Food historians tell us the history of soup is probably as old as the history of cooking. The act of combining various ingredients in a pot to create a nutritious, filling, simple to make meal was inevitable. Healthy and healing soups are part of the cooking traditions in every country.
Try and prepare your soup from fresh, organic, in season, and ideally local ingredients. Whether your ingredients are coming freshly grown from your own garden or you’ve bought them directly from the farmers’ market, making the connection between the food you eat and your local environment is important. The food we eat is part of our cultural identity. Eating local foods helps produce a more resilient and sustainable future, both for yourself and for future generations.
Cook Once - Eat Twice
Cook up batches of your favourite soups and freeze in portion sizes. You will find a plethora of simple creamed soups or more intense bean type stews to choose from on our site. All of them are very affordable even on a low budget. You can add some grains to the bean soups, or serve all of them with fresh salad or steamed greens. Soup, can in fact be a meal in and of itself. This is Bill's absolute favourite.
Marlene’s Week-Night Dinners
Hearty Minestrone Soup
1 cup ditaloni pasta
2 sachets umami instant stock paste
8 cups filtered water
2 cups cooked kidney beans
2 cups cooked borlotti or pinto beans
2 cloves fresh garlic, finely minced
2 onions, diced
2 leeks diced,
4 stalks celery, diced
4 carrots, diced
1 courgette, diced
2 tbsp sun-dried tomato paste
1 jar Sacla vegan tomato pesto
½ tsp. dried basil
1 tbsp freshly grated ginger juice
2 tbsp, tamari or shoyu
3 tbsp nutritional yeast
Instructions
Cook the ditaloni according to the instructions and set aside. Mix the hot water with the umami sachets and set aside. Place a splash or two of water in a heavy soup pot and saute the garlic and onion over a medium heat. When the onion begins to sizzle, add a pinch of sea salt and sauté until translucent, about 3 minutes. Stir in leek and celery, carrot and courgette and sauté for a few minutes. Stir in the cooked beans, sun-dried tomato paste, stock and dried basil along with the vegan pesto. Cover and reduce heat to low. Cook until vegetables are tender, about 20-25 minutes. Add more water if required.
To serve:
Stir in the cooked macaroni, nutritional yeast, ginger juice and tamari. Serve in warmed bowls and enjoy with some of your favourite crackers.
Chef's Note:
I soak all my beans overnight with a small piece of kombu and pressure cook them. For my quick meals for busy people classes – purchase pre-cooked organic beans.
No one really knows when humans started cooking their food, but one thing is sure: every culture did it. For over a million years we have been learning the magic of food and fire. It doesn’t matter if you live in the frozen north or the jungles of the tropics, human beings cook their foods.
Our ancestors discovered that cooking makes food easier to digest, brings out hidden flavours and kills off harmful bacteria. It is a basic life skill and is now more important than ever. As food processing becomes more industrialised, the use of chemicals in the growing, transport and processing has increased. Food has lost much of its nutritional value and is laced with mystery ingredients. It’s time to reclaim the kitchen and know what we’re eating. Making our own food in our own kitchen is creative, empowering and heathy.
As a teacher of Macrobiotics and TCM and a graduate of T. Colin Campbell’s Cornell course in plant-based nutrition, I can assure you that my recipes not only please the senses but are designed to improve personal and planetary health. There is no reason why the foods that are proven to contribute most profoundly to our health cannot be prepared to provide delicious meals. We should expect it.
When nutritionists attend our Macrobiotic Vegan Health Coach programme, they tell us that we have opened a huge window of opportunity for them. Instead of merely offering their clients supplements, they start to teach them how to cook. That’s what makes me excited, getting people back into their kitchens to learn the art of creating delicious plant-based meals.
Marriage made in heaven
As a yoga teacher, I have recently partnered with a few yoga centres to bring you a series of on-going cooking/nutrition classes filled with gems of practical tips and health information. It will be like having me in your kitchen. Each week you will receive the recipe, step by step instructions and shopping list of ingredients. I will have a class assistant who will use the zoom chat box to relay your questions to me as we cook together. I see this partnership as a huge opportunity to take this message to every corner of the globe. We are currently working on the series and will be updating you soon with the launch date.
