Finland has approved bread made from cricket flour to sell in supermarkets. Before you say ewww or gross, think about it for a minute. We live on a rapidly changing planet with an increasing number of people, and we need food. Our current system is flawed and overwhelmed, and easily manufactured alternatives to resource hungry, unhealthy factory farmed meat are desperately needed. Are crickets a healthy, sustainable, and most importantly palatable alternative to our current problematic proteins?

Healthy Protein

When it comes down to the numbers, crickets are a nutritional powerhouse. A serving of cricket flour provides more than twice the protein of a steak, contains almost a fifth of the daily recommended value of B12, and is rich in calcium and iron. Whole crickets have the additional benefit of chitin, their exoskeleton. The chitin is a prebiotic, benefiting already existing good bacteria. They also offer a high-protein, gluten-free flour substitute. The image above is pasta made with cricket flower.

Sustainability

Here is where the debate about how beneficial crickets actually are gets interesting. Crickets need less water, space, and food than any of the animals we currently farm for food. They are also able to eat a more varied diet and lead to decreased rates of methane gases, deforestation, and toxic animal waste. The bugs also convert what they eat to an edible product 12 times more efficiently than cows and twice as efficiently as chickens. But if crickets farmers are looking only for efficiency, they are missing a chance to achieve a higher level of sustainability with their product.

For crickets to reach the size required for harvest in the shortest period of time, they need to be fed a grain diet. But this is problematic, as all it does is repeat the same cow, pig, and chicken system that isn’t sustainable. With a different diet of food waste, cricket production is only slightly more efficient than chicken farming. Yet Americans throw away a full third of all food grown in the country. The most exciting possibility here is that crickets farmed correctly have the ability to ameliorate two serious issues facing the world – hunger and food waste.

The -Ick Factor

Many information sources on crickets and other edible bugs used to focus on whether or not anyone would eat them. As of 2017, that ship has sailed, and articles now focus on what’s going to win the new food race – bugs or lab meat. Never mind that bugs have and still are eaten by more than 2 billion people worldwide on a daily basis.

Americans and much of the food popularized here is easy, aesthetically pleasing food. A chicken is no longer comprised of bones and tendons and skin. It comes pale and perfected wrapped in plastic or processed and put back together in a nugget shape. We become so accustomed to fruit or vegetables in a single form that anything that deviates from that is treated as an absurdity.

But this is exactly why we should be eating crickets. Where before bugs required a strong stomach and a minimal gag reflex, they are now an easy food. Like milkshakes? There’s a fast food chain that offered one with crickets. Finland is offering bread at the supermarket. Multiple companies offer a cricket protein powder for smoothies or various cricket snacks for a boost during the day.

Get in The Game

People in the tropics are more likely to consume bugs, as the colder Northern weather makes it difficult for a population to depend on bugs as a food source. Good news, it’s getting warmer!

All (not funny) kidding aside, crickets have the potential to feed the world. We have the opportunity to steer the production of a potentially major part of the food supply. Give crickets a try, and see if you can surprise yourself. But most importantly, be picky about the quality of crickets you consume. We’ve already seen where the factory farming model takes us. Let’s learn something from it.

What are your thoughts? Would you eat food with crickets as an ingredient? What could go wrong?

Sources:

• Bread made of insects to be sold in Finnish supermarkets – AP News
• Cricket Flour Has 3x More Protein Than Steak + It Even Tastes Good – Dr. Axe
• Five Reasons to Eat Crickets – Huffington Post
• You’re going to be eating crickets, so just get over it – CNET
• Eating Insects Isn’t as Eco-Friendly As People Say – Time
• Half of all US food produce is thrown away, new research suggests – The Guardian

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), where too much fat accumulates in the liver without alcohol, has now been linked to greater than normal age-related brain shrinkage by a study published in JAMA Neurology. In the study, people with NAFLD from age 60 to 70 saw a reduction of brain volume equivalent to 4.2 years of aging, and patients under 60 averaged a brain volume reduction equivalent to 7.3 years of aging. The connection was notable even after other factors related to brain aging like heart disease, diabetes, blood fat levels, smoking, alcohol consumption, overweight, lack of exercise and menopausal status were accounted for in the study.

