This is Part II of my interview with John Roth, naturopathic doctor, and probably the healthiest person I have met. John tells us about his experience growing up on a farm in  Kansas and his journey to becoming a vegan.

Vegetarian to Vegan Journey

Chuck Burr: Today is Friday March 20th. Happy Spring. I am talking to N.D. John Roth in his vegan kitchen.

John Roth: Spring Equinox is tomorrow. It is always an exciting part of the year, especially when you live in Telluride and have such long winters.

Chuck: How long have you been a vegetarian, a vegan, and a naturopathic doctor?

John: I have been a vegetarian for 45 years. And what happened to induce me to become a vegetarian, I grew up on a farm in Kansas, and I watched my parents butcher  a lot of the animals we ate, and a lot of the animals had names because they were animals that we knew. I was really uncomfortable with the violence that it took to kill the animals. So I decided in my teens to become a vegetarian, and I had never known another vegetarian. I knew absolutely nothing about vegetarianism except that there were vegetarians. So, I thought I was not going to kill anymore animals, and I was not concerned about the consequences. I just did not want to be morally involved in that act of violence to take an animals life.

I thought when I was a vegetarian I would live until I was 40 years old, and I would be really smart and skinny, and I would sit around in a full lotus. But then as soon as I became a vegetarian, and started studying about it I realized that I would become a lot healthier because I was a vegetarian. There are a lot of reasons for a person being healthier as a vegetarian.

Chuck: How long have you been a vegan, and a naturopathic doctor?

John: Then after I was a vegetarian for 10 years, I started studying more about vegetarianism, I realized that I would be a lot healthier as a vegan. We will get into the reasons for the increased health as a vegan.

But basically, the difference between a vegetarian and a vegan is that a vegan does not eat animal by-products, basically eggs and dairy, which take longer to digest and have several different aspects of not being as healthy to eat as vegan foods.

I became a vegan 35 years ago, and I became a naturopathic doctor about 20 years ago. So all three were sort of a progression one to the other. The vegetarian led me to being a vegan. Being a vegan I really wanted to make sure I was getting the nutrients that I needed, and to really understand what I was doing, and make sure I was not hurting myself in anyway. So that is why I became a naturopathic doctor basically for my own knowledge, and then it became free advice for my friends.

Chuck: You mentioned that you have been researching this for 45 years, and that you grew up on a farm, which I respect a great deal, and actually seeing the process. Why would you recommend to someone to go to the extra step to becoming a vegan, cutting out the animal byproducts, eggs and dairy, from both a health and an environmental stand point.

John: I think both of those reasons are really crucial to the difference between being a vegetarian and a vegan. There is also another aspect, that the mind and the body, even though one is physical and the other is metaphysical, they still work together. And the way you treat your physical body affects the clarity and all other aspects of the mind. So, when you make that decision, it is not necessarily solely for health and environmental reasons. Also because of the affect it has on the clarity of mind.

Chuck: OK, for three reasons, healthy, environment, and clarity of the mind.

Health Impact of Eggs and Dairy

JR: From a health point of view, there are reasons why a person should take that extra step to become a vegan, first of all I have a lot of patients who come to me and say, “I couldn’t live if I did not have fish or chocolate or sugar. People will have to realize that the first step of a journey is always the hardest step of the journey. And anything that you decide that you want to do if you just have the will power to do it for a short period of time then it becomes very easy.

When I became a vegetarian it was harder to give up a lot of the things because there wasn’t a substitute, but if you choose to give up dairy and eggs, there are so may substitutes so. There is soy milk, and there is soy cheese, and there is tofu. There is egg-replacer to do you baking or you can use flax seed, arrow root. There are so many substitutes that make it easy to give up the animal products.

But the reason you really want to think about doing that is because technically the human body is designed to be a vegetarian, not a carnivore. The reason that is the case is because humans have such a long digestive system and carnivore have a short digestive system. [And humans have flat teeth instead of canine teeth.]

