Surveys indicate that there are now more vegans in the USA than ever before, but surprisingly -- there are actually many more "ex-vegans" than there are vegans. What's going on?

At first, I was surprised when I saw that statistic a few months ago, but the more I thought about it -- the more it made sense. Do a search and check out the numbers for yourself. Here's one relevant piece that I found in Psychology Today. The title:

Think about it. Being "vegan" is all about what you cannot eat Apparently, that's a turn-off for many people. And for good reason. Also, the word veganism itself sounds like some kind of religious cult -- as would any word ending with ism.

So welcome to veganism. A new "vegan" walks into a cafe and tells the waiter that she has recently stopped eating ALL animal-based foods. She then asks, "what do you have that I can eat?"

The waiter suggests that she order the lone "vegan option" on the menu: An Impossible or Beyond Burger with a side of fries. This is a sad story that is played out millions of times a day across the developed world.

Unfortunately, while the lone "vegan entree" may be slightly healthier than the animal-based products on the menu, it is not the kind of meal that will promote vibrant health. For that, one must consume lots of whole, plant-based foods.

So, the key word here is whole -- and that discovery began forming the foundation of my work in health promotion 20 years ago when I first got curious about the optimal diet for humans.

By estimating the percentage of daily calories that are derived from whole plants, we can determine how close a person is to eating the optimal diet for humans.

In 2010, my son Jason and I -- both of us being practical guys with engineering or business degrees from Auburn University -- decided that "vegan" was not an accurate or attractive way to describe an optimal diet. Eating "vegan" mainly identifies what people are "not" eating -- when what they DO eat is most important for their health.

After all, one could eat nothing but Diet Coke and potato chips and, since neither have animal products in them, they would technically be a vegan; albeit a dead one within a few months.

That is why we developed a more realistic and uplifting way to describe the absolute healthiest way that a person can eat. Drawing upon the wisdom of four enlightened medical doctors and one Cornell nutritional scientist (pictured below), we define the optimal diet for humans thusly:

We call it the 4Leaf way of eating. According to our definition, the 4Leaf level means that you are deriving over 80% of your calories from whole, plant-based foods. The 3Leaf level means deriving over 60% of one's calories from those healthiest of foods and so forth.

The average American gets far less than 10% of their calories from those healthiest of foods. That's why we have the most chronic disease of any nation on Earth. That said, most chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer and type2 diabetes can be prevented, or reversed quickly, by simply shifting 100% to a whole food, plant-based diet.

It's all about the simple process of climbing up the 4Leaf scale to vibrant health. In 2003, when I first began my study, I went straight to 4Leaf in a matter of weeks -- although I didn't call it 4Leaf at the time. As you can see below, Dr. Campbell defines the healthiest diet in the simplest of terms.

Our 4Leaf scale illustrates how close we are coming to the "optimal diet" for humans:

Back to that Impossible Burger on the menu. Where do you think that item falls on the 4Leaf scale? Well, it's almost "impossible" to figure that out unless you are a chemist with a fully-staffed laboratory.

But any 8th grader could "eyeball" it from this list of ingredients that I found on the internet for one of those burgers:

I don't see a single whole plant on the entire list but I do see a few oils. By the way, edible oils are plant-based but they are not "whole" plants and they are 100% fat. You can be sure of that. Without a doubt, those "vegan" burgers will score well below the 1Leaf level with almost zero calories from whole plants.

As for the other 10%, my evening scotch is plant-based but it is not a whole plant. So, how was I fortunate enough to learn the secret to the optimal diet for humans before I turned 60?

Once upon a time, about twenty years ago, I got curious about the "optimal diet for humans" and began searching the internet. Fortunately for me, during the first two months of my search, I found these folks pictured below and am now friends & colleagues with all of them except for Harvey & Marilyn Diamond, authors of Fit for Life.

The four medical doctors and one Cornell nutritional scientist pictured here -- all stress the importance of eating whole, plant-based foods. And they all promote the simple concept of quickly reversing most chronic diseases -- in a matter of one or two months. Rapid disease reversal is the natural result of simply choosing the foods that nature intended for us to eat.

After learning the truth about what we should be eating in 2003, it was seven years later before the 4Leaf idea popped into my head. While serving on Dr. Campbell's board of directors at his Center for Nutrition Studies, I first ran the 4Leaf idea by him over his breakfast table in Ithaca, New York.

And he loved it immediately, noting that it focused on what we do eat -- not what we're avoiding. A few years later, in the summer of 2015, Colin sent me an unsolicited assessment of the validity of the 4Leaf Survey:

You can read about the 4Leaf Survey on Colin's CNS website.

