Why Veganism as a Way of Life?

Who hasn't heard of the Mad Cow disease? Or that has reached the United States? We all are acutely aware of how this horrible, mind destroying disease can be transmitted to humans. Did you also know that there are other diseases that can
be transmitted from animals to humans through the consumption of animal flesh and by-products?

There are diseases and symptoms from A-Z that can be attributed to flesh and by-product consumption, which are scientifically proven. One example is rheumatoid arthritis (RA)-doctors have long said that there is no cure for this

horrible and painful condition. One article suggests otherwise (found at http://www.notmilk.com/arthritiscure.html): When people afflicted with RA ate a strictly vegan diet, and consumed vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts and seeds, their symptoms were greatly alleviated, if not disappeared altogether.

Another example is depression. It's no secret that females of any species have many hormones coursing through their bodies. When they are lactating, those hormones feed their babies, ensuring they grow well according to that species' design. That's a fact of life, and no one would argue with me, right? Well, then why would it make sense to drink the breast milk of another female, especially that of another species, for nutrition? There are at least 59 different hormones in every serving of milk! Estrogen, progesterone, prolactin, melatonin, and many others are present when you have that glass of milk, or eat that cheese. Is it any wonder that depression is more common among those who consume dairy products? Want to get rid of your depression? Get rid of the dairy!

Got Heartburn? Got Milk? That's exactly what is causing your heartburn. Normally, when infant cows drink their mother's milk, the milk stops digesting long enough for the hormones, and other needed items the calf needs to survive and grow on, go throughout that calf's system. When humans consume cow's milk, it does the same thing in humans, and does not get digested properly, therefore causing heartburn. Want to get rid of that persistent heartburn without medication? Stop consuming dairy products!

Do you think eating the meat is ok? Think again. What you may not know is that optimum health and weight loss occurs when you do not eat animal flesh. Animals create cholesterol in their bodies, like we do, as humans. Our bodies make all the cholesterol that we need, and when we add more from our diets, it becomes toxic. Then, you look at the fat and flesh that is going into your body-how is more flesh and fat going to help you lose weight?

So what about your favorite food to grill on the 4^th of July? It's innocent enough, right? Let's have a look at those pre-packaged, pretty deli meat, hot dogs, bacon, lunch meats, and other things like that. How do they get to be so pretty and healthy looking? Oh-it's just fresh? How do you know this? Because it is a "healthy" pink color? Well, what you and other people may think is healthy is actually a poison. That's right-poison is making your favorite pre-packaged meat look

"healthy". The substance is known as either sodium nitrite, or sodium nitrate, and manufacturers put this substance into the meat to color it and make it have that healthy glow-just to make it look attractive and marketable. Otherwise, it would be this gray, dull, dead-looking thing, and no one in their right mind would buy that and eat it. So, they have to inject a poisonous substance into the meat to make it more "marketable"?

Why is this substance poisonous? It is part of the nitrosamines family, which are carcinogenic-meaning that they cause cancer. In fact, whenever lab researchers want to perform cancer experiments, they usually inject nitrosamines into rats

to give them cancer. So, why would you want to treat yourself as a lab rat? If you want to have optimum health, you will want to avoid the deli meats.

Then, if all that wasn't bad enough, we have to worry about the other diseases in cows are present that you may not be aware of. According to Mike Adams of www.newstarget.com, "The saturated animal fat found in red meat products contributes to heart disease and artherosclerosis. In addition, red meat can contain contaminants such as heavy metals, pesticides and undesirable environmental pollutants that tend to collect in the fat tissues of cows, which are absorbed into your body when you eat cow fat. And you can't eat red meat without getting some animal fat."

If all the diseases that affect the animals, and those animals are slaughtered for your food supply, don't you think that you will get those same diseases in your diet? True, cooking meat helps to kill of some of those pathogens, but not that much. Most pathogens are not killable by heat, as well as the saturated fat and cholesterol content. And…think about all the antibiotics that these animalsget-you're getting them too!

The simple point here is that you can avoid many aches, pains, and other everyday problems if you stop consuming animal flesh and by-products. You can also avoid many diseases associated with those animals by not consuming those products. But, if the health issues don't affect you, maybe this will. According to the Unhappy Cows web site, http://www.unhappycows.com/:

"California's dairy cows are crammed into huge lots, where they live covered in mud and their own feces for most of their miserable lives. They are pumped full of drugs to keep them producing such unnatural amounts of milk that their udders often become swollen and infected-in fact, at any given time, roughly one-third of California's cows suffer from painful udder infections, and more than half suffer from other painful infections and illnesses. They are forcefully impregnated every year to keep them producing milk, and their male babies often end up chained by their necks in veal crates before being slaughtered at just 16 weeks old.

"More than a fourth of California's dairy cows are slaughtered each year, generally because they've become crippled from painful foot infections or calcium depletion. At this point, they are trucked to the slaughterhouse through all weather extremes, many collapsing and arriving crippled. Slaughter is gruesome and often terrifying and painful. Said one former USDA slaughter inspector, 'In the summertime, when it's 90, 95 degrees, they're transporting cattle from 1,200 to 1,500 miles away on a trailer, 40 to 45 head crammed in there, and some collapse from heat exhaustion. This past winter, we had minus-50-degree weather with the wind chill. Can you imagine if you were in the back of a trailer that's open, and the wind chill factor is minus 50 degrees, and that trailer is going 50 to 60 miles an hour? The animals are urinating and defecating right in the trailers, and after a while, it's going to freeze, and their hooves are right in it. If they go down-well, you can imagine lying in there for 10 hours on a trip.' "

There are many more horror stories about how animals are treated just so humans can feed their need for disease producing, obesity causing flesh and by products. Do you really want animals to go through hell and back just so you can throw some steaks on the BBQ? Or do you really want little baby cows to leave their mothers without the feel of a warm body while they drink their mothers' milk, just so you can have your ice cream cone? And your cheese? Now I am not into the whole "animal rights" issues like most vegans are, but it seems to me that humans have become very selfish in their wants, when it comes to food. It also seems to me that we could use a little less animal by-products in our diets, and it will save more animals.

One more reason to go vegan, should you so choose to do so. Mike Adams from News Target continues to tell why meat is not the answer to our global hunger problem, "It takes 10 acres to produce the same amount of red meat protein as it does to produce one acre of soy beans. And producing spirulina yields a tenfold increase over the production of soybeans. So think about it: one acre of farmland used to produce spirulina can produce 100 times as much protein as beef and red meat. That will be very important to realize as our world population grows and it becomes increasingly difficult to produce the protein required by the population." So, with some 30 million or more animals used for food, wouldn't it make more sense for the environment to grow soybeans or Spirulina? Here is a website that you can visit to find out more about

Spirulina and Chlorella: www.chlorellafactor.com.

This is why I do not include animal flesh and by-products in my diet: health issues, animal treatment issues, and the environment. The biggest one for me, however, is the health issues. I want to be at my absolute best for the rest of my life,

and if I am consuming animal flesh and by-products, then I cannot be at my absolute best. If you want to be at your absolute best, health wise, then I encourage you to stop consuming those products as well. You can reverse so many diseases by doing so!