very interesting thread...
my wife and i recently did a trip out west where we hung out in montrose, co for a bit and somehow got into eating "healthy" and visiting some health food stores there. i ended up doing a fast and then drinking kombucha and eating mainly vegetables afterward and i felt better as a result.
i have noticed that my gut would hurt after eating and sometimes it would be bad enough to really get my attention. i've noticed that meat has changed over the years and the biggest thing to catch my eye lately has been the big ass mongoloid chicken breasts from walmart. the meat is no longer fibrous like it used to be, but rather has the texture of chewed bubble gum and is a bitch to cut, even with a sharp knife. i'm not going to go down a rabbit hole about how jacked up our food has become, but suffice it to say that after spending years thinking vegans were a bit nutty, i'm actually seeing merit in a lot of their ways of thinking. but before any of y'all go high-fiving, i am going to disclose that after weeks of better eating, i did break down and pop open a can of SPAM this week....yeah, old habits die hard...just like my intestines...
i spent over 20 yrs in the military and working offshore and overseas where most of what i had to eat was prepared by people who hated their jobs and the food was the cheapest and nastiest that could be served without anyone going to jail for it. i'm definite that all those years of eating crap did some damage.
anyway...doing the overlanding stuff where we are hiking and exercising a lot has given me an opportunity to clean up my eating and the last trip really got me focusing more on vegetables. the wife is a great cook and cooks a lot healthier than i do, so she has started doing better dishes, like taking red peppers and grilling them in the oven and then using them as a meat substitute. take a ciabatta roll and put a little hummus on it and a red pepper and its a great sandwich. also do the same with a portabella mushroom. we're finding more and more recipies daily and there are plenty of great ideas on this thread, so i'm not reinventing the wheel, but totally get where there is definite benefit to plant base eating.
i'm not promoting anything one way or the other...just noticed that cleaning up my eating has made me feel a lot better and it is easy to eat like that while camping/traveling. salads and raw veggies are great and really quick since i don't have to fire up a stove for it. i know processed food is a real health issue along with foods with lots of preservatives, etc. some folk may be ok with it. i think i did ok eating garbage until my body finally had it's limit. if anyone else feels like crap after eating a meal, especially a meal with a lot of processed stuff, maybe try a more vegan way of eating. i just saw where tyson chicken is sending their chicken to china to have it processed and shipped back to the US. logically, i cant see why chicken grown here would be shipped to china for processing then shipped back. there was a huge deal about china making similac baby formula and putting gypsum in it as a filler. basically mothers were feeding their babies water with sheetrock powder in it. and we wonder why everyone in the US is on meds.
ok vegans...after making fun of y'all for so long, you definitely have my attention now!
