Most of us don’t think much about the foods we put into our bodies or how they affect our us and the environment. Not only that, we also rarely think about where our food comes from and how it got to be in that nice white shrink wrapped tray we see sitting on the grocery shelf.

Meat is an interesting one, it has a dramatic affect on your health, and the environment. Check out these 26 reasons not to eat meat…

1. Higher Body Weight – Meat eaters tend to consume more fat which often results in increased body fat levels.
2. Higher Cholesterol – Meat eaters usually consume more bad fats which results in higher cholesterol levels.
3. Higher Blood Pressure – The fats in meat tend to clog up your arteries which results in higher blood pressure.
4. Higher Risk of Diabetes – Meat eaters tend to eat less legumes, whole grains, fruits and vegetables which all help to prevent and control diabetes.
5. Higher Risk of Cancer – Meat eaters tend to eat less legumes, whole grains, fruits and vegetables which all have powerful antioxidants that help to prevent cancer.
6. Higher Toxicity Levels – Meats are usually treated with preservatives and other chemicals to help them look better stay fresher. These chemicals are toxic to the body and can lead to disease over time. The EPA also estimates that about 95 percent of pesticides in our diet come from eating meat, fish and dairy. Fish contain carcinogens (PCBs, DDT) and heavy metals (mercury, arsenic; lead, cadmium) that cannot be eliminated by cooking them. Meat and dairy products are also full of steroids and hormones.
7. Digestion Problems – Meats are difficult to digest and eliminate. Over time this creates a toxic environment in the digestive tract which can eventually cause cancer.
8. Shortened Life Span – According to many University and government studies, vegetarians tend to live about 7 years longer than meat eaters and vegans tend to live about 15 years longer than meat eaters.
9. Higher Chance of Terminal Diseases – A British study that tracked 6,000 vegetarians and 5,000 meat eaters for 12 years found that meat eaters were 40 percent more likely to die from cancer and 20 percent more likely to die from other diseases.
10. Higher Food Costs – Replacing the meats in your grocery cart with vegetables and fruits will save you thousands of dollars a year.
11. Meat is Murder – Every day about 22 millions animals are slaughtered just to supply Americans with meat for food consumption. Give up meat and save the life of a conscious being.
12. Meat Eaters Use More Fossil Fuels – It takes twenty times more fossil fuel to grow and supply 1 pound of meat compared to 1 pound of vegetables. Eliminating meat consumption will help reduce fossil fuel usage and could help lower gas prices and help our precious oil supply to last longer.
13. Meat Eaters Use More Water – It takes 441 gallons of water to grow and supply 1 pound of beef compared to only 14 gallons of water for 1 pound of wheat.
14. Meat Production Wastes Food – It takes 7 pounds of grain to grow 1 pound of meat. If everyone gave up eating meat, we could feed 7 times the population that we currently do without needing any additional farm land.
15. Meat Production Causes Animal Extinction – In the United States, grazing has contributed to the demise of 26% of the federal threatened and endangered species list. It’s also estimated that for each hamburger made from rain forest beef, approximately 20 to 30 different plant species, 100 different insect species, and dozens of bird, mammals, and reptile species are destroyed.
16. Meat Eaters Tend To Have a Lower Spiritual Energy – According to many religious traditions, the eating of meat brings heavy, stagnant energy into the body which hampers our ability to live at a high vibration. Avoiding meat consumption may help you to move toward enlightenment.
17. Meat Production is Destroying The World’s Largest Supplier of Oxygen – The rain forests in South America are being destroyed to make room for livestock.
18. Meat Production is the Biggest Cause of Global Warming – A 2006 United Nations report found that raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gases than all the cars and trucks in the world combined.
19. Meat Production Pollutes The Environment – Animal farming creates massive amounts of manure and urine run-off which pollutes water supplies and local land.
20. Factory Farmed Meat and Animal Products Are Extremely Cruel To Animals – Many of these animals never see the light of day, they’re confined to pens that do not allow them to move or turn around. They live in their own waste, forced to constantly breathe in ammonia and other waste products. They are pumped full of antibiotics because of their polluted living conditions. They are fed foods that they are not designed to digest because “it’s cheaper and more efficient”. They’re pumped full of chemicals to make them grow bigger and produce more. They are often mutilated without the use of painkillers. And finally they are often slaughtered while they are fully conscious. In short, they live a life of living hell.
21. Meat Eaters Lose More Bone Mass as They Age – At the age of 65, the average bone loss of a meat eating woman is double that of their vegetarian counterparts. Experts attribute this to excess protein consumption from eating meats which can interfere with the absorption and retention of calcium.
22. Meat Eaters Are Heavily Exposed To Food Born Illnesses – Eating meat can make you very sick. According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, 25 percent of all chicken sold in the United States carries salmonella bacteria and the CDC estimates that 70 to 90 percent of chickens contain the bacteria campy-lobacter (some strains of which are antibiotic-resistant). Approximately 5 percent of cows carry the lethal strain of E. coli O157:H7 (which causes virulent diseases and death), and 30 percent of pigs slaughtered each year for food are infected with toxoplasmosis (caused by parasites).
23. Meat Eaters Risk More Back Problems – Meat eaters tend to consume more bad fats that often leads to arterial blockages which, according to Neil Barnard, M.D, can cause back problems. “Back pain appears to begin, not in the back, but in the arteries.” “The degeneration of disks, for instance, which leads to nerves being pinched, starts with the arteries leading to the back.” Neil Barnard, M.D., president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and author of Foods That Fight Pain (Harmony Books, 1998).
24. Meat Eating Women Have More Menopause Problems – Plant food sources contain a compound called phytoestrogens that helps to balance your hormones. Thanks to a meat-free diet, vegetarian women have much fewer problems related to menopause. They sleep better, have less hot flashes, have more energy, less weight gain, fewer mood swings, and maintain a higher sex drive.
25. Meat Eaters Stress The Financial and Health Care System – Diets that are heavy in animal products cost the country over $60 billion dollars a year in health care costs related to heart disease, cancer, food poisoning, and obesity.
26. Fish Eaters are Destroying The Ocean’s Fish Population – Fish are being over-harvested and according to the Food & Agriculture Organization, 11 of the 15 world’s major fishing grounds are almost depleted.

