Diet

We are all adults.
We live in an increasingly obese world. The numbers are frightening, depending on which set of figures you use, better than half of us are obese. There is a health crisis tsunami about to hit our health system as the obese begin to need ever more medical intervention in order to mitigate the physical effects of their obesity.
It doesn't need to be this way.

We are all adults.
We are able to make reasonable and informed choices about what goes into our mouths. We are supposed to be in charge of our lives. There is a choice to be made in the consumption of high fat, high carbohydrate, high salt and high sugar "foods".
In this I completely agree with the junk food industry. They argue, and quite reasonably so, that they are not forcing people to eat their product. The junk food industry argues that obesity is a choice. 
Given this is the case, we must make a choice.
The evidence for the argument I am about to present is all around us. Indeed the evidence for my argument is us.
We can choose to patronize the multi-billion dollar multinationals that are the junk food industry. Or we can choose not to. 

Do you want to make choices that result in your premature death?
Do you want to spend the last years of this abbreviated life feeling like shit?
You can imagine just how much fun it will be to spend your last years struggling to walk, struggling to move at all. The shortness of breath. The operations you will have as they slowly whittle you away as your toes begin to die due to inadequate blood. The struggle to find clothes that fit. The sex you won't be having. These are all the fun things you want to have before your heart finally quits on you at 60. These are the fun things you want? Aren't they? 
Didn't think they were.

Do you want to make choices that have you a vigorous 90 year old?
Do you want to spend the last years of your wonderful life feeling fantastic?
Do you want to make the last years of your life the best years?
Years spent walking, making love, reading the great books, achieving goals?
Thought you would.

The key to living that wonderful, active, creative life is diet. 

The practice of Metta towards ourselves means that we eat properly. It means that we eat the foods that we evolved to eat.
Metta means that we exercise self control and be adults. I watch documentaries such as The Men Who Made Us Fat and The Men Who Made Us Thin. I research diet and read a lot of the available literature from government websites.

One opinion offered in The Men Who Made Us Thin is that the behaviour of the junk food industry is identical to that of the tobacco industry. They both market a product that has no positive outcomes. There is no safe level of consumption of either tobacco or junk food. Heavy consumption of junk food has an identical outcome  to heavy smoking...premature death. Both industries market themselves as desirable, trendy, chic, the behaviour of the successful. Both industries engage in pervasive marketing of their product. Well Big Tobacco did in the West until we saw the lie and the health outcomes. It still does so in the Third World. 

If we can accept that Big Tobacco sells a poison, why do we struggle with accepting that Big Junk Food does the same?


To practice Metta is to not eat junk food.
To practice Metta is to eat a balanced diet of vegetables, fruits and lean protein. Lean protein can and should come from a variety of sources. It should not be solely derived from beef, pork, goat or lamb. Chickpeas and in fact most legumes are lean protein. So is seafood. Bread, which has gluten in it is a source of protein.

The vegetables, should, as my wife never tires of telling me, be the colour of the rainbow. Eat lots of different vegetables and include leafy greens in your choice of vegetables. To practice Metta towards ourselves is to practice what is known to be sound nutrition. Fads come and go, proper nutrition is timeless.