In the meantime you can learn much from my latest book Go Vegan where you will find information identified by these symbols:
The microscope indicates science
When you see this sign there will be a short note of recent science that confirms the health benefits of a vegan diet. You may be surprised that most of this information has been available for decades. It is heartening that a message that presents such hope and potential to both prevent and manage disease is finally filtering into the mainstream. Veganism is not a fad; it is an important movement towards redefining good nutrition and having an ethical approach to eating.
The tree indicates the environment
This icon represents the environment. For many people the shift to vegan eating is driven by environmental concerns. One of the most important aspects of our food choices is the impact that they have on the planet. It is a fact that some of the most critical influences on climate change and species loss are directly related to what we eat. A healthy diet should be sustainable and benefit all life, human and non-human alike.
The spiral is ancient wisdom
The thoughts and actions you will find under this symbol we call ancient wisdom. We have a tendency to think that ‘modern’ is always best, but this is not always the case. Our collective ancestors prized some traditions that are especially important for living a healthy life. Some of these had to do with food selection or preparation, and some addressed our way of thinking. Remember, there is nothing new under the sun.
It’s not difficult to be vegan
In our combined ninety years’ teaching, Bill and I have high hopes we can all come together and make a better world, a healthy vegan world where humans and non-humans alike live-in harmony. Success can only be achieved through education, understanding and, ultimately, action. Let’s face it, back in the time of Copernicus, most would have thought it impossible if you said that you were going to convince everyone that the Earth revolved around the Sun, rather than the other way around, but it did eventually happen! So, the past teaches us to have hope for the future.
Going vegan is simply a choice you make. You can do it right now. Many people waste a lot of energy pondering this as if it were a complex issue, but the only difficulty lies in making the decision – it’s easy. Remove all the animal-sourced foods and replace with delicious plant-based foods.
When we reflect deeply on our relationship with the outer world, our environment, we realise that we are never independent of its influences. Food is the link between the inside and the outside world. Our Human Ecology Diet is abundant in every vitamin and mineral required for good health, vitality, and longevity.
Our Human Ecology Project encompasses health, ecology, social justice and animal rights. Health is a dominant factor in our life. Health can allow us to fully express our potential, enjoy the simple pleasures of life and make us more resilient to physical and emotional stress. Health is often described as a state of balance but balance with what? The word homeostasis is sometimes used meaning a state of dynamic balance between ourselves and our environment. Below is a short excerpt containing important information on how our immune system responds to viruses. The full article from our Advisory Board Member T. Colin Campbell can be found on the website.
'In the early 1980s, I organized and helped lead a comprehensive study of diet, lifestyle, and disease mortality in rural China and eventually Taiwan, to investigate why cancer and other chronic degenerative diseases localized in geographic clusters.
The findings from this study, when combined with experimental studies of cancer in my laboratory and clinical human studies on heart disease, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, and related illnesses by others, showed that a whole-food, plant-based diet could not only prevent but also reverse these diseases.
Within this study in China and Taiwan, we also investigated the virus hepatitis B (HBV), which causes primary liver cancer, a major cause of death in Africa and Asia. We collected data on the prevalence of people having antibodies and antigens, multiple disease mortality rates, and many nutritional risk factors. Relying only on statistically significant findings, HBV antibody prevalence was highly correlated with vegetable consumption, dietary fiber, and plant protein. In short, more plant food consumption was associated with more antibodies.
Among the exceptionally high number of virus strains, each virus creates its own unique symptoms. But they also share something in common. That is, they invade hosts like us, and our immune system, which adapts for each virus strain, mounts a defense, most commonly by custom-making antibodies for each virus strain.
Given that COVID-19 is also a viral disease, is it possible that this same nutrition could help us improve our immune response?
If so, it is a highly desirable solution that we, as individuals, can control.
In our research, we also found that people consuming more animal protein had fewer antibodies, even in those consuming a very low amount of animal protein. We obtained four sets of statistically significant correlations (plant food factors vs. prevalence of antibodies and antigens, animal food consumption and indicators vs. prevalence of antibodies and antigens), and each supported the same conclusion.
I believe that this consistent interplay of nutrition, virus activity, and disease should apply to coronavirus (COVID-19) as well, especially for older individuals compromised by diseases arising from the same nutrition that decreases antibody formation.