Personally, I’ve been a vegetarian for well over 5 years now. I feel good about my dietary choice. I lost weight when I stopped eating meat, I rarely get sick anymore (I used to get at least 5 colds a year), I have more energy, and I feel good about having a much smaller environmental impact on the world I live in.

What about you? Was this an eye opener for you? Do you agree or disagree that eating meat can have a significant negative impact on the human body and the world?

Technorati Tags: vegetarian, food, environment, health, diet

Did you know that your thoughts and feelings can impact the food you eat? Taking a moment to love and appreciate your food can improve how it reacts with, and affects your body.

Before I talk about how our thoughts and feelings affect our food, I want to introduce you to Dr. Masaru Emoto. I believe his research into water also applies to the food we eat.

Dr. Emota has spent his life studying (and proving) how words, thoughts, and emotions affect the energetic structure of water. He would even take pictures of the results. I invite you to check out some of the pictures he has taken or some of his books to learn more.

Basically, what Dr. Emoto discovered is that when we send negative thoughts and emotions toward water, the energetic structure of the water changes into something that looks very negative. Conversely, when we send positive thoughts and emotions toward water, the energetic structure changes into something very beautiful.

Dr. Emoto even used this approach to clean up several polluted bodies of water simply by getting large groups of people to send loving and grateful thoughts to the water.

Considering that our bodies are made up of about 70% water. You might want to monitor what messages you are sending with your thoughts, words, and feelings. When you love and appreciate yourself and the water you consume, it will have a direct positive impact on the energy of the water in your body.

(to learn more about Dr. Masaru Emoto, check out this great Q&A session with him.)

Love Your Food

I believe Dr. Emoto’s research into how our thoughts affect water also applies to the food we eat. Everything in this Universe is made up of energy. So the same principles that apply to water, also apply to the food we eat.

