The Natural Human Diet

The Natural Human Diet

People often wonder why there is so much suffering on planet Earth. It's actually easy to understand. The reason is the law of cause and effect. The more suffering we cause, the more suffering we experience. Pain and violence that we cause rebounds on us as disease, which causes more pain, violence, and suffering. Obviously, one area in which we can greatly reduce the amount of suffering that we cause is our diet. A diet that causes suffering, causes more human disease. This is borne out in the statistics.

Another little understood rebound effect is not only disease, but natural calamities and disasters, which according to the wisdom of the ages, is the Earth itself throwing off accumulated stress. The increase in natural disasters since 1940 is highly correlated with animal slaughter and meat consumption. Although causation is difficult to prove scientifically, this is worth pondering intuitively. Worldwide, we slaughter over 73 billion animals annually.

The arguments for a vegetarian diet have been proposed from many viewpoints. In this article I want to take an entirely different approach to the choice of diet, not just a statistical or a moral approach, but an investigation of what is natural for the human intuitively. I think it will be interesting and revealing to look at this subject from a completely different angle.

There's a lot of confusion today about what we should be eating. There are hundreds of weight loss schemes, there are crazy fad diets, there is intentional deception for profit. It's no wonder that people are confused, because we've never really considered, in a systematic way, what is natural for us to be eating to sustain ourselves.

I'm going to suggest that you ask yourself a few simple questions that will bring complete clarity to the whole field of diet and nutrition. The questions will seem silly, but they will reveal deep truths about food, life, and common sense. So here is the first silly question:

Are you a shark?
Can you see yourself jumping into the ocean and living like a shark, stuffing fish in your mouth? Does that seem natural to you? Would you try to live like that? Everyone I have ever asked this question to has said “no,” I would not do that. I would say you are right, it's not natural. So what does this mean?

It means that animals from the ocean are not a natural food for humans, and therefore we should not be eating them. This is simple common sense. Stuffing fish in our mouth while swimming in the ocean is totally foreign to human life. If you think about it, it's crazy. We would never do it. So that means we should not be eating any animals living in the ocean. Those animals are natural foods for sharks, not people.

Another silly question: Are you a fox, or a wolf? 
Can you see yourself sneaking up at night on a henhouse, silently crawling in and pouncing on a chicken, biting it through the neck, killing it, and then dragging it off to rip it apart with your teeth? Do you relish the idea of ripping through the feathers, tearing out the intestines, eating them, and lapping up the blood? Would you do that? Would you live like a wolf? Think about how carnivores live and then decide for yourself whether you would like to live like that. If you wouldn’t, then birds and their eggs are not food for you. After all, it's quite dangerous to climb trees, then shimmy out on a thin branch to rob the eggs from a nest. Would you do that? Does that seem natural to you? If that does not appeal to you then the eggs of birds and the bodies of birds, are not food for you.

Another silly question: Are you a lion or a tiger?
Can you see yourself chasing down a large mammal, a cow, a sheep, an antelope, or a goat? Can you see yourself ripping through the neck of the animal with your teeth, to bleed it to death? Can you see yourself ripping open the underbelly of the animal with your fingernails and your teeth and eating the internal organs and muscles of the animal, again, while lapping up the blood? This is how carnivores live. You can watch them on Wild Kingdom sometime. Would you live like that? Would you live like a lion or a tiger? If not, then mammals are not food for you. It is not natural for humans to live like that.

When you use common sense, it's easy to see that humans are not carnivores, we are not omnivores by any stretch of the imagination. There is no omnivore’s dilemma. That is pure insanity. It's plainly obvious that we would not live like that.

What are the natural foods for humans?
The natural foods for humans are fruits and berries, vegetables, nuts, seeds (like sunflower seeds, cashews, seeds from grasses (e.g., grains like wheat, rice, corn, barley, & dozens more) and seeds from legumes (peas and beans), melons, like cantaloupe and watermelon, pumpkin and its seeds, tubers and taproots such as potato, sweet potato, carrot, beet, radish, turnip, Jerusalem artichoke, and other root vegetables. These are all the foods of trees, bushes, and vines which are easy for us to pick. We can grow them where we live and not have to forage far and wide. In past golden ages, we lived primarily on fruits and nuts.