Now, after almost twenty years of experience with whole food, plant-based eating, my advice is simple:

Within a few weeks, your tastes will begin to change and you'll start looking forward to every meal. Then, in less than a month, some wonderful things will start happening to your body (too numerous and too personal to list here) and you'll never even think about returning to your old way of eating.

As a single man for most of the last twenty years, what is my eating routine? The slide below is how I explain my own version of 4Leaf eating in my public or Zoom talks.

The entire top row on this chart consists of foods that have just ONE ingredient: whole plants. On the bottom row, two of the images are 100% whole plants and the other two are used sparingly for flavor and diversity.

I never get tired of my "go-to" meals. I change the breakfast fruits and veggies depending on seasons but, other than that, I just stick to the proven method that has rewarded me with vibrant health, zero drugs and a trim body that rarely gets sick.

Convenient immunity? To our knowledge, there has not been a single Covid-19 death reported in the USA by a person who had been eating whole food, plant-based for more than five years. I had Covid at age 76 and it was like a common cold that I used to have several times a year. Now, hardly ever.

To be sure, the 12-question, multiple-choice survey is without a doubt, the heart and soul of the 4Leaf, health-promoting, disease reversing, weight-losing way of eating. At the link above, you can view the entire English version of the survey on one page. Taking the survey requires less than two minutes.

In the early days, people would often ask me if our survey had been statistically validated. It had not been at the time, but their questions inspired me to come up with a simple way to understand its obvious validity.

It's really quite simple: you must eat a lot of whole plants to score well on the survey. And for people who follow that simple advice, their bodies reward them with disease reversal, vibrant health, weight loss, and so much more.

As for validity, you saw what Dr. Campbell had to say earlier. Also, in 2019, I published this one-page Triangle Paper to explain the survey's algorithm in a manner that high school students have no trouble understanding.

That single page also provides estimates of the percentage of Americans who are eating at the various levels. You might be surprised to learn that over 90% of Americans are currently eating well below the 1Leaf level, deriving far less than 10% of their calories from whole plants.

You should also visit the 4Leaf Program website which can be found at 4leafprogram.com

In closing, the health of the biosphere that keeps us alive is far more important than the physical health of us humans. With the 4Leaf approach, we get both -- and we greatly raise the chance of a livable world in the future for all of the children of the world.

A huge win for the health of billions of people and a huge win for the environment that keeps us all alive. Of course, the healthcare industry would suffer mightily. Did you ever wonder what would happen to the that industry if everyone knew the secret for reversing their own chronic diseases?

Dr. Campbell has estimated that the global industry would shrink by over 70% if everyone shifted to a whole food, plant-based way of eating. Herein lies the problem: the healthcare industry has no financial incentive for us to get healthy.

Check out this great chart from 2014 -- featuring the size in dollars of the healthcare industry in the USA, Canada, Germany and Japan.

Of course, the USA tops the list: spending the most money per person but not educating people regarding the easy reversal (or prevention) of chronic diseases in over 90% of the cases.

And, then there's climate change. We now have abundant scientific evidence that the industries who produce animal based foods -- are by far the leading drivers of climate change. Most of the recent studies put the number over 50%. This video covers them all in 9 minutes.

In other words, the animal agriculture industry is by far the leading driver of climate change -- and it's the ONLY driver that can be replaced quickly and easily -- along with huge financial savings for the consumer as a bonus. So far, we have done a horrible job of getting that done. Click here to watch our 30-minute 2021 video above.

That said, perhaps we should start by calling the process of healthy eating something other than vegan or veganism. How about one of these four definitions?

Our cousins in the wild, gorillas -- whose DNA is nearly identical to ours, eat almost exclusively whole plants. We should learn from them.

We cannot depend on our so-called political leaders -- the ones who have failed us for far too long already. It's time for us individual citizens to take some responsibility for where we are and where we're heading as human beings. Our team at 4Leaf Global stands ready to help you. Click banner below to visit the 4Leaf website:

In closing, be sure to check out the "Big Picture Data and Info Section" below. It now begins with five powerful films about healthy eating; the films that were featured in last week's SOS.

Finally. Please share today's timely SOS widely. It is #152 on this list of all of my SOS Memos.

jmorrishicks@me.com  

PS: To clarify, we're not trying to preserve "civilization as we know it." Because what we have now is an extremely wasteful and harmful civilization that is threatening our very existence as a species.

We're talking about replacing it with an entirely new, ultra-green civilization of the future -- and we do our best to paint a picture of that envisioned way of sustainable living in OUTCRY.