Switching to a whole-food, plant-based diet should lessen the severity of disease symptoms while simultaneously increasing COVID-19 antibodies, a win-win effect. Based on other studies, this effect may begin within days, possibly providing enough time for people not yet infected by COVID-19 to strengthen their immunity.
Furthermore, this dietary practice should be maintained because there are recent but unsubstantiated news reports that some people who have been infected may become reinfected. If this is confirmed, it means being prepared and staying prepared."
Professor Campbell wrote the above article over a year ago. Here is a newly published study from the British Medical Journal that seems to support his idea.
One way to prepare is by strengthening your immune system through diet and lifestyle. You will find many easy, delicious and affordable recipes on our website.
At this point in time veganic sustainable agriculture must become the future. Small-scale farmers are vital to domestic food security and have a guaranteed and growing market for staple crops. The UK produces 24% less food than it consumes and will be in dire straits and under escalating problems without the ability to feed itself.
Over the last 20 years, the UK's self-sufficiency for domestically-grown food has fallen drastically, while yields of its most important staple crop, wheat, have not increased for at least the last 20 years. The UK's ability to feed itself is threatened by “complacency” over the extreme weather driven by climate change and increasing competition for food as the world's population grows.
What's the Problem?
Heavy dependence on imported soybeans to feed livestock and dairy herds with almost 90% of the imports coming from Brazil. The other major issue that requires addressing is the fast-rising demand for protein in China, India and elsewhere meaning competition for soybeans is a significant strategic risk.
Emphasis must be on climate smart agriculture in the short-term, but in the years to come the focus will be on switching crops. As climate change affects commercial crops, alternatives will have to be sought out. For example, in Mexico, the government is looking to varieties of cocoa to replace coffee crops, which may not be suitable to grow by 2025 due to blight and heat as a consequence of climate change.
With the right assistance and packages of better management practice and inputs, switching crops could be an opportunity for smaller farmers struggling with current crops to leapfrog previous performance and become more productive. Moving to adapted crop varieties that are more resilient to climate change is feasible.
What's The Solution?
Another impressive and inspirational example over the last few decades are farmers in Niger who have managed the natural regrowth of native Faidherbia trees across 5m hectares. The Faidherbia fixes nitrogen in the soil, protects fields from wind and water erosion and contributes organic matter to soils when its leaves drop. Compared to conventional farms in the country, yields of maize in these agroforestry systems can be doubled and farmers in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Zambia are taking note.
Small scale farmers growing amazing produce to feed the world, YES PLEASE... I am going to be one. The solution is at hand, everyone can be a part of reversing climate change. It's a very exciting prospect. Our Human Ecology Projects wish is to fund a small scale operation on veganic farming so everyone can get involved.
The debate about agriculture and nutrition has become centred on the conflict between organic agriculture and the GMO/agribusiness approach. There are several issues at stake: the direct health effects of chemicals in the food supply, the capacity of different farming methods to feed the world, and the continued viability of soil resources.
What Kids Know About Food
Many children think of food simply as manufactured goods. A recent British study of 1,000 school children aged between 5 and 11 showed some very strange ideas about the origins of their food. Only one out of every three (33 percent) knew that pork comes from pigs . . . And 4 percent thought that pigs were the source of potatoes. Three in ten (28 percent) did not know that carrots grow underground. When we have spoken in some schools, the level of disconnect between what is eaten and where it comes from is seriously distorted. We have heard that food is “yucky” if it was grown in dirt and that it is “made at the store” or “in a factory.” (These last statements, sadly, ring true.) and yet the young are interested in the state of the environment. They simply don’t connect it with food.
In a recent UK study, it was found that 82 percent of youngsters aged 7 to 14 rated learning about green issues as very important, putting it ahead of science, history, IT, and art. Around 62 percent wanted to learn more about wildlife and nature, and 47 percent want to learn more about where food comes from. Almost all the children were worried about people damaging the planet. An American poll with a sample of 500 preteens showed that 56 percent felt that the world would be irrevocably damaged by the time they grew up. to help, we can educate children to avert and repair environmental damage. The connection between food and the environment is a practical place to start.