If you were a fruitarian which you could be if you lived on the equator, you would eat your food and pass it out of your body in one hour. If you were a vegetarian you would eat your food and pass it out of your body in one day. If you eat eggs and dairy, it takes four days at least, minimum. Meat takes anywhere from seven days to 35 years to go through your system. So, meat is a lot more detrimental to your system and to your health than eggs or dairy.

But the thing about eggs or dairy, dairy for instance is produced by cows for food for calves. And the thing about calves is that they have a very strong digestive enzyme in their stomach. Where as humans don’t have that. When a human eats dairy products, humans don’t have the strong enzymes to digest it, so it causes a lot of problems in the human body. One things is that dairy, eggs, and meat produce a lot of mucus in the body. Those three are the primary mucus producing foods. Well mucus is where viruses breed. So you become a lot more susceptible to viruses when you eat dairy.

If anyone has ever broken a egg in the carton, the egg glues itself wonderfully to the carton. That is what happens in your digestive system too. You might as well eat a handful of library paste. Both dairy an eggs gum or glue up your system. You body has a tough time digesting both of those and that is why it takes four days for them pass through through your digestive system. There is nothing in dairy or eggs that you cannot get much better from other sources so far as nutrients go that are a lot more easily assimilate-able.

Diary is also a source of radio active contamination for people. Radio active particles participate out of the atmosphere. Strontium 90 for example, lands on the grass, the cows eat the grass. It goes into the milk which goes into the cheese. So you are getting more radioactive contamination by eating dairy.

Chuck: Why is it bad for the food to spend more time in your digestive system? From an intuitive lay person’s stand point I would think, “Oh my body has more of a chance to absorb nutrients and minerals from the food.” Why is it bad?

John: That is a good question. The reason it is bad, is that food begins to putrefy or deteriorate as it passes through the body and you do not want food to sit in the intestine and in the colon particularly for that long.

The thing is that puts the whole thing in perspective is that the stomach is the concrete mixer. It mixes the food and the digestive enzymes. It gets the food ready to digest. But many of the nutrients that you assimilate are assimilated through the walls of the colon. You can assimilate food and nutrients and food through the colon, but you can also assimilate contaminates through the colon. So when the food sits in the colon for more than one day, it begins to putrefy. And when that happens, it begins to form poisons on toxins. And then you begin to assimilate those toxins into your system.

So by having food sit in the colon for more than a day you actually weaken your body instead of making it stronger because it is more contaminants than it is nutrients.

Chuck: So after a certain amount of time as the food processes through your body it converts from being nutritional to the point it starts composting; it starts going anaerobic.

John: Exactly, that is why you want the food to pass through your body rapidly.

Chuck: I have been told that I should not drink while I eat. To get the maximum amount of nutrients from my food, should I drink liquids when I eat?

John: That is a good question in the total picture of what we are talking about. You want to drink your water half an hour before your meal, and technically you should not drink water with your meal or immediately after your meal—one hour minimum after your meal.

The thing is if you chew your food properly. A lot of Eastern people say that you should chew your food 50 times before you swallow it. In other words, your food should really become water before you swallow it. And the reason for that is because the digestive enzymes that are also secreted in your mouth help to digest that food. But the reason that you don’t want to drink water with your meal is that it dilutes the digestive juices.

Environmental Impacts of Meat, Eggs, and Dairy

So far as the environmental impact of eggs and dairy go, most people are aware of the factory farming that is involved. I grew up on a farm and we milked the cow every morning. And the cow came to the barn every morning and every evening at milking time. We did not have to call her; she loved to come. And she loved to be milked.

It is not something that hurts the animal itself. It is just that cows have probably one of the most detrimental environmental impacts on the earth of anything. They produce methane gas and that is one of the principle destroyers of the ozone  layer [and causes of global warming]. They also use a lot of fresh water. It is a fact that 50 percent of the fresh water in the U.S. is used for animal husbandry.