The Liver Brain Connection

When the liver isn’t able to properly filter the blood, toxins left behind can accumulate in the brain, causing memory loss, sleep disturbances, and trouble concentrating. The recently published study that found a link between a clearly unhealthy liver and higher levels of brain degeneration measured the overall brain volume of 766 middle-aged men and women with MRI scans and used abdominal CT scans to examine their livers. Nearly twenty percent of those examined had NAFLD. Even after other dementia risk factors were accounted for, research subjects of all ages experienced increased brain aging equivalent to at least a year. Lead author Galit Weinstein from School of Public Health at the University of Haifa concludes, “In turn, if one retains a healthy liver, his/her risk for other diseases, such as diabetes and heart diseases, is also reduced. In this study, we show that keeping a healthy liver may also be linked with a healthier brain.”

How to Support Your Liver

Experts agree that the best way to manage NAFLD is through diet and lifestyle, but what does that mean? This is good news because this means you can do something about it. Not all diets and lifestyles are the same, and recent science has found that environmental factors can also play a role in the development of NAFLD. Yet there are some simple steps and changes you can implement immediately that will decrease your risk of NAFLD and elevate your overall level of health.

Related: How To Reverse Fatty Liver Disease (Diet Plan Included)

Diet And…

First and foremost, when you have or are at risk of developing, NAFLD, sugar is not your friend. Sugar helps fat build up in the liver, and it aggravates a multitude of other problems in the body. It tastes really good. We’re biologically programmed to crave it. It’s probably one of the worst things you can have, especially if you’re at risk for a serious health condition. Consume your sugar in fruit form as the fiber slows the absorption of the sugar, but too much of any one kind of fruit can still lead to issues.

Next, rally your beneficial bacteria. Produce is the best way to give those helpers the fuel they need. That bacteria can then focus on properly digesting fat in the gut, keeping large fat molecules from overwhelming the liver. The key word here is produce. Among other things, fresh, raw vegetables and fruits have fiber, reducing the absorption of harmful lipopolysaccharides and sugars. Organic is also important, as NAFLD and brain cancer have both been linked to glyphosate. While it’s no longer possible to avoid the herbicide completely, organic produce gives you the least amount of exposure. Other liver boosting foods oily fish, avocado, olive oil, and nuts.

Related: Start Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet

Up next? Vitamin c. The liver benefits greatly from vitamin c and its antioxidant properties. A dose as small as 500 mg of the vitamin can help prevent fatty buildup and other liver diseases, like cirrhosis. Turn that dose up to 5,000 mg and the vitamin c begins to flush fat from the liver. If you can get a nutrient from whole food sources, you should, and there are numerous fruits and vegetable rich in vitamin c. Load up on those, or if you prefer to drink your vitamins, check out this super simple lemonade with bonus cranberry action.

Exercise!

Finally, like any good healthy lifestyle advice article says, exercise. The good news here? It doesn’t matter what kind of exercise you chose. Previous studies found that both aerobic and resistance training-based exercise regimens reduce fat in the liver effectively. They also suggest that the intensity and amount of exercise makes a difference, but the best exercise is the one you do and do regularly.

Connections Are Crucial

Everything in life is about connections, yet it can be difficult to fathom just how connected the body really is. Your brain health absolutely depends on your gut. Now we find that your brain health, especially as you age, depends on your liver. And the liver depends on the gut, and how well the microbes there are able to do their job. A healthy gut makes all the other organs and systems it connects to healthier. Fix your gut, fix your health.

