Thank you for your enormous responses to this series.  I’m extending it to four parts because of your countless emails.  One writer said that, “Too many Americans are stuck on stupid and clogged colons.  They shifted from good foods to junk foods and never stopped eating until they lost control of their bodies.  Most Americans could be contenders on the TV show “Big Losers.”

One reader said, “Bless you for speaking up. I am 82 years old and have been a vegetarian for the past 60 years and enjoy wonderful energy, health and use no medications.”

Another writer said, “I tried vegetarianism for several years, but lost 20 pounds and felt weak.  I had to return to eating meat and haven’t recovered the weight or strength.”

One fellow wrote, “My dad ate anything he wanted and lived to 95 so that shoots your vegetarian theory all to hell.”  To that statement, if you are one of the lucky lotto folks with genes to withstand any culinary abuse, count your blessings.

One writer said, “God didn’t make bad foods for humans to eat.  We created processed foods, so don’t eat them.  Also, you can’t get enough protein on a vegetarian diet alone.  You need meat and eggs for your protein.”

In fact, as the speaker in the video stated, “There are 600 million vegetarians worldwide.  India leads with 399 million vegetarians more than the rest of the world combined.”

As a vegetarian for 41 years, I enjoy plenty of protein from rice and beans, corn and beans (succotash), tempeh, tofu, soy, nuts, legumes, peas and such fruits as bananas. Notably, it’s highly efficient protein that the body digests with ease.  If you can imagine swimming a half mile every morning six days a week, running a mile, pedaling a cycle 20 minutes uphill and lifting weights for 45 minutes—total of two hours of hardcore physical activity six days a week—you realize that I gain enough protein from vegetarian cuisine to maintain excellent health.  Even on the road this summer for my eighth bicycle trip across America, I maintained excellent strength and endurance on my vegetarian diet.

Additionally, on the standard American diet, eating to elimination runs from 72 to 90 hours.  Meat and dairy consumers suffer their food moving through the colon so slowly because of lack of fiber that they develop diverticulitis and other severe problems.  Ultimately, “In America, it is estimated that 50 percent of Americans suffer from hemorrhoid disease by the age of 50. There are 1 million new cases of hemorrhoids each year in the United States alone, with 10 to 20 percent of those cases needing surgical intervention.” (Source:www.HDtreatmentcenter.com )

Eating to elimination for high fiber vegetarians runs every 24 hours.  In other words, the food is flying through our colons with rapid ease and efficiency. If every American maintained 40 grams of fiber in their diets daily, those disease figures could be cut to nearly zero.  Human suffering and pain would be cut enormously.  Medical care would drop by the billions of dollars.

As to the one writer saying that we need to eat meat, eggs and milk, it is simply not true. No other species continues to suckle milk after infancy like Americans. Additionally, consuming cow milk is not good because cow milk is molecularly diametrically different than human milk. We would be better off consuming goat milk, which is closer to human milk in molecular makeup.

As to animal protein ingestion, our consumption of meat, eggs and milk leads the world.  But we also lead the world in obesity, cancer, high blood pressure and heart attacks. If I had followed my father’s and brother’s eating habits, I would be dead right now from a heart attack.

On an environmental note, it takes 5,000 gallons of water to create each pound of beef on a cow.  That creates horrific urine and fecal waste that is polluting our ground water in major dairy and beef farming states.  Worse, a beef cow must eat 16 pounds of grain to add one pound of beef.  To grow that much grain, farmers poison the soils with fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides.  That’s why 100 percent of our rivers suffer horrible pollution, which ultimately poisons our oceans where the rivers exhaust their deadly contents.  The carbon footprint for planting, cultivating, harvesting and transporting that much grain explodes to astronomical levels.  Consequently, this country is well into Overshoot  by Dr. William Catton.  We cannot maintain such a way of life especially with the projected 138 million humans added to this civilization within 38 years.  We are eating, growing, consuming and wrecking our water, land and air at a prodigious rate of speed.

Americans slaughter 100,000 beef cows every day of the year to eat, which adds up to 36.5 million annually.  We also slaughter and eat 23 million chickens daily or 269 chickens every second. It equals 8.3 billion annually.  We kill 100 million pigs every year.  We rape the oceans for their fish by the billions upon billions of tons of marine life. By mid century, we will have collapsed most species of fish that we feed upon.  It terms of mass murder of other species, it’s pretty sobering.  While I began as a vegetarian for health reasons, I’m glad I’m not a part of that kind of killing spree.

Because of your terrific responses, I felt that I should clarify what it means to be a meat eater and some of its consequences.  That means the series will run to Part 4: how to avoid cancers and heart attacks.  You’re going to find it stunningly insightful because most Americans or their loved ones are affected by heart attacks and cancer.  Let’s change that equation for those of you who care about living vibrant and healthy lives. Don’t ever count on pharmaceutical companies or doctors to give you the kind of information that you will find in this series.  They all make a lot of money because of these preventable diseases.

Part 4, Next  -  If you’re in trouble as to cancer or heart disease, I will suggest two books that will change your health picture like no others.  This information will change your life toward a healthy, long one. Avoid waiting for doctors to prescribe synthetic chemical pills to alleviate your pain or problem. You will discover how to take charge of your body temple.

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Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents - from the Arctic to the South Pole - as well as eight times across the USA, coast to coast and border to border. In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece. In 2012, he bicycled coast to coast across America.  His latest book is: How to Live a Life of Adventure: The Art of Exploring the World by Frosty Wooldridge, copies at 1 888 280 7715/ Motivational program: How to Live a Life of Adventure: The Art of Exploring the World by Frosty Wooldridge, click:

www.HowToLiveALifeOfAdventure.com