Healthy at 100

Healthy at 100 is a book by John Robbins that I have recently started to read. It's not only about living to be a hundred and beyond, but about doing so and being functional and healthy still. You see, although people are living longer in our modern world, on average they aren't very functional or healthy. In fact, you may say that in stead of living longer, we are dying longer. In a quote from the book, "A century ago, the average adult in Western nations spent only 1 percent of his or her life in a morbid or ill state, but today's average modern adult spends more than 10 percent of his or her life sick." The book is full of statistics and facts based on research. As usual, John Robbins is superb at collecting his facts. But basically it is about research that has been done of four different societies around the globe that are known to be long lived. For the most part these cultures are in pristine locations with plenty of clean air and fresh fruits and vegetables. Yes, their diets are mostly vegetarian, but the book is not about that. In fact, it isn't even about promoting the lifestyles of these cultures. In general these people are very poor, and have little or none of the modern conveniences that we enjoy. Realistically, what John Robbins wants to do with the book, is change our mindset about how we look at getting old. Some of the biggest factors mentioned in the book, are how respected the elders are in these society, compared to our modern industrialized view of being decrepit and ugly. The other stuff in the book, like the differences in diet and exercise are, in my opinion common knowledge, and of no real surprise. The only thing holding people back in these aspects of health are our own decisions. But our society's mentality towards aging effects us greatly too. Look at the media today, and you mostly see commercials, television shows, and movies with young "attractive people". Especially where women are concerned. How often do you see an average out of shape guy with a more attractive woman? And even things like birthday cards talking about being "over the hill". There are not many positive terms used to describe older people, but plenty of negative ones, like "geezer," "old fogey," old maid," "dirty old man," and my favorite, "old fart." In the cultures mentioned in the book, there on no negative terms for getting old. In fact, everything about being older is so revered that the elders often lie about their age and say they are older than they really are.

John Robbins makes a point of being very honest in the book. Even though he is a vegetarian he tells about the meat and dairy that they eat. It is a very small part of their diets, especially compared to what our society consumes, but not enough so to omit. He could have focused on how old some of these people claimed to be, but he made a point of showing that research had revealed that many of them were 20 or 30 years younger than they said they were. But the point wasn't really to show that these people lived to be well over a hundred, but to show that even if they were only in their 90's, they were still very fit, healthy and active. Most of the time the researches couldn't keep up with these elders, as they went about their everyday lives.

So, what am I getting out of this book? That, yes, clean air, a good diet and exercise are important to live a long and healthy happy life, but so is attitude. Not just our own, but of our society. We need to be surrounded with love and positive energy. Getting old should not mean, a loss of health and vitality. It should mean a gain in wisdom and respect. Not too surprising either, I hope.

Is this important?

Being vegetarian

When people find out that I'm vegetarian, they always ask why. They seem to think that I can give a simple ten second answer, and I'm pretty sure they expect to not agree. But more and more often, I'm finding that people are more receptive to the idea. They may not think that they can do it, but they still seem to agree that it would be healthier. So, I want to take a little time and explain some of my reasons on my blog.

First of all, I don't limit myself to any one reason, or just a few of them. There are a lot of reasons, and all of them work for me. I figure, with so many reasons, it's obvious that being vegetarian is the right way to go. The toughest part in starting this list is deciding where to start and what to include. Since most people seem to respond to the idea of the personal health reasons, let's start there. When it started for me, back in 1993, I was in college (I started late) and most of my information came from word of mouth. The first, and by far best source of information I came across that included facts based on research, was "Diet for a New America", by John Robbins, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He's the son of Robbins, from Baskin Robbins Ice Cream. Who better to talk about such a topic, right? Well, it turns out he knows quite a bit. His book is a wealth of knowledge. For example, one of the first questions people ask is, "where to you get your protein." The answer is, from pretty much everything. Anything that has ever lived, needs protein to survive and grow, even plants. To support this answer, I would like to impose on your sense of logic. Look at the largest land animals on this planet, elephants, hippos, cows, and many more. They are all pretty much herbivores (vegetarians), and nobody wonders where their protein comes from. And, in the typical American diet, about twice the recommended, or required amount of protein is consumed. So, no real problem there, you just need to eat a good variety of foods to make sure you get all of your nutrients.

Something else I learned from the book, although is was only a theory at the time and has since been proven, is that even though American's consume more dairy than any other culture we still have the highest incidents of osteoporosis. Does that make sense, after all the marketing from the dairy industry to tell you how good milk is for us, especially against osteoporosis? The reason, is because our bodies utilize calcium in processing animals proteins, so most of it never makes it to our bones.

I'll move on to another aspect of being vegetarian now. The environmental impact of eating meat. To raise livestock for meat, we utilize literally tons of resources, like water, corn and soy. If we took the soy and corn that we use to feed livestock and gave it to humans, we wouldn't have people starving in the world. Eighty to ninety percent of both crops go towards feeding livestock. And we get such a small return on that investment, about ten to one. Meaning it takes ten pounds of these crops to get a pound of meat. And the type of farms that these animals are raised on are destroying the environment around them. Thousands of animals crammed together eating a food they weren't designed for (corn). That's right, cows bodies become acidic and sick from all of the corn they are fed, because they are meant to eat grass. But they don't grow fast enough from grass, and they aren't fat enough then either. (Another reason eating meat is not healthy) And all of these animals create a lot of manure, which ends up contaminating a lot of ground water systems and could be causing birth defects in the local communities.

In countries in South America, rain forest are being destroyed to create more farm land for raising beef and livestock. This land isn't very fertile, because the fertility of a rain forest is mostly in the plants and animals, not the ground it's on. So once it's wiped out, it's gone for good.

Moving right along, I hope I haven't bored you yet. Let's get to what is probably the least important factor for most, the treatment of the animals. Animal husbandry used to be more about caring for the animals, and letting them feed on the local grass until they naturally reached maturity and were ready for slaughter. If this were the way things were still done, I could be more accepting. It wouldn't bother me so much if someone chose to still eat meat. But this is far from how things are done now a days. In most cases the animals are not allowed to roam, in fact, most are prevented from moving much at all. They are given diets that are not natural to them, and cause their bodies to become toxic. To counter this we give them tons of antibiotics just to keep them alive until they are ready to slaughter. By that time, most of them are close to death anyway.

I could go on for quite a while, but the fact is, anybody who has read this far is probably already interested, and I'm preaching to the choir. All others probably didn't get past the title. If you are interested, and want a quite easy way to get your feet wet on this information, Diet for a New American also comes in a video format that you can watch on YouTube.

I hope you think this matters.