Taken as a whole our system has grown up based on teaching people dysfuctional
and destructive ways of life. If we have what the economists called "rational self-
interested consumer" ... if that was a reality, most of the junk would never be made
or sold and no one would be working and the economy would completely collapse
probably inside of a week.

I saw these two documentaries, by the guy in the baseball cap, right. I thought both
were pretty interesting, but it really bothers me having been interesting in and followed
the nutritional research for many years I am pretty offended by doctors, one in particular,
based up around Santa Rosa, CA Dr. Gregor making claims that cancer is caused by
eating meat and you can cure anything just by going on a plant-based diet for two
weeks.

These documentaries are never questioned because they are not real heavy-duty
commercials for health products, but they do sell books and consultations. They
call Alzheimer's diabetes of the brain, high-blood pressure diabetes of the circulatory
system or kidneys. Use the dripping of blood of someone who ate a diet high in
plant anti-oxidants on cancer cells that died subsequently as proof that anti-oxidants
from planet can cure cancer. We cannot ask Steve Jobs about that anymore.

The claims made in these documentaries, and the ones that counter than and then
the ones that counter the counter claims made mostly sound logical and some real
facts are thrown in there for good measure, but this kind of entertainment is what
makes vegans rabid, and it is based on the same stuff that makes Republicans rabid
or any extreme form or belief system turn rigid and closed minded and sometimes
violent.

So, after all that, I am most sympathetic to the "eat food, not to much, mostly plants"
slogan from Michael Pollan, but I would love to see some real research and scientists
on opposite sides arguing and grounding each others' arguments rather than these
clowns who may even be right but because of the simplemindedness and popularized
appeal of their arguments kind of turn my stomach a bit agreeing with each other.

There is simply too much money and power at stake for us to question our system and
bring about some kind of change - either right or wrong change. The industries will
not allow it, and they are capable of doing almost everything.

One thing that might actually be a motivator in the right direction for a lot of our
current problems is to socialize the costs of these things ... so for example ...

1) If we had universal health care for all funded by government taxes, the rich and
powerful would have an incentive to pay less taxes by demanding our food
system to now make us sick, or to build in taxes or fines for those things we do
that cost all of us lots of money that the people who do them do not pay for.

2) Make it illegal to dump pollution into the air, water or ground and to destroy
the environment which would incent companies and people to restore forests
lands and the ocean so that global warming would reverse by itself.

Instead of having all that money as payoffs for even more money behind ruining
the environment and making people chronically ill, it just makes sense to remove
that money and bad incentives and aim it at doing positive things.

CPA - I like your two proposals at the end of your blog post. BTW, the docs were not made by the guy in the baseball hat - at least not the big dude film-maker in the baseball hat who everyone thinks about with that description. I don't think he advocates following a plant-based diet.