The Standard American Diet is absolutely bizarre. When the term is abbreviated, SAD, that says what everyone needs to know about typical American eating habits.

I opted out forty years ago when I decided to become a vegetarian. I was seventeen at the time, and could not understand why animals had to give their lives in order to sustain ours. However, my eating habits did not change without a struggle.

My first experience of negativity toward my diet choice came when my boyfriend’s step-father referred to me as a ‘vegetable’. My self-esteem was not strong and his comment devastated me and remained imprinted on my consciousness for years.

All my life I’ve been surrounded by meat eaters. Men either left me, in part because of my vegetarianism, or exerted influence over me until I accepted their eating habits as my own. However, I was never happy to be anything but vegetarian, and eventually these relationships ended. Each time I immediately reverted to my vegetarian diet.

I do not want to support an industry that kills animals. I also don’t believe meat is ideal for human consumption. A lot has been written to show associations with heart disease, hypertension, and cancer. In recent years I’ve learned about Mad Cow Disease, injections of antibiotics and Bovine Growth Hormone, and the horrendous living conditions of chickens and other animals intended to become food. Perhaps worst of all, the food given to livestock is unhealthy. It has been found to contain chemicals, dead and diseased animals of the same species, animal waste, plastic, and unhealthy amounts of grain – especially our ubiquitous and over-produced GMO corn. How could any good come from eating an animal that has consumed all this?

Over the years, vegetarian or not, I’ve been duped into using products that were not healthy for me. For example, aspertame. When it was put on the market I was led to believe it was a healthy substitute for supposedly more-dangerous saccharine. I thought Equal brand aspertame could be the answer to my post-pregnancy weight-gain problems. I used it exclusively as a sweetener for years, then switched to saccharine and Splenda. Since then I’ve done a study of various forms of sweeteners, both natural and artificial, and found that aspartame is especially toxic.

Aspartame was developed by a chemist working for a pharmaceutical company, G. D. Searle. It was approved for public distribution by CEO Donald Rumsfeld before he became Secretary of Defense for President George W. Bush. Despite reports that it may cause brain dysfunction and cancer it continues to be approved. It is still used in Diet Coke under the brand name, NutraSweet. It is also used in pharmaceutical medications and over-the-counter medications, including many intended for children. Aspertame is an ingredient many food manufacturers use in cakes, cookies, and prepared meals as well as other food products.

At one time I consumed a lot of diet cola, not realizing I was poisoning myself with aspertame, but now I’ve cut all sodas from my diet. Looking back at that era of my life I’m chagrined, wondering how many ingredients in those drinks were of animal origin. How can we possibly know since we’re not privy to the recipes and formulas?

Not knowing the true source of ingredients is a problem for vegetarians when using processed foods manufactured by industry. An example of this is pink yogurt. As a ‘vegetarian’ I often ate cherry yogurt. You would probably think this is an excellent food for a person who eats dairy products but not meat. Unfortunately the red food coloring used in cherry yogurt, carmine, is made of dried and crushed female cochineal insects. Hardly a vegetarian treat! Carmine is also used in pink ice creams, red candies, and fruit punch drinks. Again I was duped by the food manufacturing industry to think I was eating something healthy; instead I consumed something non-vegetarian which I would not normally choose to eat if I knew the source of the ingredients. I still eat yogurt, but I now buy organic, pure yogurt and use natural, organic fruit puree to flavor it.

Another danger many are unaware of is fluoride, that controversial chemical added to the public water supply in most American towns and cities. I consider this a much more pernicious danger because it gets into almost everything. For every manufactured food product there’s a good probability that fluoride is included. If the manufacturing plant is in an area where water is fluoridated, there’s most likely some in the food. Fluoride is associated with thyroid disorders, osteoporosis, cancer, memory lapses, dementia, ADHD, autism, and Altzheimer’s Disease. Fluoride even causes tooth decay which is the thing we’re supposed to believe it will prevent. There’s more, but I’ll stop here.

A few years ago I worked in a restaurant where I sucked down green tea flavored bottled drinks, at least once each working day. My partner warned me to stop drinking them because they could be fluoridated. I ignored him, and even laughed about it. Eventually I did a study on fluoride and woke up. I no longer buy bottled drinks because I don’t know where they came from or what is in them. Our local water supply doesn’t contain fluoride so that is the source of my cooking water. My drinking water comes from a spring at the foot of Mt. Shasta, here in Northern California.

One of the hardest things to give up is genetically modified (GMO) food. I’ve given up most soy. As a vegetarian, I do not even eat tofu. Most soy grown these days comes from GMO soy crops. I occasionally use a tiny bit of soy sauce and that is all. I’m amazed at all the food products created for vegans and vegetarians that contain soy. Choose your poisons wisely!

GMO corn is even harder to avoid because it is in almost all manufactured processed foods, and unfortunately I like corn chips. I am trying to say no to all corn products now. For more information on GMO corn, and corn in general, I recommend the documentary movie, King Corn.

I consider all prepackaged, processed, manufactured foods to be potentially unsafe. This leaves me eating mostly foods I prepare at home. I have a garden and believe the healthiest foods – fruits and vegetables – are grown locally in areas such as mine where the water supply isn’t intentionally fluoridated.

It is a fact that when we buy from a supermarket we don’t know where our food came from, what chemicals were used on or in it, who picked it, and what was on the farm worker’s hands. E. coli food poisoning is usually traced to beef, but it has also been found on vegetables. I wash most of my store-bought vegetables and fruit with natural castile soap before using them, but even that won’t remove fluoride if that’s what the plant was watered with.

I may seem radical to most of you who read this, but I’ve been improving my diet over the course of many years; this didn’t happen all at one time. It is apparent to me that the very sad Standard American Diet is extremely unhealthy, but Americans everywhere still eat it. When I worked at the restaurant I saw people every day drinking sugary or diet sodas and eating sausage, chicken, roast beef, and other foods I consider unhealthy. The restaurant even offered packets of aspertame. I prepared and served foods I would not ever consider eating. I was shocked at the things people choose to consume, even with all the information available now on the internet.

I realize in the end I can save only myself. Most people aren’t willing to take food health threats seriously because that would involve uncomfortable, radical change. We grew up with a convenience food mentality, depending on cake mixes, canned soups, and fast food restaurants. Very few people want to change. Most don’t want to know they’ve been eating things that aren’t healthy. Perhaps learning the truth about processed foods would be too painful.

There are things you can do if you too decide to improve your health:

If you live in an area where fluoride is put into the public water supply, start a citizen’s campaign to end fluoridation there. Surely you’ll find many others who feel the same.

Just say no to sodas, bottled drinks of all kinds, GMO soy and corn, meat, and prepackaged, processed, manufactured foods of all sorts

If you find it hard to give these things up, tackle them one at a time. For example, say, “This week I’ll give up corn tortillas. Next week, no more diet cola.” Go easy on yourself and change your lifestyle gently, one unhealthy food at a time.

The Reality of Feed at Animal Factories

GMOs: The Greatest Threat Ever to Humans and Animals

Could There Be Evils Lurking in Aspertame Consumption?

Over-the-Counter and Prescription Drugs Containing Aspertame