Price and vegans

[Guest guest]

I wish there was more info on what Price found

regarding the plant-eating cultures--what they ate,

what went wrong with their health, etc. When I've had

this conversation with vegan/vegetarians the first

culture they point to is the Hindus in India. I use

that quote from Leon Abrams in NT about how they have

rickets etc plus the shortest lifespan in the world,

but the vegans counter with " That's because of

poverty, not a vegan diet. "

I had an interesting personal experience with all

this last year. I had just started reading NT and

Native Nutrition. I went on a 10-day meditation

retreat, at a meditation center I've been going to for

years. There's always lots of international people

there, usually from Asian countries. But this

particular course was the first time that it was

taught in both English and Hindi. So there were a

large number of Indians at this course. You know how

sometimes there's a moment where you realize that your

brain has been storing information, and it suddenly

all falls together into a pattern? Well, somewhere

around the 4th day I realized that:

1. All the Indian women were sitting in chairs around

the perimeter of the meditation hall. Particpants are

assigned a cushion on the floor, all lined up in neat

rows, but if you have a problem (knees, back,

whatever) you can sit against the wall or sit in a

chair. Usually during a course there's 2-3 people

against the wall. But I suddenly saw that ALL the

Indian women (don't know about the men--the sexes are

segregated) were sitting in chairs.

2. Then I realized that every time I had walked behind

an Indian woman--either in the lunch line or on our

way from the dorms to the meditation hall--I had seen

obvious signs of arthritis in hips and knees, the

rolling gait, stiffness, swelling etc, and had thought

how painful it looked.

But I suddenly put it all together and it gave me a

bad chill. Pottenger's cats. Every one of these women

had arthritis. In all my years of going there, I had

never seen so many chairs lined up against the back

wall. And it was all the Indian women.

Talking with some of them afterwards, most of them

had been living in the USA for 20-30 years and spoke

impeccable English. They were all vegetarians, some

more vegan. Maybe in India the dairy products aren't

pasturized, so being in America made the arthritis

come on faster and worse? It's not a scientific study,

just my observations, but it didn't look good.

Lierre

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