Also, the amount of food they eat as compared to what the earth can produce if you ate directly form the earth, say if you ate grains, would be phenomenally less than what it takes to raise a cow. Another interesting thing about chickens and dairy in particular, they have been doing quite a bit of research lately about the antibiotics those animals are given, they go into the eggs as well as the dairy and people begin to form a resistance to antibiotics because they are taking antibiotics everyday by taking these two foods.

One other thing that I would like to add is that vegetarians have one fourth the carbon foot print as a meat eater. Vegans have one seventh, and organic vegans have 1/17th the carbon foot print as a meat eater that eats a regular American diet. That means that 17 people could eat with the same carbon footprint as one person eating meat.

It also takes 20 gallons of water to make one beer, 2,100 gallons of water to make one pair of leather shoes, and 630 gallons of water to make one hamburger.

Clarity of the Mind

Chuck: How about clarify of the mind and physical body link?

John: This is one of the primary reasons that I tell my patients to become a vegetarian. The interesting thing is that even though the body is physical and the mind is metaphysical, still the two work together, and what you put in your body affects your mind. So, if you really want to have clarity of mind, you have to have a pure body. And when you put contaminants into the body it takes away a lot of the mental clarity that people have.

You can see that exemplified in a lot of things in your life. When you eat or drink something, it is going to have an affect on your mind. If you drink alcohol for instance, that affects your body, and in turn your mind. Or any drugs, the idea of taking a drug into to body and the affect it is going to have on the mind is another good example of how the body and the mind work together.

Well, your mind is not in your body. The brain is the central organ of the nervous system. The brain is not where you think from. There are people in other parts of the world that think the mind is in the solar-plexus. There are people who think the mind is in the brain. There are people who think the mind is totally outside the body.

The fact of the matter being that the mind being metaphysical has no physical attributes whatsoever. So isn’t a part of the body. It is the ethereal body. It is separate from the body, but yet the two work together. So, obviously we should be pursuing clarity of the mind because it is the only way we are going to be able to pick the correct path through life, and not make a lot of mistakes. That is the reason we are here to figure out who we are and what we came to do.

So it is important to eat foods that generate a pure body and in the same token a pure mind.

Why the Industrial Food Model Fails

Chuck: Do you think the industrial food system feeds on our inherited proclivities to crave sugar, salts, and fats that were hard for our ancestor’s to find?

John: The interesting fact behind that is that you crave what you eat, and that is something the corporations know. They feed you junk, then you get a taste for junk, and then you crave junk, and then you eat lots of junk.

The fact of the matter is that the body does not need refined sugar; that is not something that it needs at all. The body does need fats, carbohydrates, salt, and protein. But the thing is that what your body needs is not salt, it needs sodium. The best source of sodium is celery or celery juice, and you can get all of the sodium you need. And the hotter climate you live in, the more sodium you need.

So far as fats go, the body produces cholesterol. There is nobody that does not have any cholesterol in their system.  It’s the ratio of high density lipids to low density lipids that is the important equation in your life. So, we get our fats from using good oils like coconut, grape seed, flax seed, and hemp seed. All those oils have different nutrients that the body needs.

The question whether the industrial food system of the world thrives by feeding people garbage and then people becoming addicted to that is obviously true and it is a sad thing. It is a hard cycle to break, and the only way it is broken is by people having the foresight and tenacity to give up the bad things in their life, and not realizing that as soon as you give something up right away the desire to do it dissipates.

Chuck: Take two examples of corn syrup and canola oil that are promoted by the industrial food complex that are supposed to be good for us. Are they?

John: No, corn syrup is one of the more detrimental foods you can eat besides putting flesh into your body. The thing is that a lot of the foods that we have now are not the foods that we traditionally have had and the body takes a long time to get used to things.

For example, we have eaten refined sugar for about a hundred years. We never had any sugar that was that concentrated before. Refined sugar is concentrated 4,200 times from the time it leaves the sugar cane. So its the only food that elicits an adrenaline reaction in the body. And the reason it does that is because we only have been eating that for a hundred years and the body has not had a chance to adapt to it.