Reclaiming Earth Wisdom
When any organism (in this case, man) offends the natural order, there is an account to be settled. This is not a moral directive from an angry god; this is simple cause and effect. When we eat as if life matters, we honour all relationships between animals, soil, plants, the ocean, and the air, and ourselves.
It is difficult to point to the exact moment when we began our steady pull away from knowing about our food. The growth of urban areas and the domination of urban culture happened slowly over several decades. The mass marketing of our food and the erasure of seasonal or regional eating has moved us into a nutritional grey zone. The food in Amsterdam and the food in St Louis begins to look, smell, and taste the same. It is a dream come true for the food industry.
All this has happened at the expense of the soil we depend on. As industrialized agriculture grows it continues to leave destruction in its wake. Rivers, aquafers, and lakes become bereft of life and simply toxic dumps for the chemical waste of disastrous farming. The damage is not only done to the soil but to those who work on it.
The True Cost Of Food
The modern consumer enjoys low prices and apparent choice, through the scavenging of environmental resources and cheap labour. This wasteful, exploitive system undermines environmental sustainability and food security for us all. As local soil resources diminish, reliance on chemical fertilizers deepens. The resulting expense drives smaller farmers out of business and reduces biodiversity. This is the true cost of our present system and is not reflected in the price of the food. to discover the true cost of food, the environmental damage needs to be factored in as well as the direct and indirect subsidies and related health costs. The purchasing habits in the wealthier nations are bankrupting the economies and environments of developing nations.
If consumers are uneducated around how food is produced globally, how can we make sensible decisions? If schools accept sponsorship from fast- food companies and allow junk food to rule the vending machines, how are children to know? We should promote “food literacy” in school and at home.
It is difficult to point to the exact moment when we began our steady pull away from knowing about our food. The growth of urban areas and the domination of urban culture happened slowly over many decades. The mass marketing of our food and the erasure of seasonal or regional eating has moved us into a nutritional grey zone. The food in Amsterdam and the food in St Louis begins to look, smell, and taste the same. It is a dream come true for the food industry.
All this is happening at the expense of the environment we depend on for our life. As industrialized agriculture grows it continues to leave destruction in its wake. Soil, rivers, aquafers, and lakes become bereft of life and simply toxic dumps for the chemical waste of disastrous farming. The damage is not only done to natural resources but to those who work on it. This is damage that ripples out from the fact that we seek cheap food, even if it is supplied on the back of human misery. We can most effectively change this through our daily food choices – it is up to us.
Health, food and our planet alongside my love of animals are at the heart of everything I do on a daily basis. Since I was old enough to remember, my love of food and cooking has brought me the greatest joy. I became interested in food at a very young age. I grew up in Glasgow, Scotland, and pleaded with the local fruit and vegetable shop to let me work there. He wouldn’t hire me until I was twelve years old because I wasn’t tall enough to reach all the shelves. I loved to work there among the grains, beans and vegetables. I guess my future was already making itself known to me.
Food brings people together. Food should taste great, provide us with optimal health and satisfy our appetite. I do believe that food can be our best medicine, hence my unfailing desire to teach everyone who crosses my path that health and healing truly start in your own kitchen.
Changing your diet
My passion is to demonstrate that making delicious and nourishing healthy food is achievable. I find it exciting to create new recipes and train chefs and home cooks utilising my seasonal menus and cooking skills, incorporating the five tastes and my understanding of macrobiotics. Changing your diet always means finding replacements for less healthy options. I want to share with you healthier and tastier alternatives to whatever you desire. You will find the recipes on this website are easy and affordable. In fact, all our clients tell us that they have saved upward of 60% on their food bills since eating our Human Ecology Diet. I use an array of plant foods that are whole and natural and prepared with just the right mix of condiments, fresh and dried herbs, and mild spices to create robust, satisfying delicious flavours.
Dieting is out - healthy eating is in
I don’t consider this food to be a ‘diet’. This is simply healthy, tasty cooking. It gives all of us the advantage of creating a harmonious relationship with our environment whilst ending the suffering and death of the animal kingdom – an important focus in my four decades of teaching. As a long-time healthy vegan, my work brings me the greatest joy, and to share this message with as many people as I can is my life’s mission.
