Thanks to John Robbins and Howard Lyman

After studying about the health aspects of the optimal diet for humans for about five months in 2003, I read two books over the same weekend — one by each of these two great men. And before that weekend was over, I had experienced what I call my blinding flash of the obvious when I suddenly concluded, “Oh my God — we’re eating the wrong food.”

John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America and many other fine books. His website is http://www.johnrobbins.info

Nature has provided every species with an optimal natural diet; lions eat other animals; elephants, gorillas and horses eat raw plants. A natural herbivore, humans should be eating nothing but plants — in order to stay in harmony with the rest of the planet. But we have strayed far from our natural diet and nature is having her revenge — by wrecking our health.

Sadly, after 200,000 years on this planet, the human race is the only one of millions of species that has failed to live in harmony with the environment…yet we consider ourselves the smartest of all species.

And even mother nature is having a tough time dealing with the astronomical damage that humankind has inflicted on the earth’s land, trees, soil, climate and biodiversity — with much of that damage being driven by what we have chosen to eat. I first learned about all of this “collateral” damage from these two books by by Robbins and Lyman:

• Diet for a New America by John Robbins and
• Mad Cowboyby Howard Lyman
  

  Howard Lyman, author of Mad Cowboy and former president of Earth Save. His website is http://www.madcowboy.com

Both of these men joined my group of favorite authors long ago and enjoy a great deal of space on my bookshelf. Nature never errs, but humans do…and the errors of our ways were shockingly brought to my attention in those two books. Since then, I have gone on to become the “big picture guy” talking almost equally about all five aspects of global issues that are enormously impacted by what we choose to eat:

• Our health and the corresponding cost of health care
• The delicate harmony of our  fragile environment
• The wasteful use of our finite supply of fossil fuels
• The wasteful use of the limited arable land to feed the world’s hungry
• The needless suffering of 60 billion animals per year that we eat for our pleasure

J. Morris Hicks, the "big picture guy" for promoting the natural diet for humankind

Ironically both of these men have been very active in EarthSave, the organization through which I first met Dr. Campbell, Dr. Esselstyn and Dr. Fuhrman in 2005. John Robbins founded the organization and Howard Lyman has served as its president. Jeff Nelson of Vegsource.com, where I am now blogging twice per week, is its current president.

Continuing with the irony, we initially named our book Healthy People – Healthy Planet until we realized that it was the exact tagline of EarthSave. Simply said, we think alike and we’re on the same path of promoting the best health for ourselves while promoting the best health for the planet. Our book is now titled Healthy Eating – Healthy World and I am very confident that both John and Howard are going to like it.

Thanks again to both of them for making my path of learning so much easier. In one other previous post, I referred to my “blinding flash” and how it relates to the promotion of health, hope and harmonyon planet Earth.

Meet John Robbins in this heartfelt five-minute video.

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—J. Morris Hicks…blogging daily at HealthyEatingHealthyWorld.com

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