What do you think and feel while you eat?

• Do you worry about your food making you fat?
• Do you feel guilty about sneaking that extra cookie?
• Do you worry that you’re going to get heartburn?
• Do you fear that that slice of cheese is going to clog up your arteries and give you a heart-attack?

All of these types of thoughts affect the energy of your food in a negative way. In fact, those very thoughts could end up becoming self-fulfilling as the negative energy of the food starts interacting with the energy of your body.

You can change how your food affects your body by changing the energy of the food you eat into something more positive. Take a moment before you chow down your next meal or snack to send a little love to it and thank it for giving of itself to nourish you. This one little act will help your food to nourish your body and energy in a much more positive way.

I’m not saying that this approach is a free ticket to go eat whatever you want without consequence. I don’t think there has been enough research on the subject yet for me to be able to say that with absolute confidence. But I am sure that if you focus on positive thoughts and emotions about what you’re eating, it will cause less problems for you and benefit you a lot more.

Maybe there really is something to the idea of “saying grace” before your meal.

I encourage you to give it a try for the next week or two and see how you feel.

Here are the results…

pH Results

My initial goal was to bring both my saliva and urine pH levels up above 7.0 and hold them there. But after doing some further research, I decided that I didn’t want my saliva pH to go that high. I’ll explain more on that later.

My urine pH started at 6.0 and I was able to bring it up above 7.0 (neutral pH) and hold it there consistently for most of the trial.

My saliva pH started at 6.0 and mostly hung around 6.2. At first I was worried about this because I wasn’t able to get it to budge above this level for more than a day or two. But after doing some further research, I discovered that many believe that you don’t want your saliva pH to go above 6.5. Apparently you need some acid in your saliva to help with the digestive process. On the other end of the spectrum, you also don’t want your saliva pH to drop below 6.0 as this would indicate that the acid levels in your body are getting to high which leaves you more open to illness and disease.

I would like to get my saliva pH up a bit more, but overall I’m fairly pleased with the results of my trial as far as my pH levels go.

Physical Results

I had several interesting things happen during this trial.

Negative Experiences

• Initially I had some headaches
• After the headaches passed, I started getting very loose stools. I spoke to my Naturopathic Doctor about this and she suggested reducing my dosage of baking soda. I did this and the problem cleared up.
• Towards the end of the trial I got a mild cold and started getting bad breath. Both of these things indicate that my body was getting rid of even more toxins.

While these things were all unpleasant to experience, I knew that they all indicated that my body was starting to clear out toxins which I consider to be a good thing. When your body is to acidic, it is difficult for your body to dispose of toxins properly. So by giving my body the alkalizing substances it needed, it was finally able to start eliminating those toxic substances.

Positive Benefits

Besides eliminating toxins, I noticed two more positive effects of alkalizing:

• My allergies have almost completely disappeared. I used to be regularly congested and sneezing. My wife and I have a dog who I am unfortunately very allergic to. Alkalizing my body has almost totally cleared up those allergies. I can stick my face right in her fur now without reacting at all. I almost never sneeze anymore. And my congestion has cleared up considerably.
• I have more energy. From what I read, your body will usually take alkalizing substances like baking soda and convert them into oxygen in your blood and cells. This additional oxygen helps provide more energy for you body. I definitely noticed this. Aside from the few days that I had a cold, my energy levels and my ability to mentally focus both increased.

Emotional Effects

I can’t say that I noticed any emotional benefits from this trial. I did have some anger and sadness come up on a few occasions, but I suspect that was more related to some meditation exercises I was doing to help clear out negative mindsets.

Conclusion

Overall I would say this trial was successful. I’m pleased that my body was able to do some detoxing and that my allergies are almost completely gone. That alone made the detox symptoms and the effort of the trial worth it.

I plan on looking more into how my diet affects my pH. Being a vegetarian, I tend to eat a lot of grains which apparently creates a lot of acidity. The focus should be more on raw vegetables (alkalizing) and raw fruit (just slightly acidic).

