I have always enjoyed eating and cooking. Which may have been one of the driving forces for me to get a degree in dietetics and become a Registered Dietitian. But since I have been home full time for the past five years, I haven't spent any time in a hospital working with the sick. I haven't given ordered instructions to anyone while they lay half delirious on a bed. And I doubt that my instructions given to those people made an impact at all.
Last month as I was working to keep up my certification, I read a book called the CHINA study. It has changed my mind on quite a few things. This MD wrote about his research with the NIH and how intake of animal protein could grow cancer cells in the body. It is easy to see that the intake of protein is high in America.
Most of my friends would say that we eat healthfully in our household. You can find loads of fruits and veggies, meat is found in scarcity. You could not find cheese puffs or candy bars. But we do have animal protein every day....Reading this book made me think more about eating to keep yourself disease free....rather than just eating to curb poor health. I am beginning to think we need to have less animal protein in our household.
This article was distressing to me. Last week as my hubby was in the hospital for a OP surgery I waiting in the family room with this magazine.....and I remembered visiting Africa and the poverty of food there. As Americans of affulence or poverty, we have become so unhealthy. Even our poor people in America are obese! We can see the unhealthfulness of obesity, but perhaps we can't see the cancer we are growing due to the food choices that we make.
So how do these two things I have read link to each other? We KNOW that eating animals takes more of our resources and costs the environment more, so is it a stretch to say can give of ourselves by eating less animals and taxing the environment less? Can we give more of our designated grocery bill to starving families in third world countries? Can we eat less to share more of God's love with our universal Body of Christ? How can I help my family make an impact here and now? I wonder...and will keep pondering this issue.