How to Change Your Diet
and
Become a Vegetarian

Once again, large numbers of people are becoming aware that the foods sold by agri-business are not healthy. Many of these folks are becoming vegetarians in their eating style. If you are thinking of making the shift this essay is written for you.

Becoming a vegetarian is not simply walking across the street and shopping at a different supermarket. There is a world of difference between a supermarket and a health food store. If you try to buy canned vegetables in a health food store, you will discover that they cost two or three times as much at the health food store. So the first thing you learn is how not to live out of cans. After you have learned the vegetarian style of eating you will find that it is cheaper than the supermarket - and you save on medical bills because you are healthier.

Becoming vegetarian needs to be done slowly. Getting meat out of your diet needs to take two to three months. I suggest cutting your meat intake in half the first two weeks, just have meat every other day. Then in the second two weeks cutting it in half again, eating meat every 3 or 4 days for two more weeks. Then going down to once a week for a couple of weeks . Then -- forget about it.

White sugar should also be cut out at the same time. Eat white sugar only on the days when you eat meat. White sugar and meat are balanced in yin and yang: the sugar is extremely yin and the meat is extremely yang. When eaten together they balance each other. Once you have become vegetarian, if you eat them separately you will throw you body energy out of balance enough to make you uncomfortable but not enough to make you feel 'sick'. During the transition learn how to use honey. Honey comes in many kinds--explore their tastes. Also the honey in health food stores is much different from that in supermarkets. Supermarket honey is as phony as supermarket hamburger. Sometime I'm going to explain the difference, but not now.

Should you quit meat and sugar suddenly, you are likely to become ill in about a month. The body can't take the sudden shift and it will rebel by causing dis-ease. Also, you will not be able to learn a new style of cooking so quickly and will likely become bored, even under-nourished, because your digestion can't process the new foods without some change-over time. Your digestive system is complex and needs to remodel itself slowly. The small creatures that live in your gut-tube and help you eat your food died off from the chemicals in supermarket food and need to be replaced by healthy new creatures. Keep your internal zoo healthy.

At the outset of the change you will need to become acquainted with 'steamed' methods of cooking. Get an Oriental wok and two bamboo steamer baskets with lid. The wok can be inexpensive, the baskets will cost more. Woks with lids can often be found in thrift stores where people have tried them and given up too soon. With the wok you will need a metal lid, a ring to set it on over the flame, a stir-fry paddle and a wooden spoon or two. The whole lot will cost about $50.

Then you will need a cookbook. Get a simple one to start with, then a fancy one if you want to do a gourmet or elegant style of meal. There is a book called simply "The Wok Book" - its a good one. There are also many macrobiotic cookbooks for beginners.

Some of the new foods may taste funny a first. Miso and tamari (Japanese soy sauce) are two of these. They are essential ingredients in the 'vegetarian' cuisine. A taste for them takes a little time to acquire. In a few weeks you will get used to them and even miss their flavor. There is one caution however - these foods are fermented and need to be cooked for only a minute or two. Eaten raw they will cause stomach problems eventually so you must cook them for a minute and change their enzyme structure a little. Learning to eat miso is a great advantage however. Miso removes heavy metals from the body. Everything from mercury to strontium 90. If you plan to have children, removal of strontium 90 from your body keeps the baby from glowing in the dark. It even removes the preservatives from treated lumber used to make porches around the house; these chemicals are extremely poisonous to children who play on the lumber of the porch floors.

The Russians even used it on the people around the Chernobyl disaster but not until 1995 or so. The American news media of course ignored this completely, they are not interested in anything about health unless they can make money from it.

Here are some handy tips on vegetarian cooking that will make life easier.

1. Cut your vegetables at a very strong slant; they cook quicker that way. Cutting lengthwise or crosswise will leave you with raw chunks in otherwise over-cooked vegetables. Cut up all your vegetables before you start cooking and stack them about the cutting board. Surprise! It takes 45 minutes to cut up the vegetables and 5 minutes to cook them.
2. Different vegetables cook in different times. Learn which cook slower and which cook faster. Whether making soups or stir fries, put the long cooking vegetables like carrots in first, then slowly add the others, one at a time in the order of their cooking times, tougher ones before tender ones. This gets everything done to tenderness at the same (or nearly the same) time.
3. Add herbs, garlic and miso at the end so as not to overcook them and destroy their goodness. The smell of the herbs is due to their essential oils evaporating into the air and not getting to your mouth, tongue and stomach. Also learn to like garlic. Garlic is one of the healthiest food/herbs the human race has discovered. Snobs who refuse garlic have more colds and flus than vegetarians.
4. Learn to cook beans and split peas and lentils 2 or 3 times a week. Cooking with mushrooms and cumin removes the gas. Also a teaspoon of oil added before serving controls gas. Beans are a vital part of a meatless diet, especially during winter. They are also a very chap source of protein. The human race as a whole eats more beans than meat.

Here are some healthy things to get used to and discover how tasty they can be: Buckwheat, short-grain-brown rice, yellow millet, barley, yogurt - the real stuff - onions, salads with various greens besides lettuce, sprouts of many kinds, cayenne pepper (a tiny pinch at first), fresh fruit, nuts, tofu in summer, mushrooms, flours made of different grains like oats, rye, corn, buckwheat, etc. and dried fruit in winter.

If you get to confused and have no knack for making food tasty, find someone who teaches macrobiotics and take some lessons. Macrobiotics is an excellent system. A thousand years ago the Chinese dietary system invaded Japan and took on a lot of Japanese characteristics and then became Macrobiotics. Then Mishio Kushi brought the system to Boston where it took hold. Kushi also became very wealthy here. However, Macro is a bit narrow for the American climate and needs to be broadened after 2 or 3 years. Beyond 4 years, it will cause dry wrinkly skin and create an urge for cigarettes, hard liquor and coffee. Strange but true.

While you are eliminating meat and sugar, get rid of "milk". The milk sold in supermarkets is a disgrace to a cow. It has everything saleable removed from it to make latex paint and Elmer's Glue. There is nothing left in the milk except a thin blue color (Isn't milk supposed to be white?). I am "lactose intolerant" to supermarket milk but guzzle real cow and goat milk with no side effects. Also, radioactive fallout is increasing at a rapid rate and milk concentrates the Strontium 90 part of the fallout and causes bone cancer, particularly in young children.

The reasons for not eating meat are many. My reason is chemistry - the chemistry they feed cows, chickens, pigs and others to make them grow faster and cheaper. This chemistry would amaze you if you knew what it is. It is poisonous to humans.

Three or six months after you have made the change, eat some meat or sugar. It will make you sick. Then you will find out why so many people quit. You will need to do this to prove to yourself how eating affects your health.

Then learn how to be a vegetarian gourmet. Its not difficult and can be delicious quite easily. An herbal white sauce on steamed veggies has 1,000 variations, all delicious, gourmet delicacies.