Recommended Reading:

• Sugar Leads to Depression – World’s First Trial Proves Gut and Brain are Linked (Protocol Included)
• Healthy Sugar Alternatives and More
• Sugar Industry Has Had Evidence Linking Sugar to Heart Disease for Nearly Half a Century

Sources:

• Fatty liver linked to a shrinking brain – Reuters
• Monsanto’s Glyphosate, Fatty Liver Disease Link Proven – Published, Peer-reviewed, Scrutinized Study – Organic Lifestyle Magazine
• How To Reverse Fatty Liver Disease (Diet Plan Included) – Organic Lifestyle Magazine
• 15 Health Problems Linked to Monsanto’s Roundup – EcoWatch
• There must be FIFTEEN WAYS TO LOVE YOUR LIVER – DoctorYourself
• New Study Indicates that Exercise Improves Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease – Elsevier

President Donald Trump’s budget proposal calls for saving $10 million next year by selling wild horses. Horses captured throughout the West will likely be sold for slaughter, which current regulations do not allow. Wild horse advocates say the change would gut nearly a half-century of protection for wild horses — an icon of the American West — and could send thousands of free-roaming mustangs to foreign slaughterhouses for processing as food.

Rep. Stewart is leading the charge to slaughter America’s wild horses and burros over the opposition of 80 percent of Americans,” said Suzanne Roy, AWHC Executive Director. “Putting his deputy at the helm of the agency charged with protecting these national icons is like putting the wolf in charge of the chicken coop.”

Brutal Outlook for Healthy Wild Horses and Burros: BLM Calls for Shooting 90,000 https://t.co/ePTwoYrYhJ @greenpeaceusa @foe_us

— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) October 20, 2017

In 1971, Congress passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, ending the practice of rounding up equines on America’s ranges and killing them for meat. But today, some members of Congress want to return to the era of mass killing.

Polls show the majority of Americans do not favor killing horses, wild or domestic. But lobbyists for the cattle industry and hunting groups do because horses compete with livestock and game species such as antelope for pasture and water. The Trump Administration’s 2018 budget included a proposal that opens the door for the Bureau of Land Managment (BLM) to save money by selling wild horses for slaughter. The congressional budget proposal would instead allow the BLM to cull young, healthy wild horses. Representatives say the horses would be “euthanized,” the way homeless pets sometimes are.

As EcoWatch writes:

The American Wild Horse Campaign on Thursday harshly criticized Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke‘s appointment of Brian Steed, the former chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT), as the acting director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) as dangerous and out of step with the wishes of the vast majority of Americans.

“Rep. Stewart is leading the charge to slaughter America’s wild horses and burros over the opposition of 80 percent of Americans,” said Suzanne Roy, AWHC Executive Director. “Putting his deputy at the helm of the agency charged with protecting these national icons is like putting the wolf in charge of the chicken coop.”

“Americans don’t want the government to be in the horse slaughter business, and Interior Secretary Zinke should appoint someone to lead the Bureau of Land Management who is committed to protecting, not destroying, America’s historic mustangs,” Roy concluded.

Roy added that the long-term leadership for this agency, which manages 245 million acres of public land in the West, should be determined through a full and transparent confirmation process, not a late-in-the-day political appointment by the secretary.

Recommended Reading:

• President Trump Has Nominated A Pro-Vaccine Exec to Secretary of the Health and Human Services
• Why the U.S. Washes and Refrigerates Eggs, & Why Other Countries Don’t
• Keystone Pipeline Has Leaked More Than 200K Gallons of Oil in South Dakota

Sources:

• Brutal Step Backward Wild Horses – The Humane Society
• Trump Budget Would Allow Sale of Wild Horses for Slaughter – Mercury News
• Slaughter of 90,000 Wild Horses Could Proceed Despite 80% Objection From American Public – Eco Watch

For years public health advocates wanted the CDC and WHO to run studies on vaccinated vs. unvaccinated populations and compares health outcomes. A team of Native scientists have conducted such a study and the consequences are alarming. The study, financed in part by the Danish authorities and lead by Dr. Soren Wengel Mogensen, was published in January in EBioMedicine.