Veganism is not new
The ideas that drive the vegan approach to living are not new. For the centuries since the times of Pythagoras, thousands of thoughtful people have questioned the use of animals for food. Those concerns have usually been moral considerations about killing sentient life, but concerns for health and our relationship with nature have been considered as well. As winner of the Nobel Prize Albert Einstein said, “Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution of a vegetarian diet.” That evolution has arrived, and it is veganism.
Famous people who stopped eating animals include Leonardo da Vinci, Leo Tolstoy, and two other Nobel Prize winners – George Bernard Shaw and Isaac Bashevis Singer. You don’t have to be a Nobel Prize winner to get the message. In present times the sensibility of a vegan diet has spread out into the arts and athletics. The number of professional athletes who have switched to a vegan approach to eating include swimmers, skiers, weightlifters and those in team sports, and include multiple modern Olympians. There is rumour that the word ‘vegan’ comes from the Latin word vegetus, meaning ‘strength of mind and body’. Who really knows? Based on the evidence, it sounds right to me.
My mentors
No one lives in a vacuum. We are all influenced by our experiences, our study and by the people we meet. The following eight people have been my inspiration – all of them wise and trusted teachers who speak the truth. I could in fact write a book about each of their accomplishments alone. They share intellectual curiosity, enormous energy, perseverance and the ability to see the connections between things.
Let me start with the ‘Scottish connection’ – Dr. Dennis Burkitt, who gave me a huge light-bulb moment about dietary fibre. As a young Scottish lass, a mere teenager and constantly constipated, my doctor told me I had a lazy bowel and would have to take laxatives for the rest of my life, or my appendix would burst. I refused to take the medicine and, consequently, guess what? My appendix burst and nearly killed me with peritonitis. I survived, all the wiser but wanting to know why the condition was there to begin with.
Much to the amusement of my friends I took to the library to start learning about diet and health, and I have never stopped learning over these past forty-five years.
Dennis Burkitt was a surgeon and physician – the ‘Fibreman’ who observed the role of dietary fibre while working in Africa. He was also a distinguished researcher and identified Burkitt’s Lymphoma. ‘The only way we are going to reduce disease’, he said, ‘is to go backward to the diets and lifestyles of our ancestors’. Dr Burkitt’s explanation of why I was sick sparked my interest in studying human ecology.
Colin Campbell is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University and the co-author of The China Study, the most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted. Professor Campbell’s research and writing have had the most important single influence on bringing the issues of dietary reform into the public eye. His promotion of a wholefoods plant-based diet added much-needed credibility to the food revolution. He is an inspiration.
John McDougall is the author of The Starch Solution. A physician and nutrition expert who teaches better health through ‘It’s the Food’, he has been studying, writing and speaking out about the effects of nutrition on disease for over fifty years. He is the founder and director of the internationally renowned McDougall Program. Dr McDougall has been one of the trailblazers of the movement away from an animal-based diet, and an outspoken critic of nutritional nonsense for decades. He is the man of truth.
Gary L. Francione is the Distinguished Professor of Law and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy at Rutgers University School of Law. He is an author and leader of animal-rights law and ethical theory, and the abolitionist theory of animal rights. Professor Francione’s advocacy for animals has inspired thousands of vegans to move beyond superficial quick fixes and into the heart of our relationship with non-human life. A revolution of the heart.
Anna E. Charlton is an adjunct professor of law who, along with her partner, Gary Francione, founded and operated the Rutgers Animal Rights Law Clinic from 1990 to 2000, making Rutgers the first university in the United States to have animal-rights law as part of the regular academic curriculum.Anna co-authored Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach and Eat Like You Care with Professor Francione.
Neal Barnard is a physician, fellow of the American College of Cardiology, clinical researcher, author and an adjunct associate professor of medicine at the George Washington University. He is the founder and president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. The work of Dr Barnard has provided important inroads to the orthodox medical community and his is a strong voice in defence of animals.
Michael Klaper, known affectionately worldwide as Dr K, is a gifted clinician, internationally recognised teacher, and sought-after speaker on diet and health. As a source of inspiration advocating plant-based diets and the end of animal cruelty worldwide, Dr Klaper contributed to the making of two PBS television programs: Food for Thought and the award-winning movie Diet for a New America(based on the book of the same name). Dr Klaper teaches that ‘health comes from healthy living’, and he is dedicated to the healing and flourishing of all living beings and our planet.
