Dilbert author Scott Adams has a GREAT idea for reducing health insurance premiums:
First, 80% of healthcare costs go toward chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and heart disease.
Second, a huge study on diet and its correlation to disease, called The China Study, found that chronic diseases, particularly the ones I just mentioned, only get triggered if you eat a plant based diet, for the most part, regardless of your genetic propensity. (CR Note: I think he meant to write "DONT get triggered if you eat a planet based diet".)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study
The author’s thesis, backed by a mountain of data, is that the only safe level of animal based food is zero. No milk or cheese either. Moderation simply doesn’t work when it comes to eating meat. That’s the data talking, not me, according to this expert. I haven’t seen any data that contradicts that notion. Provide a link if you have.
As a practical matter, it would be impossible to ban meat from the diets of average Americans. But when you are talking about insurance of any sort, whether it is health or auto or hurricane, we accept the principle that risk factors can be considered in pricing. So all we need to do is charge meat eaters four times as much as vegetarians for health insurance. Over time it will create more vegetarians, for economic reasons alone, and healthcare costs will plummet.
You might say it is unfair for the insurance company to charge a higher premium for earthquake insurance to people who actually live on a fault line. But I say that’s just good business.
What do you think? Should health insurance companies have better plans for vegetarians? And would YOU become a vegetarian if you knew your health insurance would be cut by 75%?
No, imagine how long life would seem without a nice rare steak. It’s a matter of length of life vs quality…
Human beings are omnivores, not herbivores. It is more likely the crap going into the meat–the antibiotics, the steroids, etc–that is causing the health problems and not the meat (or animal products) itself.
I agree with Herne. Also, we need to take other things into consideration such as the fact that many people today are gluten intolerent because human beings have changed the molecular structure of grains through genetically modifying our crops by selective breeding over thousands of years & so have unwittingly increased the gluten content which is too high for many to tolerate. So now we have to consider what else in a vegetarian diet needs to be restricted. We may end up with nothing to eat at all.
As Robin said, you can’t slow roast brocolli for hours while drinking wine, eating some nice cheese and chatting with friends.
Having said that, if it wasn’t for vegetarians being such a bunch of anal retentive wankers, i would probably be one too.