The data suggest that the DTP vaccine reduces infections from those 3 germs, but data also shows that children are more likley to die from other causes. Mogensen’s team discovered that DTP inoculated African Americans had 5-10 times higher mortality than their unvaccinated peers.

 Though protective against the target disease, DTP may increase susceptibility to unrelated infections… DTP was associated with 5-fold higher mortality than being unvaccinated.  No prospective study has shown beneficial survival effects of DTP.” – Vaxxed vs. Non-Vaxxed Study

Related: How Plumbing (Not Vaccines) Eradicated Disease

Mogensen and his colleagues hypothesize that the DTP vaccine weakens the immune system, which supports the conclusions of prior studies. An earlier study by Dr. Peter Aaby, on the introduction of DTP in rural Guinea-Bissau, indicated a 2-fold greater mortality among vaccinated kids. The Aaby report is just one of many studies that adopted kids and documented vaccination status. All of them suggested that DTP-vaccinated kids died at rates far exceeding mortality.

In the primary analysis, DTP-vaccinated infants experienced mortalities five times greater than DTP-unvaccinated infants.  Mortalities to vaccinated girls were 9.98 times those among females in the unvaccinated control group, while mortalities to vaccinated boys were 3.93 times the controls.  Oddly, the scientists found that children receiving the oral polio vaccine simultaneously with DTP fared much better than children who did not.  The OPV vaccine appeared to modify the negative effect of the DTP vaccine, reducing mortalities to 3.52 times those experienced among the control group.  Overall, mortalities among vaccinated children were 10 times the control group when children received only the DTP.” – Robert F Kennedy

Related: How To Detoxify and Heal From Vaccinations – For Adults and Children

Moreover, Mogensen and his colleagues observe that the research reviewed by SAGE probably exacerbated the deadly effect of the DTP vaccine due to unusually high mortality in the control groups,

Unvaccinated children in these studies have usually been frail children too sick or malnourished to get vaccinated and the studies may therefore have underestimated the negative effect of DTP”. The Mogensen study sought to avoid this pitfall by removing orphans and children from the control group and the research group and by utilizing controls. It included children who had been breastfed. All of the infants were healthy at the right time of vaccination. Nevertheless, the Mogensen authors went longer and point out that, even in their analysis, the unvaccinated kids had status. They conclude that, “The estimate from the natural experiment may therefore still be conservative.”

Recommended: Lyme Disease – Holistic Protocol to Completely Rebuild the Immune System

From the early 1980s, a cascade of lawsuits filed throughout the United States drove DTP manufacturers and threatening to shut down production of vaccines and the DTP shot. That threat led the U.S. Congress to bestow legal immunity on vaccine makers during the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Program from 1986, conducted in December, 1987, from the rollout of “Vaccine Court.” After the recommendation from the Institute of Medicine, thimerosal was removed by vaccine manufacturers from the American DTaP involving 2001-2003. But, multi-dose DTP vaccines given to thousands of children across the African continent carry on to contain huge doses of thimerosal (25mcg of ethylmercury per booth) that exceed the EPA’s maximum exposure levels by many times. Neither the CDC nor the WHO has ever published a vaccinated vs. unvaccinated study that will be necessary to determine the total health consequences of the potent toxin on African children. The Mogensen report is a call for such a research.

The authors close with a bracing rebuke to people health labs,

“It should be of concern that the effect of routine vaccinations on all-cause mortality was not tested in randomized trials.  All currently available evidence suggests that DTP vaccine may kill more children from other causes than it saves from diphtheria, tetanus or pertussis.  Though a vaccine protects children against the target disease it may simultaneously increase susceptibility to unrelated infections.”

https://youtu.be/cx1VDqvDXjE

Related Reading:

