Is our tendency to "dietary shrinkage" trying to tell us something?

By Leslie A. Cook, vegetatingwithleslie.org

Do you believe that intuition is a valuable tool for anticipating events? I do! And I think that sometimes intuition works beyond our personal lives. Before you start to think that I'm getting into fortune-telling or something, let me explain.

Have you ever anticipated a trend? I have, and I suspect a lot of you have as well! So maybe there were "hints" in the environment or in the culture, and we didn't even realize we were picking up information that fed our intuition.

What if intuition turns out to be an early warning system of sorts? Let's look at the example of our changing food culture...

Who Is Howard Lyman? Cattle Rancher Gone Plant-based

By Don's Early Light, Donald J. Brix, Ph.D. 

In case you don’t know, I won’t keep you in suspense a moment longer. Howard Lyman is a former Montana cattle rancher, now approaching elderliness. He grew up on his family’s ranch, a sizable operation which he eventually took over and made larger. A spinal tumor that came close to paralyzing him resulted in his beginning to question his way of eating, a super-sized version of the high-fat Standard American Diet.

Your biggest contribution to sustaining the environment: your plant-based diet

By Don's Early Light, Donald J. Brix, Ph.D.

Our Brain: All It's Cracked Up to Be?

By Leslie A. Cook, vegetatingwithleslie.org

A brain is an interesting thing. I was just thinking about brains the other day. My thought process began this way:

I took a walk with my husband. Along the way, we saw a dead rabbit in an area where we had seen a feral cat the evening before. His reaction reminded me of times we had watched nature movies together. If one animal hunted another to kill it, he turned off the TV. Of course, I don’t like to see animals killed or hurt, but I wondered about his reaction. I said, “It’s natural. It’s just the way life works. It’s designed that way.” He said, “It’s a stupid design.”

That generated something of a paradigm shift for me. It’s the way nature works: it’s always been that way. I never questioned it. Whether or not there is divine intention behind it, sustaining life requires taking life, at least in this universe, even if it’s “just a plant.”

Everett Dirksen Again

Eat Less Meat (dem's fightin' words)

By Don's Early Light, Donald J. Brix, Ph.D.

John Robbins’ website, The Food Revolution, recently passed along a list of six claims the (red) meat industry is promulgating, trying to stem Americans’ diminishing consumption of its product. Robbins, probably justifiably, calls the six statements “lies.” Here’s the list with a few observations.

Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution Day 2015: An Addendum

By Leslie A. Cook, vegetatingwithleslie.org

Do Food Products' Labels Tell Us Anything?

Have you ever noticed that there’s lots of “nutritional” information on all the items in the center part of your local grocery store and NONE on the real foods around the periphery of the store? Of course, this information is required on the commercially created food products in the center of the store, and I imagine we assume it’s not needed for the real food. I mean, a carrot is a carrot, right?