I also plan on continuing to take the baking soda on a regular basis. Alkalizing my body has clearly benefited me, so I would like to maintain these benefits and see if I can gain even more going forward. If I do, I’ll be sure to share them with you in future posts.

I wanted to share this video with you today not to convince you that what Dr. Simoncini is saying is true, but just to present to you another viewpoint you can use to determine your own truth.

The motives of others are not always going to be in your best interest. Start taking your health into your own hands. Don’t take what your doctor, or anyone else tells you as truth without doing your own research and finding what makes sense to you.

I personally believe that it isn’t in the best interest of the medical community to allow cancer cures like this out into mainstream medicine. Here’s why:

• Baking soda can’t be patented and therefore drug companies can’t get rich off of it. There’s a lot more money to be made by treating cancer patients with expensive drugs.
• There’s more money to be made by keeping a patient ill and having them constantly come in for checkups and treatments. These medical treatments bring in a LOT of money for medical centers.

Unfortunately greed rules much of what goes on in our world today. In most cases, you can just follow the money to find the truth of something.

What about you, do you implicitly trust the medical community? Or do you think there are cheaper, safer, and more effective alternative treatments that are being suppressed because there is no profit to be made?

I invite you to follow along with me as I will be posting regular updates on my progress and results on this website. Short updates will be posted in the comments section at the bottom of this article. I may also post a full article summarizing my results at the end the trial.

Before I move on to explaining how I’m going to be doing my trial, let me share with you some of what I’ve read about having an alkaline vs. an acidic body pH. I should also share with you that I’m not a licensed physician. This information is simply based on what I’ve read. Which is why I’ve decided to do this trial to see if alkalizing will benefit me.

I encourage you to join with me in this trial if you think this might benefit you as well. I would love to share the experience and results of this doing this trial with others.

What Do Alkaline And Acidic Mean?

Chances are that you probably already have some idea of what acid is. Highly acidic substances can corrode and dissolve anything they come in contact with. You have hydrochloric acid in your stomach to help you digest the foods you eat.

In relation to pH, anything below a pH of 7.0 is considered acidic. The lower the number, the more acidic it is.

On the other end of the scale is alkaline. If something is alkaline it is the opposite of being acidic. Alkaline substances can act as a buffer to help neutralize acidic substances. However, if something is too alkaline, it can also have a corrosive effect.

Anything above a pH of 7.0 is considered to be alkaline. The higher the number, the more alkaline it is.

A pH of 7.0 is considered to be neutral. It is neither acidic or alkaline.

What An Acidic Body pH Does To You

Our bodies are designed to work optimally at a pH level of approximately 7.3 – just slightly alkaline. When that pH level starts dropping below 7.0 and we start becoming more acidic, it takes a heavy toll on our bodies.

• Your immune system no longer functions optimally.
• Cancer cells can grow much more easily. Every person that I’m aware of that has cancer has had a pH level in the low 5  range.
• Your energy levels are depleted as acid builds up and oxygen levels are depleted.
• It can even help aggravate negative emotions making them more frequent and prolonged.
• You could gain weight because the acid in your body causes your body to store fat instead of use calories for energy.
• Bone material gets depleted as your body uses the minerals from your bones to try to keep your blood pH neutral.
• Toxin build up in your body is accelerated as your body’s ability to neutralize and dispose of toxins is handicapped due to excessive acid.
• You could suffer from malnutrition as your body’s ability to assimilate nutrients from food is compromised.

On the other hand, it is also possible to become overly alkaline. Being overly alkaline for an extended period of time can also cause health and digestive problems. It’s best to aim for a pH level in the 7.0 to 7.5 range.

What Causes Your Body To Become Acidic

There are four main causes of acidity in your body:

Diet – Basically, an unhealthy diet leads to acidity in the body. You can check out a list of acidic and alkaline foods. Or do a quick Google search to come up with lots of lists that you can look through.

Lifestyle – Smoking, excessive drinking, not getting enough sleep. These types of lifestyles cause stress on the body which leads to excessive acid production.