Children are naturally interested in eating grapes, pecans, and other simple-to-eat foods. If you give a small animal like a baby rabbit or chick, to a child, they will naturally play with it. They won't try to eat it. Give it to a dog, and the dog will eat it. We are not dogs, we are not naturally carnivores.

When my father was growing up he had a pet chicken, and like all children he loved his pet. One day, the family had his pet chicken for dinner. He was devastated as any child would be, because it is natural for children to love animals, not eat them. From that day forward he would never eat chicken. Children make friends with animals and you can't eat your friends. It was too bad that he didn't translate that lesson to all animals, it would have changed his life dramatically.

I once visited a dairy-hatchery that produced eggs. I took a wrong turn and ended up in the warehouse. In the warehouse were large cardboard drums, considerably larger than a 55 gallon drum. Dozens, if not hundreds of drums were filled with suffocating chicks. These were the male checks that were not going to produce any eggs, so they were summarily dumped into large cardboard drums to starve or suffocate to death. When you see what goes on behind the scenes, like at a hatchery or an animal slaughterhouse and processing plant, it certainly shocks any sensitive person who sees it from wanting to consume unnatural foods. Chicks are sometimes added to pet food or processed into animal feed, even for animals like cows that would not naturally eat them. Sometimes they are used in fertilizers. Human cruelty to animals is currently in the extreme.

What about milk? Is dairy a natural food for humans?
It seems unlikely that we would naturally suck on the udder of a cow. So let's investigate the nature of dairy and how it came about. In olden times, most people lived in villages. Many families had a cow, sheep, or a goat, or maybe a few of them. Children often cared for and loved the family animals.

These animals would naturally reproduce and produce milk for their young. The mother would continue to produce milk beyond the need of its young. Civilizations learned to make use of the excess milk and found that it could be turned into ghee, butter, yogurt, and cheeses. Sometimes the milk was consumed without processing, but not all cultures are milk tolerant. No mammals consume milk after weaning. 

65-75% of the world's population experiences some degree of lactose intolerance because they can't produce the lactase enzyme. Different races and cultures respond with different degrees of intolerance.

1. Africans, African-Americans, and Afro-Caribbeans: 65-90%
2. Asians: 70-95%
3. South Asians (Indians, Pakistanis): 50-80%
4. Native Americans: As high as 80-100%
5. Northern Europeans (Scandinavians): typically below 20%

Lactose intolerance can be reduced by bacterial fermentation that produces the lactase enzyme that breaks down lactose into simpler sugars. Also, cheeses in which the whey is removed (aged cheeses) are better tolerated. Hard cheeses and cheeses coated with wax can be kept without refrigeration in cheese cellars or cool, dry environments, extending their usefulness.

The modern day practice of homogenizing milk is disastrous for the body because the cream (fat) is micellized into extremely small fat molecules under high pressure, which can be directly absorbed into the bloodstream without proper digestion. It's like a foreign substance entering the bloodstream and it causes a multitude of problems.

Pasteurization also denatures milk, removing many valuable properties that are destroyed by heat. This is why if milk products are to be consumed, they are best consumed fermented. Other hard to digest foods such as beans also benefit from fermentation. Many cultures do not consume beans without fermenting after cooking. No one has ever been harmed or died from consuming foods fermented with lactobacillus bacteria. Yogurt and sauerkraut are examples. Lactobacillus bacteria are ubiquitous and are used to make sourdough bread, and are also the basis of soil regeneration, because they out compete dangerous, putrefying bacteria.

Spiritual Considerations

Some people approach diet from a spiritual point of view, most people know that different religious cultures recommend various dietary restrictions. We can examine the original, ancient religious texts to see what they have to say.

Old Testament Bible - Genesis 1:29,  "Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. (i.e. a meatless diet). “Meat” is sometimes translated as “food.” This simple injunction clearly prescribes the ideal diet for our food. This plant-based diet is the most wholesome diet recommended by every tradition originally. Later inclusions of animal flesh were exceptions, probably made for political and economic reasons, which is the case today. Read the labels, look at all the unnatural additives added to our food. People get addicted and attached to their food choices and refuse the natural diet without any examination of their social conditioning. Business interests, both current and ancient, had a vested interest in promoting an unnatural, more compromising diet. I grew up with those same conditionings.

