Rant From a Concerned Member of Society

After a conversation with my parents about food and general nutrition, I finally had "the moment". Society's attitude towards food and nutrition is genuinely F#@!ed. I don't understand how we can have social norms that are so destructive to our health. My parents (who are very healthy people in general) could not understand my choice to eliminate meat from my diet. They couldn't get past the idea that is ingrained in their mind that you need meat to live and that you can't be healthy without it. People don't understand that there are so many sources of nutrition for your body that if you plan correctly, you don't need animal protein. I have no problem with meat or people that eat it. I just think that I'm at a point where I can get my nutrition elsewhere and get better results.

Society only looks at food on surface level. They don't go behind the curtain to understand that it is fuel that is a necessary part of life, not just a 5 times per day compulsion that needs to be satisfied. Somewhere along the line eating stopped becoming a survival instinct and became an obsession. We have become addicted to fatty and salty processed foods. You may think addicted is a harsh word, but I don’t think it is. I am guilty if it too. Even though I cut these foods out of my diet, just eating them once causes my body to rationalize eating them again. That is the very nature of an addiction, rationalizing behavior that is inherently destructive. People need to start seeing food for the elements that make it up. Until you can look at your lunch and see a carbohydrate that will keep your energy up, a protein that will help build and maintain muscle, and vegetables and fruits that supply the vitamins and minerals necessary to carry out bodily functions instead of something that tastes good that will make you full, you will never truly be healthy. These are habits that are being passed down to the next generation.

I just can't stand that I'm the one who is making a change to better myself and society is looking at me like I'm the annoying health nut. Mental illness (mainly anxiety disorders and depression) has been rising exponentially in our country’s youth. It took me overcoming my own struggles with anxiety and depression through lifestyle changes to actually understand how clear the link is. As we have shifted towards processed foods mental illness has spiked. I think it is our body’s way of crying out for help by responding to our malnutrition.  That is a huge problem and the time to change it is now. It is time for health conscious people to be in the majority, not the minority. I am all in.