Emotions/Stress - Negative emotions and stress (both mental and physical) lead to the production of acid in the body. If you think about it, terms like stress “eating away at you” really aren’t that far from the truth.

Toxins – Regular exposure to toxins also causes acid production in your body. We’re assaulted by toxins on a daily basis, so this is hard to avoid. Air pollution, toxic gasses from new carpets, fuel vapors when we fill up our vehicles, herbicides and pesticides, pharmaceutical drugs, that “new car smell” in a new vehicle, are all toxic. Toxins are everywhere and hard to avoid.

What Are The Benefits of Alkalizing Your Body

Weight loss – An alkaline body is better suited for converting stored fat into energy and using consumed calories for energy instead of converting them into fat.

Better Nutrient Assimilation From Foods – An alkaline body will assimilate nutrients from food and supplements better than an acidic body. If you are too acidic, you may actually be suffering from malnutrition since your body can’t get the nutrients it needs from the foods you’re eating.

Prevents Bone Loss – Your blood must maintain a pH of around 7.35. Based on what I’ve read, if your blood pH goes below seven, or much above 7.5, you will die very quickly. If you don’t keep your body in an alkaline state, your body will start leeching minerals from your bones so that it can at least keep your blood at the proper pH level. This isn’t a bad thing, your body is just doing what it has to in order to keep you alive. But if your body is kept in an alkaline state, then it has no need to leech stuff from your bones to keep your blood at a safe pH range.

More Energy – Keeping your body alkaline helps it better utilize the calories you consume as energy. It also helps provide a better environment for oxygenation of your cells which will help give you an extra energy boost.

More Stamina – Physical exertion often leads to the release of lactic acid in the body. This lactic acid can make your muscles tired and sore. When you’re body is in an alkaline state, it is better able to buffer or neutralize this lactic acid giving you increased stamina.

Helps Prevent Viral, Bacterial, and Fungal Infections - Viruses, bacteria, and fungus all thrive within an acidic body. They begin to die off when they are placed within an alkaline environment. By alkalizing your body, you’re making it an unfriendly place to live for the things that can make you sick.

Helps Prevent and Heal Diseases - Just as bacteria and viruses suffer in an alkaline environment, diseased and damaged cells within the body also suffer. Some research has shown that when the pH level of a cancer cell is changed from acid to alkaline, it dies very quickly.

Read the story about a man who cured himself of prostate and bone cancer using pH therapy. There are stories all over the place of health practitioners making a dramatic difference in their patient’s lives just by putting them on a pH therapy program to help them become alkaline.

Helps Prevent Allergies - Allergies are basically an overreaction of your immune system. In an alkaline body, your immune system is much less likely to overreact to substances that are of no danger to it.

May Help To Improve Your Mood – It’s possible that if your body pH is slightly alkaline, your mood and overall sense of well-being will improve.

My Current pH and How I Plan To Alkalize

This morning I did both a urine pH test and a saliva pH test using simple pH test strips that you can buy quite cheaply at most drug stores or online. Apparently testing first thing in the morning is the most accurate way to check you pH levels.

My results for both urine and saliva were a pH of 6.0.

This shocked me a little, but not too much, considering I just recently finished doing a several month trial of mega dosing vitamin C. I used a common form of vitamin C called ascorbic acid which, of course, is very acidic. So I wasn’t overly surprised that all that vitamin C I took created a lot of acid in my body.

Considering that I just quit drinking coffee . I decided that I didn’t want to push myself with too many lifestyle changes at once. So instead of focusing mainly on diet to help raise my pH, I plan on using baking soda and molasses for the purposes of this trial.

Baking soda is highly alkaline, so taking it orally it will act to buffer out the acids in the body. The molasses are also alkaline forming in the body, and they help to transport the baking soda to any sick cells or fungus in the body. When the baking soda hits these cells and fungus, it injures or kills them by quickly creating an alkaline environment around them.

For now I’m going to be using plain old Arm and Hammer baking soda. I have read that this baking soda might contain aluminum in it, so hopefully I can find some aluminum free baking soda the next time I get to the grocery store.

