Take Heart! Whole-Food, Plant-Based Living Will (Slowly) Reach the Masses

Once you know the connection between dietary choices and health, watching other people eat can be a gruesome sight. It can seem like you are watching a train wreck in slow motion. I was once in a restaurant and observed a woman in her 60s on oxygen eating a burger and fries. This can make you shake your head and wonder:  “Are they ever going to get it?”

As someone who has been watching this cultural process for thirty years, my guess is yeah — they are going to get it … but it will be a slow dance. Don’t hold your breath about what you are likely to see in your lifetime. Think in terms of the march of human enlightenment, and it can help you relax. A hundred years ago, women weren’t allowed to vote. We are only about fifty years since the civil rights movement. Today, we look back in amazement at the primitive thinking of the average citizen in previous eras. Cultural perceptions can change — and usually in the right direction.

Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “One’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” While many people are now confused by the overwhelming sources of health information and oftentimes opposite recommendations from medical experts, this is a battle that will eventually be won. The plant-based program, I believe, will win out in the end because it yields consistent, positive results.

I see an open-mindedness among physicians that was nowhere to be seen thirty years ago. The collective mind is being stretched by these powerful new ideas, and the collective consciousness is not going to shrink.

But we need to be patient with other people and their processes. There will be a lot more slow train wrecks. We will all witness them, even within our families and friends. But with every mind touched by this knowledge, people are finding their way. At some point, what we know here will become common knowledge, and the benefits to people and to the planet will be immense.