Have We Lost Contact with Nature?
Many children are growing up rarely walking on grass and interacting with ‘nature’. It is rare for a child or adult to camp out without listening to music or wi-fi. More and more people are moving from rural areas to urban and suburban communities. The trend is worldwide and continues to increase; in 1950, 30% of the population lived in cities; today the percentage is over 54%– that’s a rapid increase. Today 82% of North Americans live in cities, especially in mid-size and large cities. The landscape for our species is rapidly changing; we are rapidly becoming ‘Urbanimals’.
On one hand one may expect more land available for growing crops however that is more wishful thinking than reality as more and more CAFOs (Certified Animal Feeding Operations)…the food industries new marketing term for the reality term that really stated what they are, “Slaughterhouses”, are being established. These are huge operations that destroy the land they use, destroy the rivers and waters from animal waste products, and pollute the air for miles and miles around the slaughter operations. Feeding Operations sounds much more appealing than ‘slaughterhouses’. And our forests that give us oxygen to breath are being destroyed world-wide at an incredibly alarming rate! All of this to allow the world’s population to eat what has become the deadly diet of the 21st Century…the Standard American Diet (SAD)! This SAD is supplying toxic poison to the world; toxic to the people who consume the SAD, deadly toxic to the animals…over 150 million animals are killed each day in the U.S.; 56 billion animals are slaughtered each year in the world. Due to the sickness and death animal products cause…heart disease (#1 killer in the US), type 2 diabetes (presently an epidemic), cancer (science has shown that eating animal products increases the risk for cancer; processed meat (bacon, hot dogs, lunch meat, etc) has been listed by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a Class 1 Carcinogen in the same category as asbestos and smoking. Eating just a few strips of bacon or a hot dog everyday dramatically increases your risk for colon cancer. The risk increases with the amount of processed meats consumed. And another epidemic on the immediate horizon is the devastating disorder, Alzheimer’s Disease.
Not only does the SAD have the potential for cancer, this diet which is rapidly spreading across the globe is loaded with tasty sugars, stimulating salts and fatal fats. Combine the damaging three (Sugars, Salts, and Fats) with multiple chemicals that few know, fewer can pronounce, and far fewer even know what these chemicals are or do and you have a recipe for a deadly disaster. Our species and our world cannot sustain such destructive damage; we are in dire straights. As the great Astrophysicist Steven Hawkins, when asked why humans are destroying Earth and themselves, he stated, “Greed and Stupidity.”
Losing our connection to nature is our species way of committing suicide while destroying everything that is designed by nature to keep us alive. There is a slight trend to reverse this deadly cycle with those who are giving up consuming meat, dairy and fish, those who believe in Climate Change, and those who are defending the right of the billions of animal that are slaughtered each year while destroying our planet. The key may be in having those who want to save the Earth join together to force those with money and power to reverse the pattern that Greed and Stupidity has established. If not, we surly are in a point of no return. Eat healthy, stay happy, and enjoy Life. Vegan Doc (7/25/19)
