Plant Based Food Quotes
1 “As far as food is concerned, the great extravagance is not caviar or truffles, but beef, pork and poultry. Some 38 percent of the world’s grain crop is now fed to animals, as well as large quantities of soybeans. There are three times as many domestic animals on this planet as there are human beings. The combined weight of the world’s 1.28 billion cattle alone exceeds that of the human population.
While we look darkly at the number of babies being born in poorer parts of the world, we ignore the over-population of farm animals, to which we ourselves contribute…[t]hat, however, is only part of the damage done by the animals we deliberately breed. The energy intensive factory farming methods of the industrialised nations are responsible for the consumption of huge amounts of fossil fuels.
Chemical fertilizers, used to grow the feed crops for cattle in feedlots and pigs and chickens kept indoors in sheds, produce nitrous oxide, another greenhouse gas. Then there is the loss of forests. Everywhere, forest-dwellers, both human and non-human, can be pushed out. Since 1960, 25 percent of the forests of Central America have been cleared for cattle. Once cleared, the poor soils will support grazing for a few years; then the graziers must move on. Shrub takes over the abandoned pasture, but the forest does not return.
When the forests are cleared so the cattle can graze, billions of tons of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere. Finally, the world’s cattle are thought to produce about 20 percent of the methane released into the atmosphere, and methane traps twenty-five times as much heat from the sun as carbon dioxide. Factory farm manure also produces methane because, unlike manured dropped naturally in the fields, it dies not decompose in the presence of oxygen. All of this amounts to a compelling reason…for a plant based diet.” Peter Singer, Practical Ethics
2 “Look into their eyes and tell them “I’m sorry, you have to die, but I need to eat”. Look into their eyes, and tell them “I know there is an abundance of plant based foods I could eat, but I would still rather eat you”. Look into their eyes and tell them “I know I don’t NEED to eat you, but I am going to pay someone else to murder you anyway” Look into their eyes and tell them “I’m sorry you lived a short enslaved, abused and tortured life, but I don’t care because I am selfish” Look into their eyes and tell them “ I love my cat/dog, but your life doesn’t matter as much” Go ahead, take a look into their eyes and tell them that!” Jenn V Keller-Lowe
3 “Avoid food products containing ingredients that are A) unfamiliar B) unpronounceable C) more than five in number or that include D) high-fructose corn syrup” Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto
4 “As I learned about the consequences of my food choices and as I recognized that I didn’t have to eat animals, and that eating animals caused the animals to suffer, it caused an enormous footprint on our planet, and it wasn’t healthy, it made since to go vegan. And, it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, and I think most people who’ve decided to go vegan share a similar experience. It’s very empowering. And, when I went vegan I actually started eating a wide variety of foods I had never tried before. Different ethnic foods. You also start combining things in different ways, you start becoming more creative in the kitchen. But I went vegan just because it seemed to make sense, and it was aligned with my own values, because I didn’t want to support this system that was so abusive to animals, and wasting and squandering so many scarce resources on our planet. And it was also healthier, so it was in my interest to eat food that was plant-based instead of animal-based. Living a vegan lifestyle makes a lot of sense.”
Gene Baur
5 “How did we forget these lessons from the past? How did we go from knowing that the best athletes in the ancient Greek Olympics must consume a plant-based diet to fearing that vegetarians don’t get enough protein? How did we get to a place where the healers of our society, our doctors, know little, if anything, about nutrition; where our medical institutions denigrate the subject; where using prescription drugs and going to hospitals is the third leading cause of death? How did we get to a place where advocating a plant-based diet can jeopardize a professional career, where scientists spend more time mastering nature than respecting it? How did we get to a place where the companies that profit from our sickness are the ones telling us how to be healthy; where the companies that profit from our food choices are the ones telling us what to eat; where the public’s hard-earned money is being spent by the government to boost the drug industry’s profits; and where there is more distrust than trust of our government’s policies on foods, drugs and health? How did we get to a place where Americans are so confused about what is healthy that they no longer care?”
“What made this project especially remarkable is that, among the many associations that are relevant to diet and disease, so many pointed to the same finding: people who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease. Even relatively small intakes of animal-based food were associated with adverse effects. People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease. These results could not be ignored. From the initial experimental animal studies on animal protein effects to this massive human study on dietary patterns, the findings proved to be consistent. The health implications of consuming either animal or plant-based nutrients were remarkably different.”
T. Colin Campbell, The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health
6 “The best way to minimize your exposure to industrial toxins may be to eat as low as possible on the food chain, a plant-based diet.” Michael Greger, How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease
7.“KF: Are you saying that if one changes their diet from animal-based protein to plant-based food that the disease process of cancer can be halted and reversed? TCC: Yes, this is what our experimental research shows. I also have become aware of many anecdotal claims by people who have said that their switch to a plant-based diet stopped or even reversed their disease. One study on melanoma has been published in the peer-reviewed literature that shows convincing evidence that it is substantially halted with this diet.”
Kathy Freston, Veganist: Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World
8. “There are really only two “rules”: 1. Build your meals from plant-based foods, especially vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and legumes (beans, peas, and lentils). 2. Ensure complete nutrition with a supplement of vitamin B12” Neal D. Barnard, The Vegan Starter Kit: Everything You Need to Know About Plant-Based Eating
9. “Based on a study of eighty-nine thousand Californians, flexitarians appear to cut their rate of diabetes by 28 percent, good news for those who eat meat maybe once a week rather than every day. Those who cut out all meat except fish appear to cut their rates in half. What about those eliminating all meat, including fish? They appear to eliminate 61 percent of their risk. And those who go a step farther and drop eggs and dairy foods too? They may drop their diabetes rates 78 percent compared with people who eat meat on a daily basis. Why would this be? Figure 1 Is it just because people eating plant-based diets are better able to control their weight? Not entirely. Even at the same weight as regular omnivores, vegans appear to have less than half the risk of diabetes.37 The explanation may lie in the difference between plant fats and animal fats.” Michael Greger
10. “The most important thing is that you find a diet and lifestyle that meets your personal needs and goals. If you feel inspired to eliminate animal foods completely from your diet to make a positive impact on animal welfare, on the environment, and on your own health, then go for it. But if you believe that it’s not realistic for you to completely forgo animal foods, there’s still a plant-based eating style that can improve your health and reduce your eco-impact. The bottom line: There are no hard-and-fast rules about the plant-based eating style; it’s up to you to decide your own.” Sharon Palmer, The Plant-Powered Diet: The Lifelong Eating Plan for Achieving Optimal Health, Beginning Today
11. “You probably grew up learning that milk is the best source for calcium and that meat is the best source of protein because of very successful advertising campaigns associated with these foods. These campaigns were so effective that people now confuse food with nutrients. It’s such a pervasive idea that even proponents of plant-based diets sometimes fall into this trap and compare soymilk directly to dairy milk, or beans directly to meat, to prove their nutritional value.” Matt Frazier, No Meat Athlete: Run on Plants and Discover Your Fittest, Fastest, Happiest Self