Bill Tara has since 1967 been an active advocate for natural healthcare and macrobiotics. He was a pioneer in the natural-health movement in the 1960s in both America and Europe. His educational work includes being the founder of the Community Health Foundation in London, and co-founder of the Kushi Institute for Macrobiotic Studies in the 1970s. Bill has been invited to over twenty countries to speak on macrobiotic philosophy, health and environmental issues. (Another accomplishment is that he is my husband!)
All of these incredible and dedicated teachers have written numerous books and articles. Their work will change your life forever.
The China Study
I remember reading The China Study in 2005 and thinking, yes! The world will now change with this book. We are getting there slowly, but too slowly. Please share the work from all of these wonderful humans with family, friends, colleagues and, quite frankly, anyone who has a pulse!
When we are driven by passion and not fear, everything falls into place. When nature is in jeopardy, we MUST take action. All living organisms exist as interconnected parts of the natural whole. No element is superfluous, not even the smallest insect or microbe. This entire system is sustained by natural energy of the elements. With climate change impacting our global environment in so many ways, it seems that nature herself is punishing us for the way we live.
"We often speak of ‘producing food’ but farmers do not produce the food of life. Only nature has the power to produce something from nothing. Farmers merely assist nature." Masanobu Fukuoka
In good health
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
The summer solstice (or estival solstice), also known as midsummer, occurs when one of the Earth's poles has its maximum tilt toward the Sun. It happens twice yearly, once in each hemisphere(Northern and Southern). For that hemisphere, the summer solstice is when the Sun reaches its highest position in the sky and is the day with the longest period of daylight. At the pole, there is continuous daylight around the summer solstice.
Summer Tips
This is the best time of year to lose weight, so choose foods which are easy to digest, eat salads and fresh fruits. Sea vegetables salads such as wakame with grated apple, Arame mixed with fresh greens are a great way to pack in minerals. Use Sweet White Miso to lighten up the taste of your daily miso soup and simply cook with tiny tofu cubes. Macrobiotic Paella is a favourite dish of mine to cook at this time of year served alongside a delicious summer salad. Use spring onions and some parsley for garnish. On the whole our diet should be of a cooler, lighter nature. Foods that strengthen the heart are bitter endive and dandelion, asparagus, whole grains such as rice and bulgur or couscous, and don’t forget to drink lots of clean living water. Dandelion root tea is an excellent tea for strengthening the heart and also aids in digestion.
Summer Solstice Peach Kanten & Sweet Date Cream
Kanten is a Japanese dessert that is somewhat likened to jelly or Jell-O. It is made with agar-agar, a gelatinous substance that comes from several species of dried seaweeds. It’s a macrobiotic classic dessert. Deliciously simple, and simply delicious, this healthy dessert is also packed with the natural fibre found in agar flakes.
Kanten
6 sweet ripe peaches
3 medjool dates, pits removed
1 cup apple juice
3 tbsp agar flakes
Pinch sea salt
Topping
Sweet date cream
Fresh blueberries
Sprig fresh mint for garnish
Sweet date cream
½ cup cashews, soaked overnight
4 tbsp almond milk or filtered water
3 medjool dates, pitted
¼ tsp lemon juice
¼ tsp vanilla
Drain the cashews and place all of the ingredients for the cream in a high-speed blender. Blend until creamy. You may have to stop and scrape down the sides of the blender with a spatula a few times.
To remove the skins of the peaches easily, soak them in boiling filtered water for 30 seconds then transfer to an ice bath. Remove the skins and stones from the peaches and transfer the flesh to a blender. When blended you will have around 3 cups of puréed peaches. Add the dates to the blender. In a small saucepan bring the apple juice, agar flakes and sea salt to a boil, reduce to low and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Pour into the blender and blend to a creamy consistency. Divide into individual serving dishes and chill in the fridge to set. Top with some sweet date cream and fresh berries. Garnish with a sprig of fresh mint. Makes 4–6 servings.
Thank you for your interest and have a healthy and enjoyable summer.
