The Thrive Diet: The Whole Food Way to Lose Weight, Reduce Stress, and Stay Healthy for Life

By Brendan Brazier

Summarized with permission of Da Capo Lifelong, a member of the
Perseus Books Group (www.perseusbooks.com). All rights reserved.

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The Thrive Diet for a Healthy Environment

The Energy Requirements of Food Production

The production, processing, and delivery of food have tremendous impact on our environment -- greater than any other industry.

Many experts believe that the production of food uses more energy than it returns.

Each time a plant-based meal is eaten instead of a meat-containing one, fewer resources are being consumed. By following the Thrive Diet, you will be helping reduce oil usage simply by consuming foods that require less energy to produce.

Less processing is better not just from a health standpoint but from an environmental standpoint. The first and easiest way to do this is to simply reduce the number of steps involved in the production of food -- from the time it's planted to the time you take a bite.

• If more milling, heating, and refining are required before food is consumable, more energy will have gone into its production.
• Animals that are eaten need to eat plants, so there is a significant amount of waste when eating meat.

Protein Production: a Significant Environmental Strain

Traditionally, protein-rich foods have taken the most resources to produce, requiring the most land, the most water, and the most energy. Traditional protein-rich crops consist of animal products: meat and milk.

Most standard crops, such as wheat and corn, produce very little protein. What is needed is a plant with a high protein content, enabling it to be fed directly to humans without having to pass through numerous energy-intensive steps to convert it to a reliable form of protein.

Fortunately, that plant does exist: hemp. Hemp is both nutritionally and environmentally superior to most plants. Its seed, of which approximately 35 percent is protein, delivers numerous nutrients.

Soil Quality

The soil in which we grow our food is an important factor in its nutrient value. We get many of the trace minerals our body needs from the soil via our food.

Organic farmers have been aware of soil value for centuries, even before they were known as "organic" farmers. Once too great a demand was placed on the soil, it started to produce less vibrant plants --  smaller, less colorful, and less flavorful crops that lacked the healthful qualities their counterparts grown in rich soil possessed. And so the farmers began to enrich the soil.

What We Can Do

The Thrive Diet is less demanding on the environment because it consists of food that has been minimally processed and consists of primary-source nutrition is less demanding on the environment. Primary-source nutrition means eating solely plant-based foods.

Supporting companies that have environmental consciousness will help make their standards the new benchmark of food production.

 

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