As always, I welcome the opportunity to deliver my latest talk to your group of any size via Zoom: “Food, protein, pandemics and the future of humanity.” (Click the link to view the 60 slides)

This section has been appearing at the end of my weekly SOS Memos for six months. It contains links to relevant information that form the foundation of what our options appear to be for responding quickly and appropriately to our global crises.

In order to respond appropriately, we must first grasp the all-important "big picture" regarding how we got to where we are in the first place. The various links below will help you do that.

This powerful summary by Dr. Sailesh Rao was added on February 4, 2022. The FACTS about animal agriculture being the leading cause of climate change.

Added to this section in April of 2022 is my list of five powerful videos that tell the whole story about the health AND the many environmental reasons we should be eating only plants.

In 2014, Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn produced their first documentary film Cowspiracy. Executive producer is Leonardo DiCaprio, it runs 90 minutes and has been on Netflix since 2015. In 2020, I met Kip and Keegan in Sedona where I was honored to be able to speak at the same conference with them and other great leaders in this movement like Dr. Sailesh Rao and Dr. Michael Greger.

Also on Netflix, Kip and Keegan teamed up again in 2017 to produce What the Health, which is also on Netflix. It runs 92 minutes and may be the best documentary ever that focuses on the health reasons for choosing to eat plant-based. Click here to watch the short trailer. You can also watch the full movie for free on Vimeo.

Film #3 in 2021

In 2021, Kip Anderson teamed up with British filmmaker Ali Tabrizi, to produce Seaspiracy, an 89-minute film that vividly and alarmingly reveals what is at stake when it comes to the crucial importance of our oceans to our future as a species. Most people have no idea regarding the environmental horrors of commercial fishing -- a disgusting industry that kills dolphins by the thousands and tosses them back into the ocean. It runs 90 minutes on Netflix. Click here to view the trailer.

As our situation becomes more desperate, the documentary films become more terrifying. As alluded to earlier, we are literally Eating Our Way to Extinction, a process that is vividly covered in this 2021 film (81 minutes). Narrated and produced by Kate Winslet, you can watch this great film on Amazon Prime or on YouTube for $3.99. The great ocean scientist and former head of NOAA, Dr. Sylvia Earle lends powerful credibility to such a crucial topic.

This new film (89 minutes) features a young activist who travels around his country, New Zealand in an effort to find out the truth about the horrors of the dairy industry in his native land. The film uncovers alarming information about the environmental and health impacts of the industry -- leading up to the discovery that we are on the edge of the biggest global disruption of food and agriculture in history. This new film is now available for free at waterbear.com

Next is a half-hour video that was published in November of 2021. It was produced by Michael Dowd, a non-scientific researcher like me who does a very fine job of explaining the many facets of the obstacles standing between us and our survival as a species.

Dowd has a pretty good handle on most things, but he seems to be unaware of the simple weapon that we can all use to fight the leading driver of climate change. Our forks.

That said, he does a terrific job of describing our ever-worsening dilemma. Click the link below to view this very informative 33-minute video, published November 15, 2021.

This powerful film will certainly help more people grasp that all-important "big picture." Just click on the hourglass image.

I will continue sharing this TEN BILLION link in future weekly SOS Memos

More Data re Leading Driver of Climate Change.

What can you do? For starters, you can buy the new documentary -- Eating our way to Extinction for $6 on Netflix -- and watch it often with your friends and family.

A final word. Hopefully, the kind of crucially serious situations expressed in these SOS Memos will soon replace meaningless and trivial topics that dominate a ridiculously large percentage of all of the conversations in the world.

I volunteer to help you do that. For Free. Invite me to collaborate with you and your group via Zoom. To help you jump-start that all-important conversation, I will be happy to present and discuss this topic at length. Here's an advance link to my standard presentation: 65 slides.

Click on the image below to view the slides that I am currently using for those kinds of sessions:

Want to share some of my SOS Memos with others? Visit my SOS Memos page where the most recent ones are listed first.

Finally, I am confident that if a few million people carefully read and digested OUTCRY, that there might at least be a more robust conversation taking place about our grossly unsustainable way of living in the developed world -- and what it will take to get us focused on maximizing our chances of survival as a species.

To my knowledge, OUTCRY remains the only book ever published that features an envisioned, totally-green, ultra-sustainable, super-desirable, future way of living for humans -- along with ideas for how we might get there as quickly as possible.

Send me an email and let's get started.

Our book, for a host of environmental reasons, is only available as an e-book on Amazon. As such, it contains hyperlinks to hundreds of references and videos, is less expensive, does not kill any trees and does not have to be manufactured and delivered. 

You can join my mailing list and/or find all of my previous postings by visiting the SOS Memos page on my website. 

Want to see earlier SOS Memos? Click here

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