We are avidly reading The China Study. This book is making sense to me. I have been angry this week, wondering why both George and I have had to deal with cancer. We have both lived what I have thought of as very healthy lifestyles, and there's no genetic predisposition or markers in either of our families. When it happened to me, I was ready to be resigned, thinking "oh well, sometimes shit just happens". But now that George has had this diagnosis, I am saying "wait a minute - this is happening too much, this is not right". So I've been reading, trying to figure out what could possibly be the cause. It is definitely something in our Western lifestyle that is causing the rates of cancers such as breast cancer, prostate cancer, and lymphoma to skyrocket, because the doctors can trace out a pattern of these diseases in Northern Europe and the United States. Is it toxins in our environment, stress, electromagnetic radiation, genetics, the food we eat or some kind of lethal combination of all these things? I do know one thing: there are many things I cannot change but I can change the food we eat. Ever since I was diagnosed with breast cancer I have been eating organic food, but still eating meat and dairy products (just organic ones). This apparently was not enough since George was eating the same food. Now we are seriously thinking about making the switch to a vegan diet. Am I ready for tofurkey? Or maybe just lots of healthy whole grains and vegetables? I don't want to think about what this house will be like if we start eating beans all the time. As George said tonight, "peanut butter and jelly is vegan, so if all else fails, we can eat that!"
I did order two vegan cookbooks from Amazon today, so stay tuned!
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Vegan has it's attractions but what about the synthetic products we are always exposed to? My family history has all of my grandparents living to their 80's and 90's on a high fat, high protein diet with lots of meat. But, they were not driving, and enclosed, in cars with synthetic upholstery, living in vinyl clad houses with plastic carpet, drinking sodas from aluminum cans lined with synthetic coatings, with water piped in non-natural materials and so forth. I also challenge the idea that you can be too confident about eliminating complex synthetic chemical compounds from your diet by going vegan. The chemicals in our environment have been proven to be very capable of getting into the food chain whether it is vegan or omnivorous. Some veggies are particularly good at picking up crud and retaining them for your dessert, despite being certified "organic." I want you both to be healthy - I am just not sure that I would blame diet as a primary causal factor.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, I can loan you a Vegan cookbook I like! It has lot's of good recipes I enjoy. But I am not a vegan.
ReplyDeleteHave one or both of you spent time back east growing up? I don't recall where you guys grew up. I have been off and on reading a book called Living Downstream (http://www.steingraber.com/) which goes into the env. and the inherent problems with the Cancer Registry. She does talk about the large number of superfund sights particularly out East. I'll loan it to you, probably very easy for you guys to get through it considering geo's diagnosis.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I grew up in a town that has a superfund site in Massachusetts. Check out http://epa.gov/superfund/programs/recycle_old/pilot/facts/r1_05.htm . Thx for the pointer to the book - looks like an interesting read! I can remember doing an environmental science report in the 7th grade and getting information from a PR guy at GE about how environmentally sensitive GE was. Those fuckers...
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