• How To Detoxify and Heal From Vaccinations – For Adults and Children
• Doctors Against Vaccines – Hear From Those Who Have Done the Research
• Nurses Against Vaccines
• The MMR Vaccine – A Comprehensive Overview of the Potential Dangers and Effectiveness
• Influenza Vaccine – A Comprehensive Overview of the Potential Dangers and Effectiveness of the Flu Shot

Source:

• Study: DTP Vaccine Associated With 212% Increased Infant Mortality Risk – The Vaccine Reaction

Project 259 is a study that linked sucrose, a common sugar product, to heart disease and bladder cancer and would have revolutionized the way we think about sugar in regards to our health. Or at least it would have…if the sugar industry hadn’t stopped funding it halfway through the project in 1971. The project was discovered by a team of researchers at the University of California San Francisco who have been in the news for other reports on the sugar industry’s unsavory practices.

Details of the Project

Project 259 was launched by the Sugar Research Foundation in 1968. The project was in two halves, and only one of them was completed. The finished portion of the project looked at rat’s gut bacteria after rats consumed sucrose compared to starch. Early results showed that the sucrose caused gut microbes to throw off those rodent metabolisms, increasing their levels of triglycerides. Elevated triglycerides clog arteries and increase a person’s predisposition for cardiovascular disease. Project 259 also found that in a comparison to high-starch diet, a high-sugar diet boosts the activity of beta-glucuronidase, an enzyme linked to bladder cancer, when compared to a starch diet.

These discoveries were reported to Sugar Research Foundation in 1970. The results accompanied a request for 12 additional weeks of funding to finish the second half of the project, which was outlined as a deeper look at the effects of starch. Within a month, the Vice President of the Sugar Research Foundation declared these findings as nil and the additional funding never materialized. Project 259 was abandoned in 1971.

Related: Healthy Sugar Alternatives and More

Who Tells The Story

The sugar industry does not see this as a story. According to Courtney Gaine, the president and CEO of the Sugar Association, “They never called us. We would have let them look at the archives. I would let them look tomorrow. The story we have in our archives is a lot better than the story they’ve been telling,” She asserts that this study was lost in a bureaucratic shuffle, and emphasizes the industry’s ongoing interest in negative claims.

The sugar industry has a vested interest in controlling the story of sugar and health’s relationship. More than anything, Project 259 disrupts a narrative that was already being put into place.  The same researchers who found this study also uncovered a letter in the Harvard library that revealed the truth of that. Two prominent and now deceased Harvard researchers, Harvard nutritionists, Dr. Fredrick Stare and Mark Hegsted, were responsible for disproving studies that implicated sugar and concluded that there was only one dietary modification — changing fat and cholesterol intake — that could prevent coronary heart disease. Their work was published in 1967 and didn’t require disclosure of industry funds, although these newly found records state that the sugar industry trade group initiated and paid for the studies, examined drafts, and laid out a clear objective to protect sugar’s reputation in the public eye. Yes, the sugar industry wants to know about negative studies but not to offer an informed choice.

Related: Candida, Gut Flora, Allergies, and Disease

Most Frustrating “What If” Ever?

Sugar (especially the way we process and refine it) is more detrimental to the human body than anyone had previously thought, but what would our quality of life look like if this study was published? What would our sweetener options even look like?

Rates of heart disease, the number one cause of death in the world, would be far less than they currently are, and the ripple effects from consuming less sugar would be huge. Would we be facing the same level of antibiotic-resistant bacteria crises? While the majority of the blame for that coming storm can be placed at the factory farming industry’s doorstep, sugar feeds infection like no other food. Would doctors and dentists need to prescribe antibiotics at the rate they currently do?

This is all speculation. Infuriating speculation, at that, as that potential future is gone.

Related: Start Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet

We Should Be Angry

Not everyone who has heart disease has a history of heart disease in their family, but through the over-consumption of sugar, we have bred that predisposition into millions of people’s genetics. Anger and outrage are a daily occurrence in the current news cycles though and making this another cause for anger doesn’t send a strong enough message.

