbon-absorbing trees need to be cut down so they can have more land to grow MORE food, and with lots of pesticides and hormones so they can keep up with your consumption.
Cows as we know them (before they evolved) have been domesticated by us for a good 10,500 years now. They're not the issue.
WE are the issue. Humans. We are 7.8 billion earthlings. We are currently consuming 175% of total Earth's resources. That means we need 2 planets to feed us and sustain us.
What and how you eat affects your health AND the environment
Here's what happens when you eat at the recommended 5-7 times a day, with a lot of processed, high-sugar/sweetener foods, even if you're calorie counting:
- Running the kitchen needs a good amount of earth's resources. Every time you use your stove, your convectional oven, your microwave oven, your toaster, grill, sandwich maker, air fryer, kettle, coffee maker, run the dishwasher, wash your dishes by hand, run your monstrous fridge and 2 freezers, turning on the lights for your dinners and midnight snacks... that's a lot of water, electricity and cleaning products needed for a full day's consumption of let's say a family of 4 that eats every 2 hours.
- More food = more trash. Since you've been taught to snack all day long AND have 3 main meals a day, you got wrappers from so-called "healthy" protein bars, cartons / other packaging material from frozen meals and no-expire date snacks, plastic from your ketchup, bottles and cans from your beers and "diabetes in a can" (hint: sodas and diet sodas), food leftovers in the trash, because you either cooked too much food, your freezer is too full to save the leftovers for another day, the food is such that can't be stored away for later, you preferred to eat the chocolate chip biscuits first before the fruits / veggies so your fresh produce has gone bad, or you kept ordering fast food than eat the healthy fridge items with an expiry date. Meanwhile, somewhere in the world, there are men, women and children with no access to food.
- Flushing your planet down the drain. Eat more and frequently, more trips to the bathroom. Get diabetes or insulin resistant and you also need to pee the excess sugar from your system ALL... DAY... LONG! How much water do we waste on flushing the toilet? How about the chemicals in the WC cleaning products? What about the enormous amount of toilet paper? The highly damaging effect of sewage waste? Have you ever asked yourself these questions while you're camping on the throne with a phone in your hand and the bathroom lights on in the daytime?
- The reason why everything is not organic: Since neither the planet nor traditional, healthy agriculture can keep up with our daily food consumption, the farmers / producers / processed junk manufacturers had to invent ways to produce more food at an affordable price, at the expense of both the environment and our health.
What we should be really doing
For the sake of both our health and our environment (or of what's left of it), the solutions are almost obvious:
- Eat only once a day. Cook once, clean once, less food needed to grow, buy, store, throw away, more food for those in need.
- Eat and buy only organic, grass-fed, pasture raised, wild caught etc unprocessed foods. More nutrition, more satiation (less hunger = less food), more energy with less food and no need for supplements / medications, less diseases and trips to the doctors, less resources and damaging effect on the environment, and you're sending a message with your money and choices that the world needs to shift towards healthy, nutritious, unprocessed food that doesn't damage the environment nor promote animal cruelty. If you're only eating once a day, you CAN afford organic food.
- Move more. Use public transportation. Better yet, cycle or walk to gym, work / school etc.
- Sleep early, wake up early, eat your one meal early. If you make a habit of sleeping when the sun goes down, you won't need so much electricity as you will use natural light to see where you're going / what you're doing. I started this habit when I got married, as we were broke and couldn't afford to pay so much on the bills by turning on the lights at night.
- Change your habits to a more natural way of living. Stop using all these perfumes, lotions, make up products, hair sprays / coloring concoctions, etc. Along with hurting the environment in so many ways, they're disrupting your endocrine system in a damaging way (more on that on a separate post). Perfume manufacturers are practically free to add whatever chemical they want, as they're not required to state the ingredients, to avoid revealing their "secret recipe". It's a recipe for cancer, that's for sure. Use natural-only, organic products and only the essentials (toothpaste, bar soap, shampoo, hand wash).
Disclaimer: This YT channel & Blog are a documentation of my health journey. The content is based on what worked for me and is for informational purposes only, not a replacement for medical advice from a professional.
I’m NOT a doctor, nutritionist, dietitian, coach, nor a personal trainer. Furthermore, we are all different and my results may not reflect your own. Any action you take upon the information provided by ZenGainz is strictly at your own risk.