I learned something this week. If you want to rant, sometimes it’s a good idea to type it into an Appleworks document and leave it on your “desktop” overnight. It gives you a sense of perspective and means that you are less likely to say something you’ll regret in public!

So this post is a very different version from the original, but that’s a good thing!

I also learned that it’s very easy to find something that will support your point of view. Google the subject you want to read about, and there’ll be a million sites with a million points of view, so you’re bound to find one that says what you wanted to hear.

So I might google “the benefits of a vegan diet” and find some very reassuring articles and research which support my beliefs, and if I choose I can then refer to this “evidence” when arguing my point with others.

We don’t like it when others disagree with us, do we? Or is it just me? I have had someone disagree with me twice in an online forum this week, stating that she has read that vegan and/or raw diets are not sustainable or optimally healthy and that there is no evidence that our ancestors ate that way.

Of course, my hackles rose and I started typing up my rant ready for publication.

Then I had second thoughts.

I realise that I have read much to support my point of view, both online and in books. She has done her own reading, which obviously comes to a different conclusion.

We can try to make assumptions on how our ancestors lived, how early humans ate, from archaeological finds. We can make assumptions on what the human body is designed to eat based on the fact that our digestive system is similar to a herbivore’s and totally different from a carnivore’s. Some people use religious texts as their “proof”, but that has no influence on me, as I do not subscribe to any organised religion.

So I have decided that in future I will keep it simple. When someone asks me why I am vegan or eat a lot of raw food, I will keep the answers personal. My personal reasons cannot be refuted, argued or questioned (although people will undoubtedly try).

I am vegan because I believe it is good for me, I eat a lot of raw food because I feel great, I lose weight, I have more energy, my conscience is clear as I am not contributing to the mass slaughter of sentient animals, and I am helping the earth as I have a smaller “footprint” (I read today that becoming vegan is better for the planet than buying a hybrid car).

Even though I believe, totally, that the first humans must have eaten a raw plant diet, those first humans didn’t keep journals, so we will never know how they really lived. I believe that the perfection of nature means that the food we are designed to eat is the fruits of the trees, unadulterated – our bodies are perfectly designed to digest these foods as they come, straight off the plant, not cooked to death, or processed into something that can’t really be called food. I cannot believe that humans are the only species on the planet that have to cook their food.

Oops, I’m off again – better stop now before this post gets to be a mile long!