Don Bennett

I have made it my life's work for the passed 26 years to understand what is the optimal diet for humans. I have found no one, I repeat no one, who, in the long term, does better, physiologically, eating an animal-based diet vs a plant-based diet. I have known many people who switch to a plant-based diet because they hear that it's healthier, only to find their apparent health "deteriorating". Understand, the longer one has been on a diet that isn't health promoting, the longer it takes to clean out and rebuild a healthy body once you adopt the diet nature intended. During this time, you usually feel worse before you feel better.

What can cause you to feel worse for a *prolonged* period of time? Cooking your plant food, lack of B12, unhealthy plant food (grown on non-nutritious soil), and feeling deprived of the foods you gave up that you "loved", in addition to not getting enough sleep and water, getting not enough or TOO MUCH sunshine and/or exercise, and not having emotional equanimity. When these people mentioned above, stopped the plant-based diet, and went back to their former animal-based diet, they felt better, so they surmised that they require meat in their diet. They made an assumption based on observation.

In my opinion (and everything I say is in my opinion), since we're not living in our "eco-niche", we need to make certain choices based on physiology rather than on observation alone. An alcoholic going through alcohol detox might surmise that he needs alcohol in his diet because not having any feels worse than having some. But an understanding of physiology tells us that in the long run, alcohol will do more harm than good. So will an animal-based diet.

If you want animal in your diet, don't cook it. But that opens up quite a can of worms (pun intended). To combat non-nutritious plant food, try to buy organically grown produce, and maybe consider, as a supplement to a normal diet, one of the green, plant-based powders that are not heated passed 90 degrees (I'm experimenting with "Hydrilla Verticillata - The Calcium Plant" by Vibrant Health, available in health food stores. And maybe consider Nature's First Law's Nature's First Food). To combat possible B12 deficiency, consider taking an under-the-tongue methylcolbolomine form of B12 like "Bioactive-B12" from Enzymatic Therapy available in health food stores. If we were living in our eco-niche we wouldn't need to consider taking these things, but...

To my knowledge, there's nothing you can get from an animal-based diet that you can't get from a plant-based diet. If there is, I'd love to hear about it.