INPUT/OUTPUT = "You Are What You Eat"
Problem: There is a lost correlation between input and output. In every aspect of existence, of culture, there underlies input and output, cause and effect. You’ve heard the cliché’ “You are what you eat.”, which is another way to say input/output, cause/effect. The beautiful benefit we all love to enjoy is freedom and it’s a touchy subject to me personally. What is freedom? Is it more so a privilege or a responsibility? Benefit or liability? While there exists the freedom to eat whatever the heart desires and the mouth allows, we are losing sight of our privileges and responsibilities. We have a responsibility to our self, our neighbor and environment in every aspect of existence. What you input into your body is the number one factor to causing physical sickness and dis-ease to your body. I am talking about the root cause to the problem so that we can know the solution.
Food is your medicine, therefore there is absolutely a science to it, having a cause and effect reaction. We should all be very knowledgeable and well-versed about the science of what we put in our bodies. The cold medicine is not the cure to the cold. Flu vaccines are not the prevention and/or cure to the flu. Being out in the cold, may make you uncomfortable, but will not give you a common cold. We are not infants, so people sneezing around us and on us, may make us uncomfortable or even disgusted, but it is not going to give us the cold or flu. It is said that over 100 types of viruses cause the cold and I say well if we know the cause then we should have the solution. Are they one of a hundred viruses that magically appear out of nowhere to go viral? During certain seasons? These are viruses that are being consumed in your diet. Think of them as being like a time release sickness, that’s why they come (go viral) at certain times/seasons of the year. Aside from viruses and bacteria being consumed in the diet, we are just simply eating a lot of foods that do not chemically react well with our bodies.
Allergies are very common to millions of Americans, but also very unknown to millions of Americans. The most common food allergies are: peanuts, tree nuts, wheat, soy, milk, egg, seafood (including fish and shellfish), and corn. Some of these are labeled on packages and some aren’t. These are just the common ones, but with the wide variety of foods out there are more that will be uncommon to others but very real and common side effects to you. The symptoms may resemble other common sicknesses, like the flu or cold, but in fact just be reactions to the allergy, intolerance, insensitivity or whatever it may be that you are consistently putting into your body. There are a wide range of foods and substances in foods that could affect us ranging from seeds, fruits, veggies, animal meats like chicken, beef and pork to artificial dyes, sulfites, acids, arsenic and other chemicals. Insensitivities or intolerances are not considered allergies, because they are not life threatening; although they are every bit as capable of causing changes to your mood and energy, along with sicknesses and diseases to your body when consumed consistently or in abundance. The symptoms don’t have to take place immediately, as it could be days or weeks so determining where it came from can prove to be difficult if you consume a wide variety of foods within a couple of weeks. I was very familiar with allergies growing up, kept an Epi pen, suffered symptoms of allergies all through childhood. I knew I was allergic to peanuts based on the allergic sensation it gave me when I smelled it. I didn’t know the intolerance or insensitivity I had to milk existed, because the test didn’t reveal it, but my body was revealing it. The TV ads showed images of muscular toned teenagers and young adults and claimed, “Milk does a body good.”, but whenever I would drink milk, my airways would become restricted and I had trouble breathing, began wheezing and having asthma attacks. I also had an episode where my esophagus was inflamed and irritated to where it was hard to swallow, I was having migraines and a runny or stuffy nose all the time, and I went to take an allergy test and it revealed I was allergic to tomatoes, lemons and strawberries, which never came up on the childhood tests, so it was shocking. I loved strawberry lemonade and had just made some from scratch with about 2 lbs. of fresh strawberries and some strong organic lemon juice to go along with my tomato pasta sauce dinner, so it made sense that why my esophagus was inflamed, and I was experiencing all those symptoms. Aside from the sugar, which is a toxin to the body as well, I was consistently consuming these foods that I didn’t even know I had an intolerance, insensitivity, or allergen to. I knew that by removing animal flesh from my diet, I no longer experienced the cold or flu. Furthermore, I learned that by removing allergens, intolerances, and insensitivities from my diet then I would no longer suffer from symptoms such as migraines, bloating, and other sicknesses and dis-eases to the body.
Interestingly, the allergy or sensitivity is caused by the proteins found in these foods. My co-workers and peers have always joked saying I don’t eat anything but leaves and oats, but I just try to stay disciplined to not eat things bad for me just because it’s more convenient. As my New Year’s Resolution in 2002, I became a vegetarian and quit eating animal flesh. Ever since then, I am constantly asked “What made you become a vegetarian?” It is such a deep question with a deep answer needed that if you don’t have time to hear the entire story, all I can tell you is that it felt like it was against nature. Like it was not the right thing for me to do, for myself, my neighbor and the environment. At the time, I spent a lot of my free time reading the bible. I thought “Why did everyone in my family have heart disease and diabetes?” and I began researching and reading all the information on heart disease and diabetes and it was linking back to the animal flesh in their diet is what they had in common. I was also very disturbed seeing a friend’s snake eat a mouse alive, while it was trying to escape for its life. I also thought about the people in third world countries with not enough food to eat, let alone have enough meat for everyone to eat to survive. They are surviving without meat, off the bare minimum. Did the snake have to eat the mouse alive to survive? Do we have to eat animals to survive? The answer is no.