Nearly a decade of extra life -- that's what you get when you move away from eating animal foods and toward a plant-based diet. This is really exciting science for anyone seeking healthy longevity (and who isn't?)!

According to a recent report on the largest study of vegetarians and vegans to date, those eating plant-based diets appear to have a significantly longer life expectancy. Vegetarians live on average almost eight years longer than the general population, which is similar to the gap between smokers and nonsmokers. This is not surprising, given the reasons most of us are dying. Click here to read the full article

I am often asked this question and frequently criticised for maintaining such as stand.  The reason is very simple; I have read an abundance of scientific literature, showing that if I want to live a long time and have the greatest chance of dying of old age, the final big disease, my best course of action is to stick strictly to assimilating food that gives the trillions of cells that make up my body, and the eight times as many bacteria residing in it, the best possible fuel to keep me going.

Just as any fuel contaminated with undesirable matter causes unnecessary wear and slows an engine down, so the wrong food fed to my cells causes the same wear and sluggishness.

When we are told by a doctor to take pills, or stop eating a certain food, most of us adhere to the instructions.  My doctors tell me, in no uncertain terms, that in order to avoid disease and so live a longer healthier life, I have to stop eating animal proteins and fats as well as manufactured foods, in fact anything that comes from the industrial food chain.

Given that even small amounts of the wrong food will clog the works, and given that it is too easy to slip into my old ways of eating, I am now fearful of breaking the ‘rules’.  In truth I am fearful of succumbing to cancer, heart disease, diabetes and any one of the dozens of diseases I see around me and which may take me out prematurely.

I now thoroughly enjoy the good foods I eat and I thrive in the knowledge that I am lighter, fitter and very much healthier than I was previously.  No medical intervention can offer me anything like the feelings of complete well-being that I enjoy.

Continuing on from my previous blog, it is salutary to consider the attitudinal differences between the threats of immediate and long term deaths.

If we were to apply the same efforts and costs presently spent on avoiding road accidents to avoiding the cause of chronic diseases, initiated years before the time of death, we could simply eliminate most of these deaths and their associated suffering.  

A cynic might conclude that the immediate effect of a traffic death creates the opportunity for a huge road safety industry; whereas the insidious development of a cancer or heart disease is unobserved until, at the last minute, there is a cry of “save me”, creating the opportunity for a huge medical repair industry.  If there was less money poured into the medical repair industry and its promotion, we might take more care of what we ate to avoid health accidents.

A seat belt hardly saves lives compared to driving with care.  By the same token, eating with care saves lives more effectively than medical intervention.  Medicine may sustain us for a while but not with huge success.

There is ample proof that we should be viewing chronic diseases and their untimely deaths far more seriously than the many immediate fears we presently express, such as death from accident or other statistically insignificant causes. 

Animal protein is directly linked to cancer and heart disease.  It may not necessarily be the direct cause of the problems but it creates the perfect nursery for these conditions to develop and kill us.  

“Warning – animal proteins and fats can kill”.  

If you gathered a group of 100 friends and family around you at age 20, what would have happened to the 100 originals after 50 years? 
 
Assuming you are one of the survivors and have made it to the biblical three score and ten years, approximately 81 of your cohort will still be living.  11 would have died of cancer, 5 from heart disease and 4 from other problems including 1 from suicide, 0.5 from traffic, 0.2 from medical misadventure and 1.3 from other causes.  If you lived through the Second World War, 1.2 deaths from war could be included in this summary. (Note; making assumptions over a 50 year period is fraught with difficulties.  The figures used are my best guess and are accurate enough to bring out the points I wish to make.)

All one hundred will have been under some form of medical care.  Those who were treated for infection or trauma will be lucky; they will in almost all instances be repaired.  Those who present with chronic auto immune diseases will have had their symptoms treated; some died, some had their early demise postponed and a few cured.

While the figures are broad and inexact, they do highlight where our fears should lie; they should not be with the immediate and highly visible deaths, but with the insidious illnesses that initiate long before the disease is manifest and death occurs.  The 16 who have gone from cancer and heart disease have, along with their family and friends, suffered terribly; the cost of treating them before they went and the costs associated with their early demise are high; a much greater proportion of the remaining 81 are still destined to die from cancer and vascular disease provoking the same suffering and costs. 

There is indisputable scientific proof that the development of cancer and vascular disease, as well as the scourge of diabetes, is primarily due to eating animal proteins and fats.
  
We and our governments must start working towards reducing and even eliminating these scourges from our diet. 

A good start would be to have warnings placed on all packets of meat and milk products stating - “Warning – animal proteins and fats can kill”.