How Not to Die

4 stars

This book is the primary reason my husband and I decided to try going vegan, and we've been ~90% vegan since then (1.5 years since reading the book). It has a wealth of knowledge and is convincing if you're moved by data!

Inhales deeply What are other reviews on about? This is a densely packed book full of information, it teaches about antioxidants, inflammation, mentions probiotics (which aren't that important, but one review complains how it doesn't go in depth about probiotics)

This contains so much stuff which I wish I had grown up on, I wish people sought to be healthy both in mind and body. I have been vegan for 7 years, but I haven't been on a whole food plant based diet and now I am sad about it. I started it only recently, but my skin feels so much softer. I have generally more motivation to move my body on it, because it's easier now.

If you put bad, addictive and overwhelming stuff into your body it will cause disease is a controversial thought for a lot of people. Why. People invent diets and downplay the benefits of good physical activity just to appease the consumers. We live in a society in which people want us to consume bad content, put bad chemicals into our own bodies by our own will. Profit driven incentives to sell stuff that damages your body.

The book goes over all the angles of how plants have mostly only benefits and how meat is full of downsides and why wouldn't it be so? With the current science it is ridiculous to downplay the effects of meat. The fats, the cholesterol, it's lack of fibre contents. It is the plants that are packed with the vitamins and the nutrients and the most essential stuff, not the other way around.

I have so much information now to do well with my diet, I know so many little things which will help me navigate to the best options. It is the most flavorful, colorful, dark foods that are the best foods, but the big companies decided to trick our brains and make those kinds of foods with no nutrition content. Instead of the best options it now craves for the worst ones and cannot stop, we literally now need to detox our brains in order to eat healthy again. Candy makers take advantage of your good inner food radar to sell you the most garbage content.

Rant: Greens and berries and fruits are very important and I haven't been consuming any of them for like most years of my life!!@#!!! Hello? Hello. Hello?!?!!? I am a bit mad at myself atm. Since eating healthier I started to recognize how polluting it is to walk near car roads. I can literally feel pollution 24/7 rn and I am not even kidding. I wonder how much I am actually sad and how much it's just the pollution we are on. Antioxidants put some sort of shield from the pollution, but I mean wow is walking outside damaging and why did we make it so? Wth. Is it really so difficult to combine healthy tribal living with technological advances, can't we seek the best of the two worlds smh? I live in a dystopia and I hate it. I will love it tho to combat the existential dread which I want to bury deep inside. When I die I will be like “Ha! I did my funny little person check marks!” because that's the most that a person can really do tbh and I need my little check marks for real.

Gonna bother my relatives over this book and support them in ways I wasn't supported because I am just so cool. Damn who is this nonbinary demon? I wanna be just like them. Now they will be so much hotter with this new diet and knowledge. Damn... (This is me appealing to the americans and myself)