What You DON'T KNOW About Vegan & Vegetarian Diets
I get many questions, but this one is almost always one of the first things people ask me OR assume about me: Are you a vegan or vegetarian?? To their surprise my answer always is: ABSOLUTELY NOT. Why you ask? Well, simple answer is really in another question I follow up with: “Would you ever make your cat or dog be vegan? Do you think they would survive?” Their facial expression is quite interesting something like: Are you out of your mind?? Well, few years ago, I had to cat sit for a family who was strictly vegetarian. I had known the cat, Xena, for many years, and she was always a happy jolly Chubby cat. The couple told me before, Xena is not feeling well, not eating, losing weight…. We think she may have cancer!! Well, the first night I stayed with this Xena, I went to feed her. If you can believe it, someone had created a vegetarian cat food!!! My thought: Are they crazy?? No wonder she is not eating. I had a few cans of tuna with me for my consumption, knowing I was going to a vegetarian house. I opened one and gave it to the starving cat, she devoured the entire can in seconds and started following me around everywhere I went. So I continued this diet for the week I was there. Xena was back to her normal self and full of energy and playful. I won’t tell you the earful they heard from me when they came back. I told them that they were actively killing their beloved cat. Needless to say the shame and embarrassment on their faces, but the guilt stayed with them for the rest of 5 years that their happy meat eating cat lived thereafter.
Do you see where I am going with this?? As much as we like to be sophisticated humans, we are very much omnivorous mammals like Dogs. Which means we NEED meat and vegetables for survival.
Why is this so important to YOU especially with respect to Health and Cancer? Your immune system has these wonderful cells that are like soldiers on the battlefield. More like real hard core navy seals. They are there to find, fight, catch and destroy anything and everything that is trying to harm your body. So imagine you send these navy seals to war zone malnourished and hungry. How do you expect them to fight? We evolved as Omnivores so our bodies are designed by nature to function by utilizing natural bio-available proteins and carbs and fats. Nearly every process and function in your body is performed by some sort of protein (enzymes, hormones etc). How do you expect your body’s major machinery to function without its basic parts and fuel? It may partially function and really try to get by with the scarce resources you are providing for some time. After a while, it will fail. The outcome? You guessed it: Weakness, Illness, cancer.