The Perfect Diet for Humans

August 20, 2017 Off By Deby Jizi

Growing up, I loved horses. I was obsessed with horses. By the time I was in high school, I was helping a friend train her horses, and I spent a lot of time at the barn. After school on weekdays, I would muck stalls and fill them with clean shavings from the saw mill, or I would put down fresh straw.

Years later, after I had graduated from college, I wanted to find a way to be around horses, so I interviewed for a part-time job at a university large animal hospital that specialized in treating horses. If I accepted the job, I would be mucking stalls and putting down straw or shavings. Right near the end of the interview, the interviewer told me two things that helped me make my final decision not to take the job.

First, he pointed to a field of horses. They were quietly grazing in a rolling pasture with the Blue Ridge Mountains in the background. He said, “Those horses are going to be sold for meat. We sell them to Japan. I have to tell you this because many people who work with horses find it difficult to accept.” He was right, I did have a problem with it. But it was the second thing he showed me and told me that shocked me even more.

The man took me to modified stall, all of the sides were enclosed, and inside was an emaciated race horse. “When you clean this stall, you cannot add straw. The horse is allergic to it.” I am not good at hiding my emotions, so the look of disbelief must have put him off. “The horse is on an all liquid diet, too,” he added.

Well, I think we both knew that I was not the person for the job, but seeing a once beautiful horse, quarantined in a barn, not allowed to eat what horses eat and allergic to straw, stayed with me. I felt it was a form of abuse, and horse racing has never been the same for me since.

What does this have to do with the perfect diet for humans? Well, I think we have gotten so far from what we are meant to eat that we are like that horse. We are being managed like it was being managed, and for the same reason, money. There is a lot of money in horse racing, and there is a lot more money in “health” care, to the tune of trillions of dollars.

Just like there is a perfect food for horses, grass, there is a perfect food for humans, plants. I often wish I could have let that horse out of his man-made prison and watched him get well as he grazed in a beautiful pasture. It is the same way I feel when I see people who are sick and who are being told by their doctors that what they eat won’t make a difference. I want to set them free, too.

The science is out on which diet will sustain and heal us. All we have to do is listen. We have the key to our health, and it is in the form of whole plant foods.