18.Captain Vegetable!

Glutton-Free: Cultivating a Theology of Enough

Part 18: Captain Vegetable!

One of my husband’s favorite childhood memories is the Sesame Street character Captain Vegetable. He flew in to remind kids not only to eat spaghetti and candy but vegetables too. Such a superhero is clearly necessary when we consider our nation's state of un-health.

In order to see the effects of high fat meals, Dr. Robert Vogel of the University of Maryland School of Medicine conducted a breakfast test. One group of students ate fast food with 900 calories and 50 grams of fat. A second group also ate 900 calories but without any fat. After testing their brachial arteries, Dr. Vogel found the arteries of the no-fat group bounced back to normal. However, the high-fat group’s arteries took nearly six hours to return to normal. 

“If a single meal can have such an impact on vascular health, imagine the damage done by three meals a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year – for decades.” (Rogers. Loc 2419).

Dr. Richard Béliveau is a biochemist at the University of Montreal who studies the effects of food in causing or preventing cancer. He reports: 

“With all I’ve learned over these years of research, if I were asked to design a diet today that promoted the development of cancer to the maximum, I couldn’t improve on our present diet!” (Servan-Schreiber, Loc 2112).

That strong condemnation of the “Standard American Diet” led me to do further research into what I should be eating.

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