"A plant-based diet is like a one-stop shop against chronic disease."~ Michael Greger M.D.

 

We know things are getting real when KFC has added a plant-based menu item called Beyond Chicken, made of soy and wheat. Along with Burger King’s Impossible Burger and McDonald’s McPlant Burger, these fast-food giants are harbingers of the change that has solidified the position of plant-based food as a $7 billion market, of which $1.4 billion is plant-based meat.

 

I’ve shared childhood memories of my family’s backyard vegetable garden a few times here. The garden was in a field just 10 yards beyond the fence at the back of our property line. Another 200 yards beyond that, through the field that we mowed into a small, three-hole golf course, nestled next to several sets of railroad tracks and a local train depot building, was the local slaughterhouse and Pezner’s Meat Market.

 

We appreciated the fresh garden vegetables for sure, but took them for granted because it was so common that just about everyone we knew grew their own, including potatoes of course, because we needed the potatoes to serve along with the meat.

 

The slaughterhouse building was a drab gray with red shingle roof located in front of a small corral, built with wide, wooden slat-boards. Most of the cows were delivered by truck; however, sometimes they would come via rail and unload from the train car down a ramp into the well-trodden mud within the corral.

 

We grew up with the sound of trains rumbling and whistling in the night and the smell of cow manure wafting through the neighborhood, depending on prevailing winds. Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t farm life by any stretch of the imagination. It just happened to be normal where we grew up. I am still mostly unfazed when trains rumble past during the night, unlike attorney Vincent Gambini, trying to get a good night’s sleep in rural Alabama in the film My Cousin Vinny.

 

Plant-based eating, vegan lifestyle tips and the bounties of local farmers markets, plus more, are all included in this month’s food and nutrition issue. Whether you’re a meat eater or a vegan, there’s something here for you to consider and possibly integrate into your routine. The notion has been around since at least 400 B.C., when Hippocrates may have said, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food"…so you can feel good, live simply and laugh more.”