What if you stopped and said no more to products with large quantities of added sugar? Chose a different salad dressing or committed to figuring out a quick and tomato sauce recipe that kept you from reaching for the sugar-laden, jarred version on the shelf? Instead of choosing foods that create problems while willfully ignoring them, dictate your own health and choose foods that heal.

Sources:

• Sugar industry withheld possible evidence of cancer link 50 years ago, researchers say – PBS
• How the sugar industry artificially sweetened Harvard research – PBS
• How the sugar industry tried to hide the health effects of its product 50 years ago – The Verge
• Uncovered Coca-Cola Emails Expose 3 Ways Big Food Casts Doubt on Science, Endangering Public Health – Alternet
• Stop Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet – Organic Lifestyle Magazine

Matthieu Ricard is a former French genetic scientist, Tibetan monk, and author of Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill. His designation as the world’s happiest man is the result of a scientific research done on him and other advanced meditation practitioners in 2012, where during a meditation on compassion, 256 sensors on his skull measured levels of gamma rays in his brain never before reported in the history of neuroscience. Even though Matthieu is widely known and respected, the wise monk shows no sign of ego, as he kindly shares with the world the secret to finding true happiness.

Why We Cannot be Happy Eating Animals

On a video Matthieu participated in for PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), he demonstrates how the act of buying and eating animals creates a domino effect of negativity in all aspects of our life.

First of all, the animals, with 60 billion land animals and a trillion sea animals killed each year. Next, the environment, since the whole chain of factory farming involved in meat production today is the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases nowadays, after homes and before transportation. Poverty in the world: 800 million tons of grains that could feed 1 billion people are sent from developing countries towards rich countries for meat production.

“So the first victims are, of course, animals, but everyone else loses too! Even human health! The WHO (World Health Organization) published a report showing that the regular consumption of meat was bad for health.”

Recommended: Start Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet

So let’s be logical. If we ask the people of every nation whether they would like to live in a world filled with beauty, safety, prosperity, joy, kindness, love, peace, laughter, justice… most are likely to say yes. But to truly create such reality we must produce more of these acts (beauty, peace, love, justice and etc.) individually, so that this may turn into a ripple effect, creating this new collective reality. But how will we achieve such life when we are taking away innocent beings from their families and societies, forgetting that they are capable of feeling the same emotions we do, such as trust, love, joy, and fear and then serving them on our plates?

According to Matthieu,

…When you see the intensive conditions in which dairy cows are raised, for instance, it’s absolutely unimaginable. They are confined to stalls during their short lives, unable to see the sky, and when they become less productive, they are eliminated. When you know that 10 to 15 percent of them, sometimes more, are cut up into pieces while they were still conscious because they were improperly stunned, they die little by little, it’s unimaginable. But this is the reality of their lives, every day, all year long.”

So we must urgently ask ourselves, can any kind of death bring true happiness? Is it ethical and just? Will this act bring more fulfillment into our individual lives or consequently to our collective experience?

That’s right, the answer is no.

The Key to Happiness

Matthieu reveals the key to happiness and it´s simpler than we thought.

He says: “True happiness can be attained when we avoid causing pain to others…”

Matthieu’s wise words become even more interesting when we take a look at the results from the 2010 happiness survey done on Harvard´s class of 1980. It turns out that the number one item listed as one of utmost importance to achieve happiness is doing good for others.

This strongly correlates to what Matthieu has shared with us. Happiness is to think of others (people and animals) and keep from bringing them suffering, it is to think of the world and the future generations, the environment and ourselves (our health) doing what is morally correct.

Related: How to Be Happy

How Meat Consumption is Hurting our Health and Planet

“The human appetite for animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the human future—deforestation, erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice, the destabilization of communities, and the spread of disease.” Says the World Watch Institute.

But how much in numbers are we truly talking?

