The World Peace Diet: Eating For Spiritual Health And Social Harmony

Profiting from Destruction / 193
New America, Mad Cowboy, Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating, The
Food Revolution, and many other books and articles. The information
is available, and any of us who are interested can do the research and
discover that a diet based on animal foods is a primary driving force
behind the most serious environmental problems we face: the ongoing
extinction of species, rain forest destruction, air and water pollution,
loss of water resources, global warming, dependence on foreign oil, proliferation
of disease, topsoil loss, drought, forest fires, desertification,
habitat destruction, and even war and terrorism. This information is not
publicized, however, and our understanding of it is suppressed, because
eating animal foods is the elephant in our living room that we all pretend
not to see—unrecognized behavior that destroys our family but is
taboo to confront or discuss.
Our institutions reflect the mentality required by our omnivorism.
Part of the problem is that the toxins used in industrial agriculture are
highly profitable for the wealthy and privileged elite that dominates our
cultural conversations through its power over the media, government,
and education. The military-industrial-meat-medical-media complex has
and offers no incentive to reduce animal food consumption. Poisoning
the earth with massive doses of toxic chemicals and petroleum-based fertilizers
is highly profitable for the petroleum and chemical industries.
These toxins cause cancer, which is highly profitable to the chemicalpharmaceutical-medical
complex. While the world’s rich omnivores
waste precious supplies of grain, petroleum, water, and land feeding and
eating fattened animals, the world’s poor have little grain to eat or clean
water to drink, and their chronic hunger, thirst, and misery create conditions
for war, terrorism, and drug addiction, which are extremely profitable
industries as well. The richest fifth of the world’s population gets
obesity, heart disease, and diabetes, also highly profitable for industry.
The transnational corporations profit from animal food consumption, as
do the big banks, which have made the loans that have built the whole
complex and demand a healthy return on their investments. The system
spreads relentlessly and globally, and while corporate and bank returns
may be healthy, people, animals, and ecosystems throughout the world
fall ill and are exploited and destroyed.