How’s Rocco, the meat-loving cowboy who Dr Oz put on a vegan diet for 28 days, doing? After being on death’s door only a month ago, he has embraced the vegan diet and has no plans to change back to his old ways, thanks to his new lease on life. Rocco says if he can do it, anyone can. Watch his transformation here:
I recently discovered Dr Michael Klapper, a doc who really knows his stuff when it comes to nutrition — and what the body does and doesn’t need to survive (and thrive).
He believes strongly that proper nutrition and a balanced lifestyle are essential for health, rather than merely treating the symptoms when someone becomes ill.
Check out this video, from the doctor himself, that’s packed with information, insights and the truth about foods we eat that are killing us. You can also find out more about him here.
Dr Oz has dished up just the medicine for rotund Rocco, a cowboy whose diet of animals and junk food has put him on death’s door.
What is the medicine that is Rocco’s only hope? To follow a vegan diet.
A scan of the cowboy’s plaque-jammed heart, which resembles that of an 85 year old’s, shocked him so much that he’s giving up animal products to save his life.
“I can’t look back, I’ve gotta look forward,” Rocco told Dr Oz. “I’ll make the best out of a bad situation.”
While Dr Oz did well highlighting what many of us know (eating animals and animal-derived products is a death sentence), he misses the point by introducing meat back into Rocco’s diet during week four of the 28-day challenge he set for the cowboy.
The doc also recommends Rocco eat soy products, but should have mentioned soy needs to be fermented before consuming.
Despite these two not-so-wise recommendations, Dr Oz has put the attention squarely on the overwhelming benefits of a vegan diet — and that can only be a huge positive for people, animals and the planet.
Watch the show here…
One of my favourite quotes is from Hippocrates. He said: “Our food should be our medicine. Our medicine should be our food.”
If you look closely, wholefoods actually mimic the body parts they most benefit (thanks for the heads up Don Tolman!). An avocado for instance? It resembles a pregnant woman and inside grows a seed, which, when planted takes nine months to grow to a ripened fruit. Celery? Bones. Walnut? The brain. Beetroot? Blood. Tomato? The heart. Carrot? The eyes, of course! Makes sense right?
Hippocrates also said to eat when you’re sick is to feed your illness. Even ancient cultures instinctively knew that fasting was an important part of life.
To celebrate Hippocrates’ wise words, here are some other golden nuggets, from the lips of some of the most intelligent thinkers of our time, that are bound to get a person to ponder:
“Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.”
—Albert Schweitzer, French philosopher, physician, and musician
“There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties… The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.”
—Charles Darwin, naturalist and author
“Even in the worm that crawls in the earth there glows a divine spark. When you slaughter a creature, you slaughter God.”
—Isaac Bashevis Singer, writer and Nobel laureate
“Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.”
—James A. Froude, English historian
“If you visit the killing floor of a slaughterhouse, it will brand your soul for life.”
—Howard Lyman, author of Mad Cowboy
“In fact, if one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people.”
—Ruth Harrison, author of Animal Machines
“The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined. If beef is your idea of ‘real food for real people,’ you’d better live real close to a real good hospital.”
—Neal D. Barnard, MD, President, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
“Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places.”
—Leonardo Da Vinci
“As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap the joy of love.”
—Pythagoras
“It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living, by its purely physical effect on the human temperament, would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.”
—Albert Einstein