Genesis is recognized by all three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It is the first book of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) in Judaism, the first book of the Christian Old Testament, and one of the holy scriptures in Islam. It is therefore the first statement for dietary practices in all three religions. It does not include the slaughter of animals or consuming their flesh. It's hard to imagine a slaughterhouse in the garden of Eden.

Later, all three religions departed from a pure vegetarian diet by allowing the slaughter of various kinds of animals. These departures were typically endorsed by interpreters and commentators, and though allowed, were not required or advised. It should be noted that the consumption of blood and blood by-products is strictly forbidden in all three religions: Christian (Acts 15:29), Judaism (Leviticus 17:10-14), and Islam (Quran (Surah Al-Baqarah 2:173 and Surah Al-Ma'idah 5:3). This is an obvious contradiction. It’s difficult to see how you could eat meat or fish without consuming blood and blood by-products. It’s simply not possible. To be true to the precepts of all three religions, a vegetarian diet would be ideal, since all religions recommend wholesome food and forbid unclean food and food containing blood.

Essene Gospel of Peace: The Essenes (the community that Christ was born into), believed in living in harmony with nature and consuming only unadulterated foods in their raw, natural state – a vegan or strictly plant-based diet, raw and uncooked. Even their bread was unleavened and uncooked. It was made by soaking grain, sprouting it, crushing it, and drying it into a bread-like wafer in the sun. 

Hindu and Buddhist: The ancient scriptures of Hinduism, including the Vedas, Upanishads, and Bhagavad Gita, promote the concept of ahimsa (non-violence), which influences dietary choices that cause no harm to sentient creatures. Adherence to the principle of compassion and non-harm (ahimsa) produced a strictly vegetarian diet that includes ghee and fermented dairy.

It would be safe to say that all of the spiritual traditions mentioned above could adopt a vegetarian diet and not be in conflict with any aspect of their traditions, as many followers have already done, for health, ethical, or environmental reasons.

Ascended Masters, Sananda, Saint Germain, and others. Current teachings.
Current texts include “Unveiled Mysteries,” “The Magic Presence,” and many more. Here’s some excerpts.

“We do not want any misunderstanding about these conditions which the human side of mankind generates; for the raising of animals to kill for food is wrong from the beginning to end.”

"Age after age Nature is continually throwing back upon man, through cataclysmic action, his own iniquity; and She is stronger than any opponent because She is the Direct Creation and Outpouring of the Ascended Masters. In this way, man's own discord destroys and buries himself, and Nature in Her Pristine Purity goes on serenely expressing Her Immortality. Notice the many civilizations that have been built upon this Earth, and the fact that Nature has so completely obliterated all traces of man's work in them—until only in tradition and myth is there the faintest record of some of these activities.”

"Man, if he has attained Wisdom, which is the constructive use of all knowledge, may have the perfect cooperation of Nature's gigantic forces, and through them make his accomplishments Immortal also. He must stop the stupendous slaughter of animals for food and the business of raising them to kill." 

Scientific Evidence

• All carnivorous mammals have a snout. Humans do not have a snout.
• Carnivores have pointed teeth for ripping and tearing. Humans have teeth for slicing and grinding.
• Carnivores have claws, usually curved with sharp points for tearing and ripping. Humans have broad fingernails.
• Carnivores have extremely strong digestive acids. Humans often cannot digest flesh, which languishes in the body for days, undigested and putrefying.
• Carnivores have a short intestinal tract for rapid transit.
• Humans have an intestinal tract five times the length of the body, about 30 feet.
• There are so many basic biological differences between humans and carnivores that it is scientifically invalid and impossible to consider humans to be carnivores or omnivores.

SUMMARY

In summary, it seems that our human diet should be based on love, which is the highest expression of human life. Love of nature, love of life, love of others as ourselves, even to love our enemies was once incorporated into all spiritual traditions. They all taught love and compassion as the highest of spiritual values. Our human diet is no exception and is also supported by common sense, as well as scientific reality. The bottom line is that the more we love, the better our life becomes.

There is something to be said for physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual purity. They are all tied together with love as the bond. If we establish ourselves in loving compassion and radiate it wherever we go, we will help to create the new Golden Age.