The millennium ecosystem assessment shows that meat and dairy products are responsible for:

• 70% of global freshwater consumption

It takes around 147 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of corn. A single beef steer or a heifer can eat 1,000 or more pounds of feed over a few months (since they are often fed corn and soy feed to achieve a speedier growth), consuming large amounts of water that could be preserved instead.

• 38% of total land use

In various nations of the world, you see lands being taken over, Amazonian forests cut down for soy production for cattle, banks of wild streams muddied and trampled by grazers in New Zealand, countries like Greece that were rich in woodlands are now dry and taken over by goats.

• 19% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions

Because cows chew on grass, and their digestive system works differently than ours, they end up releasing a lot of methane into the air and atmosphere. So, the more meat-eating humans, the more cows, the more methane, the more greenhouse gasses, and the worse it will be for the planet.

A scientific study that was done also indicates that the long-term consumption of red meat, and specially processed meat, is associated with an increased risk of mortality, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, colorectal cancer in both women and men.

But this isn’t the only source to share such information.

Dr. Marco Springmann from the Oxford Martin School, says: “Imbalanced diets, such as diets low in fruits and vegetables, and high in red and processed meat, are responsible for the greatest health burden globally…”

All of the above data show us that this lifestyle is extremely harmful to our health and for the planet, as it’s not sustainable. As the world population increases, the tendency is for the demand of meat production to increase, which could mean that we are looking at an unavoidable worldwide point of no return.

Watch this video for a quick 3-minute summary.

How a Vegan Lifestyle can Change the World

According to the recent 2016 Oxford study, a vegan diet could bring various benefits, such as:

• Save 8 million lives by 2050 – The study concludes that almost half of the avoided deaths would be due to the reduction of the consumption of red meat as the other half would be a result of an increased fruit and vegetable intake as well as calorie reduction causing fewer people to be obese or overweight.
• Save money on healthcare – About 700 to 1.000 billion US dollars.
• Avoid climate-related damages – Which would have otherwise cost 1.5 trillion dollars.
• Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2/3 – By adopting vegan dietary guidelines we could cut out 70% of these emissions which would bring an economic benefit of as much as 570 billion US dollars.

To summarize on the greenhouse gases matter, Nick Hewitt, Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry in the Department of Environmental Science at Lancaster University says “The biggest lifestyle choice you could make to reduce greenhouse gasses is to stop eating meat. It’s hard to think of another single lifestyle change we could make that would have the same effect.”

Bringing Happiness to the World

We have enough scientific evidence supporting the numerous problems within the animal-based product industries, as well as we are aware of how it negatively affects our health, our environment and the animals themselves. For those of you who comprehend this and are asking yourselves what you can do now, the answer is simple — Take action! Be the example, and exclude meat products from your plates, choose vegetarian and vegan options, bring awareness to your friends, family, and colleagues. Your actions will bring about a ripple effect, that will turn our collective reality into one free of suffering, full of environmental restoration, better human and animal health, which inevitably brings about greater feelings of joy, purpose, and love. Happiness takes courage and effort, so the Tibetan monk and former scientist, a true master of happiness and compassion, humbly makes a plea— he asks that we become vegan like him.

Blessings to all.

More from Aska Barros:

• Tiny Homes — The Biggest Life Hack
• Minimalism – How to Change Your Life When Everything is a Mess

Sources:

• 6 Animal Species With Strong Family Bonds – One Green Planet
• The secret ingredient to a happy life? Going VEGAN: Tibetan Monk dubbed ‘world´s happiest man’ says eating meat is the reason we feel unfulfilled – Mail Online
• Key to lasting happiness is a vegan diet, says ‘happiest man in the world’ – The Telegraph
• The Secret Of Happiness Revealed By Harvard Study – Forbes
• Veggie-based diets could save 8 million lives by 2050 and cut global warming – University of Oxford
• Health Risks Associated with Meat Consumption: A Review of Epidemiological Studies – Hogrefe
• What Would Happen If an Entire Nation Stopped Eating Meat? – Vice
• The Water Footprint of Food – Grace Communications Foundation