Milos Pokimica

Go Vegan? Review of Science Part 3 Milos Pokimica

There are no phytochemicals and adequate amounts of antioxidants in animal products. When plants absorb sunlight, they will store that light as chemical energy in the form of sugar or oil. We cannot use solar energy to live therefore we need to eat. In hundreds of millions of years of evolution, the animals coevolved by eating plants. If animals want to live and want to consume or extract that stored chemical energy from plants by consuming them, they will have to consume all of the other chemicals that are present in the plants also. In nature, food is a package deal. All for the price of one. These chemicals that are present in the tissues of the plants are known as phytochemicals. Different herbivore species will eat different plants and in time they will adapt their organism to different chemicals that are found in that particular plant. In time adaptation will be so complete that animals would not be able to live without some of the phytochemicals that are produced by the plants that they are eating. In that case, these chemicals would become essential for life as much as sugar or oil are and are known as vitamins. Vita means life. Before vitamins became essential for the life of different species, they were just one more phytochemical. Besides vitamins, there are thousands of different phytochemicals that are not vitamins but are still important to a lesser or higher degree. Phytochemicals are needed because in our normal evolution our body adapted at consuming a large amount of them. There will be a lot of health issues if we don't have an adequate phytochemical intake. If we don't consume vitamins, we will die, but if we don't consume an adequate amount of antioxidants we will not die. We will have higher inflammation that would lead to chronic disease and then we will die from some illness like cancer. Standard American Diet (SAD) is so sad that the number one antioxidant in it is coffee. We have changed our diet completely. Today most of the calories come from fat, sugar, refined flour, meat, eggs, dairy and where are the antioxidants? Nowhere. And where is inflammation and cancer? Everywhere.