My protocol is quite simple:

• I’ll start by taking 2 teaspoons of baking soda with 4 teaspoons of black strap molasses twice daily.
• I’ll take the mixture away from food (one hour before or two hours after eating) to avoid buffering the acids in my stomach just before or after eating. Your stomach needs those acids to digest the food you eat.
• I’ll track my progress by testing both my urine and saliva pH each morning, and increase or decrease the amount of baking soda and molasses I take as necessary.

I’ll also keep track of any physical and emotional effects that I notice and share them with you in the comments below. So please be sure to come back regularly to read the comments if you’re curious how things are going .

Update – This trial is now complete. Read the results.

Let’s roll back in time to about one week ago from the date of this post where my story about quitting coffee begins…

It was just another typical day. I spent my morning working from home, and as usual, drinking my several cups of dark roast, extra strong, coffee. I was in love with the aroma that filled the house while it brewed and the bitter, yet smooth taste as it slid down my throat. And, of course the euphoric ‘buzz’ I got from being over caffinated.

If I didn’t get my usual dose of caffeine, I felt tired and slow, so I had to keep drinking it to keep myself going.

I never thought much about what all that caffeine was doing to my body. Drinking coffee is normal right? Apparently about 80% of the population of planet earth consumes the stuff on a daily basis, so who am I to question such a powerful social proof. If everybody else is doing it, it must be ok right?

Later that day, I learned just how wrong I was…

I had an appointment with my Naturopathic Doctor that afternoon. As a side comment during my appointment, I mentioned being tired and needing coffee to get through my day. Her response to that was; “Eventually you’re going to crash if you keep that up”.

That statement alone shocked me enough to make me commit myself to quit coffee for good.

She went on to explain that caffeine causes the adrenal glands to release additional adrenaline into the body which is what gives you the energy and buzz. The problem is that over time this constant over stimulation of the adrenals will actually wear them out. And when that happens you get adrenal fatigue.

The fact that I was already experiencing fatigue if I didn’t consume any caffeine was a signal from my body that I was already well on my way to wearing out my adrenal glands.

Adrenal fatigue can take months or even years to heal. If you’re not familiar with what adrenal fatigue can do to you, here are just a few of the symptoms I found after doing a quick Google search:

• Insomnia and feeling tired even after adequate amounts of sleep
• Constant feelings of fatigue and sleepiness
• Reduced ability to handle stress
• Cravings for salty and sweet foods
• Extreme sensitivity to cold
• Reduced stamina and ability to recover from physical exertion
• Suppressed immune system
• Cognitive dysfunction and memory loss
• Reduced ability to concentrate
• Reduced sex drive
• Low blood pressure
• Unexplainable neck and back pain

Wanting to avoid these things gave me a pretty good reason to quit coffee. The next day, I began. And I haven’t had any withdrawal symptoms yet.

My Process To Quit Coffee Without Any Withdrawal Symptoms

It’s been about a week now, and I’m already 50% of the way to completing my quest to quit coffee.

The solution for me, and I’m sure this will work well for you too, is to cut back gradually.

Too many people try to make major life changes overnight and end up failing. The changes are too drastic to do all at once. Most life changes are easier to make if you take baby steps.

So I applied the concept of taking baby steps to my quest to quit coffee.

The next morning, when I made my usual pot of coffee, I replaced 50% of the beans with naturally decaffeinated coffee beans. That way I was still able to drink the same quantity of coffee, but I was only getting 50% of the caffeine. It went without a hitch. I hardly noticed the difference.

Next week, I’m going to step up to replacing 75% of the beans with decaf. The week after that, 100%. If those steps go as smoothly as my first one, getting over the caffeine addiction will be easy. From there, I suspect it shouldn’t be too hard to quit coffee for good if all I have to do is give up drinking decaf.

So, all in all, it will be about a 4 week process to quit coffee completely without any withdrawal symptoms. I’m sure my adrenals will thank me for it .

What about you? Have you thought about giving up coffee? If you’ve already given it up, how did you do it?