The thing about corn syrup is that the body has not had a chance to adapt to it. It is basically like eating plastic. The body does not know how to handle it. it is a very detrimental thing.

Another thing, canola oil is made from rapeseed. Canola oil really means oil from Canada basically where rapeseed is grown. Mustard gas is made from rapeseed a very poisonous substance. Rapeseed is detrimental to the autoimmune system and should really not be eaten at all.

Chuck: How does your vegan diet help you take back control of your health and to be proactive instead of reactive. In our medical system doctors are only paid when you are sick.

Take Control of Your Health

John: The thing is that our doctors get paid when you are sick, traditionally, the Chinese and other oriental doctors got paid when you were well. So it tended to make people more preemptive in their dietary choices. And from my own experience as a naturopathic doctor over all of these years I have learned by far the best way to view your health is to be come proactive. Make choices before you’re under the eight ball. Make a choice to stay healthy instead of trying to get healthy after you have become ill.

The smartest people are the ones that make that choice early in their lives, and stay healthy and don’t have all these heath problems. Don’t subject yourself to environmental contamination through the food that you eat and the lifestyle that you live and then get cancer and then try to cure the cancer. It is very important.

Why Take Supplements?

Chuck Why would one want to take the extra step of taking supplements if they have gone to the extra step of eating a healthy vegan diet?

John I recommend to all my patients that they take supplements. The reason is basically that there are a lot of things that affect the nutrients that you take into your body. One thing is that a lot of foods these days are grown in soils that are depleted of nutrients. Even though you may eat a good variety of food and good foods, they do not have all the nutrients that you need. [recent studies have shown a 25 to 30 percent loss of mineral content in vegetables since 1975 alone.]

Another thing is that by the choices that you make in your life, you can destroy nutrients that you have already gotten. For instance if you drink alcohol or eat refined sugar, you destroy your vitamin B. If you smoke cigarettes, you destroy your vitamin C. If you live in a really cold climate you need more vitamin C.

So it is important to take supplements. And the reason is that the body is a complex machine, and to run properly it needs to have the right nutrients. It is just like an engine. If you put bad gasoline or all of the additives you need like oil in an engine it is not going to run well.

It is much more important to get more of the nutrients than you need than less than what you need. So vitamin B for instance, you pass it out of your body the vitamin B that you do not need. But, if you do not get the vitamin B that you do need, it is a much worse situation to not have it than to not utilize all that you take.

The easiest thing to do is to get a good liquid vitamin mineral if they do not want to mess with a lot of different supplements. I use Liquid Health supplement called Complete. Take two tablespoons a day.

I buy mine through a food coop. I spend about $10-15 per week on supplements.

Chuck Mentioning all of these supplements, one would think that you sell supplements.

John No, I don’t.

Chuck What do you charge for your naturopathic consultations?

John To make a long story short, I do all of my naturopathic medicine at no charge. And, that is why I don’t provide supplements or herbs to my patients. I have gone to a lots of doctors, naturopaths included, that have charged me a $100 bucks to come in and see them, but I have left with a bill of $350 dollars because they give me this whole list of nutrients. You know they are making a profit, you never know if the motivation may be pure or not.

Ever since I became a naturopathic doctor, I have done all of my naturopathic medicine for free, and the reason is because I think that we all need to make the world a better place in some way if we can. So each of us needs to do what ever we can. That is one thing that I thought that I could do that would make people healthier and happier, and in turn make the world happier, and in return make me happier.

Chuck: Thank you, John.

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Visit www.culturequake.org to read the most updated version of this essay and to read the blog as a whole work, visit the Culturequake amazon.com book store, and learn more about the book Culturequake: The Fall of Modern Culture and the Rise of Earth Culture. Visit www.restorationfarm.org to learn what we are doing to grow new stories and cultures. ©2009 Chuck Burr LLC.

Notes:

Nancy and Michael Phillips
The Village Herbalist:Sharing Plant Medicines with Family and Community, p. 18

John Roth
Supplements Table below