Omega 3, Diet & Lifestyle Factors Influencing Brain Health
Our friend and colleague Dr. Tim Radak is one of our advisory board members of our Human Ecology Project. Dr. Radak has a masters and doctorate in Public Health Nutrition from the leading university for vegetarian science and nutrition, CEPH accreditedLoma Linda University,is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and has worked in the nonprofit sector and academia for over 20 years, authored or co-authored articles related to plant-based diets in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Dr. Radak has interned at the California Department of Health, and the McDougall program and worked in the nonprofit sector including serving as Director of Nutrition for The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
In this latest article, Dr. Radak shares extensive research on Omega 3, diet and lifestyle factors influencing brain health and risk for cognitive disease and impairment and relevance to vegan diets.
Diet vs Supplements
Diet rather than supplementation should be emphasized, with the exception of Vitamin B12, similar to protective strategies for other chronic diseases. Dr. Tanzi a leading neuroscientist at Harvard university believes that “For heart and brain health, there’s nothing better than a plant-based diet.” (Tanzi, 2014). A 2014 International Conference on Nutrition and the Brain concluded with several guidelines including “Vegetables, legumes (beans, peas, and lentils), fruits, and whole grains should replace meats and dairy products as primary staples of the diet” (Barnard, 2014) and a recent review suggested there is mounting evidence in support of plant based diets for reducing or preventing age related cognitive decline and dementia via their neuroprotective effects (Rajaram, 2019). while unhealthy Westernized diets increase risk (Agarwal, 2021).
Dementia & Alzheimer's
Supplements in studies for AD or dementia or cognitive decline have largely been without success or significant benefit, including Vitamin E, D, B vitamins, calcium, copper, zinc, selenium and mixed to low evidenced of benefit for beta-carotene and Vitamin C (Rutjes, 2018; Kryscio, 2017)
In 2019, the FDA cracked down on 17 supplement companies who had false claims for brain health on their labels (FDA, 2019) including vitamins, minerals, Omega 3, herbal products, as well as "nootropics", supplements purported to benefit cognitive function.
And in 2016, CVS drug, who touted an algae DHA supplement that prevents dementia was successfully sued for this deceptive claim and the FDA forcing removal of the claim.
“There is zero evidence from any reasonably rigorous study that any supplement or dietary aid has any benefit on cognitive function or decline in late life,” says Dr. David Knopman at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota (Knopman, 2019). Other concerns about fish oil supplements in particular include adding insult to significant depletion and overfishing of fish stocks and increasing concern regarding sustainability. Pollutants are also a concern. A 2013 study examining children’s fish oil supplements found that every sample contained levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (Ashley, 2013).
Please read Dr. Radak's extensive article and share with family, friends and colleagues. Where you get your information on health becomes even more important day after day. Please trust the pioneers who are our advisory board members, Bill and I are blessed to have all them contributing excellent articles to our resources packs for schools. All of these fine people share their work freely for a healthy world and not for profit. Heart-warming to say the least.
What we eat is one of the most important relationships we have to the environment. It seems that we have forgotten that simple fact. Food is often seen as something manufactured and not a product of nature. We want to shine a little light on what makes sense regarding the human diet and why it is so important right now that we make choices that serve not only personal health but the survival of planet earth.
This short video is the first part of a series we are calling FOOD FOR OUR FUTURE. We are going to start with some of the major changes that have happened over the years to what we eat and why we eat it, the decisions that have taken us into our present nutritional waste land, and how we can move forward toward a healthy future for both human and non-human life.
Migration
From our ancient origins, human life has migrated to almost every location on the planet. We have settled in deep jungles, arctic tundra, deserts, and forests. Our primary concern has always been to find food. It is a matter of life or death. We did not have to concern ourselves with eating locally or in season; we ate what was available. The forces of nature were in charge.
Environments
If there was an abundance of nutritious plants, that was where we focused our efforts; If the soil was poor or the growing season short, we used animals. We discovered over time that out of the 400,000 species of plants there are only about 200 that are safe for us to eat and we focused on those.
These were not decisions we made in a conference hall. They were practical actions aimed at staying alive and creating homeostasis—that life-producing relationship with nature that governs all life.
