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J Morris Hicks

Posted May 10, 2011

Published in Green, Health

The future of food; must we be forced to change?

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This Thursday evening (May 12, 2011), I will be part of a three-person panel at a local community center in Stonington, CT. Our topic is the "future of food." The other two panel members are a local organic farmer and an author of healthy, organic cookbooks.

My premise is that humans WILL move back toward a plant-based diet -- the natural diet for our species. The only uncertainties are: For what reasons? And how quickly? My suspicion at this point is that most of us will have to be forced.

: In the seaside village of Stonington, CT

On Thursday, I will deliver a PowerPoint presentation highlighting the gross unsustainability of the typical western diet -- showing that compared to plant-based foods -- calorie for calorie:

It requires 20 times as much land
It requires 20 times as much energy
It requires well over 20 times as much water
It is also responsible for incredible environmental damage to our land, forests, oceans, rivers, climate, and biodiversity.

: The natural diet for our species -- whole foods, plant-based -- still in nature's package.

So why don't we just all change to a plant-based diet? Clearly, there are many compelling health reasons why we should do just that. After gradually learning about the following preponderance of evidence supporting a plant-based diet, I experienced a blinding flash of the obviouswhen I suddenly realized that "Oh my God, we've been eating the wrong food."

The animals in the wild with DNA closest to ours eat nothing but raw plants.
Cultures who eat mostly plants have almost none of the chronic diseases that plague the west.
When those peoples move to the U.S. or Western Europe, they begin to have our diseases at the same rate that we do.
We now have overwhelming scientific evidence that we humans should be eating a whole foods, plant-based diet.
Many prominent physicians have an over 90% success rate in reversing heart disease and type 2 diabetes with nothing more than having their patients return to the natural diet for our species.

: The author using renewable wind energy off the coast of Newport, Rhode Island

Certainly, I would like to think that with books like The China Study, our upcoming book and others -- coupled with people like Bill Clinton making the change -- that the word would spread and that humans would want to change their diet for all the right reasons:

Taking charge of their own health
Nurturing our fragile environment
Conserveing our finite supply of fossil fuels
Feeding the world's hungry
Ending the needless suffering of billions of animals

Our entire book is all about those five things -- and as our grassroots revolution takes hold, more and more people will make those changes for the right reasons. But how many?

If we are wildly successful, maybe there will be 50 million, or even one hundred million Americans who will voluntarily change their diets for those five reasons -- but I fear that the large majority of our nation will have to be forced to change.

And that force is called MONEY. As the world passes the inevitable "peak oil" point in the years ahead, we are going to see an unprecedented rise in the cost of energy and our grossly inefficient typical western diet is going to be in trouble. For more on this topic, you might want to look at a few earlier posts:

What is the future of food? — Take a look at the past.

Worried about gas prices? You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.

The Price of Oil…and the food we eat

From the seaside village of Stonington, Connecticut – Be well and have a great day…