A big part of our adaption was our ability to alter the quality of the food available to meet our needs. We learned to grow specific foods, cook, preserve, ferment, and otherwise make simple changes in the plants we relied on for our well-being.
Cooking has become a lost art
Consider what a genius trick it was to learn to cook. Cooking allowed us to increase the efficient use of many simple foods to fill our needs. We took the digestive process and made it external.
Cooking allowed us to expand the plants that we could use and increase the nutritional impact of them. It made it possible for us to take cereal grains and beans – the staples of the human diet over at least the last 10,000 years and soften the fibres, making the nutrients more available and easier to digest and metabolise.
Our understanding of cooking and fermenting foods made it possible for us to nourish our gut biome, reducing the amount of energy needed to digest and efficiently utilize a healthy range of vegetables, grains, beans, and other plant foods. You will find over 80 delicious and inexpensive recipes in my latest book Go Vegan. Join us in service for a healthy world for humans and non-humans alike. Thank you.
Animal Agriculture = 87% of Greenhouse Gas Emissions
We should all be concerned about climate change, future pandemics and the devastation that we see globally. Past climate changes led to extinction of many species, population migrations, and pronounced changes in the land surface and ocean circulation. The speed of the current climate change is faster than most of the past events, making it more difficult for human societies and the natural world to adapt. A new report from The Climate Healers reported that animal agriculture is responsible for at least 87 percent of greenhouse emissions. The report – written by our friend, colleague, and advisory board member Dr. Sailesh Rao was published in The Journal of Ecological Society, presenting a counterpoint to the currently accepted numbers.
Fossil Fuels
The burning of fossil fuels is undoubtedly the leading source of human-made Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions today. CO2 is the most powerful human-made greenhouse gas in terms of its radiative forcing, which is the average energy trapped by the greenhouse gas per unit time per unit area of the Earth’s surface, typically measured relative to the base year 1750.
In the absence of active reforestation efforts, CO2 is a long-lived greenhouse gas as it persists in the atmosphere for tens of thousands of years. The Fifth Assessment Report (AR5)[1] of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates the mean radiative forcing of human-made CO2 to be 1.68 Watts/square meter (W/m2). Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound composed of one carbon and two oxygen atoms. It is often referred to by its formula CO2. It is present in the Earth's atmosphere at a low concentration and acts as a greenhouse gas. In its solid state, it is called dry ice. It is a major component of the carbon cycle.
Methane
The next most powerful human-made greenhouse gas, methane, with a mean radiative forcing of 0.97 W/m2, lingers in the atmosphere for an average of 8-10 years before it reacts with oxygen free radicals and also converts into CO2. As such, it is tempting to conclude that a single-minded focus on the reduction of fossil fuel burning to minimize future human-made CO2 emissions is the best strategy to address climate change.
The problems caused by rising global temperatures are predicted to include heatwaves, flooding, food and water shortages and blackouts by mid-century, if urgent action to curb greenhouse gases is not undertaken.
What to do?
We encourage everyone we connect with through our educational short movies, books and blogposts to Go Vegan. Humans do not require any form of animal food to live a long happy healthy life. We can turn over all grazing lands to growing trees, savannah and grasslands thereby lowering the carbon. We must continue to educate at every opportunity to promote the solution which is at hand.
Around 25-30% of the planet is used for grazing animals. Therefore, connecting the dots showing the greatest source of methane and black carbon comes from animal agriculture along with the greatest source of tropospheric ozone, another of the short-lived climate forces is methane. To reiterate, the greatest source of methane is animal agriculture. We CAN control methane that in turn will reduce climate temperatures by adopting a vegan diet.
Whatever the future holds, our love affair with eating animals is, without a doubt, the single largest driver of human-induced climate change. And it's all about what lies at the end of our forks in the developed world. Up to 85% of diseases are non-communicable, meaning, humans are quite literally eating themselves to death and at the same time contributing to global warming.
It's important to note here that farmers are not the problem, consumers are. Farmers respond to consumer demand. This is not something that governments can legislate over, it is something each and every one us has the choice to make each time we eat. We have the power to create a vegan world. I like to remind all our students and clients, we are in this together, we each have our part to play.
Please join us in service for a healthy world for humans and nonhumans alike.
