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Caution! Your life may be in jeopardy! Are you safe at the plate? 
We are digging our graves with a knife and fork. D eat H is 3/5 EAT. What are we eating? Optimal nutrition plays a key role in keeping people healthy and reducing the risk of chronic diseases. What must we do to obtain this optimal health? We need a diet transition: From S.A.D. - Standard American Diet - high in fat, high in protein, low in fiber, low in nutrients – linked to major diseases. to G.L.A.D. - God’s Life-Activating Diet - Low in Fat, Low in Protein, High in Fiber, High in Nutrients - not linked to any major disease. We are what we eat! 
Dr. Neal D. Barnard states in his book, The Power of your Plate, "The animal-based diet that most Westerners currently follow is risky. If you are on such a diet and, for whatever reason, you decide to stay on it, please see your physician regularly, continue to read about the value of changing your diet, and please encourage others not to follow your example.
"Similarly, diets based on poultry or fish are extremely weak and are not recommended. They do not provide the cholesterol-lowing, weight-reducing, or cancer-preventive effects that come from a plant-based diet, and they do not reverse heart disease in most patients." Wow!!!! What a statement about what we eat. It has also been stated that the western diet is woefully deficient in fiber, overly high in animal fat and protein, and linked to the causes of heart disease, stroke, cancer, obesity, and diabetes. These are the major conditions that are killing us. "Most people can gain some disease prevention benefits by making dietary changes". Understanding Nutrition, 9th edition, page 624 Melina & Davis in The New Becoming A Vegetarian, says, "Evidence linking diet to chronic disease continued to mount, prompting numerous health organizations to develop dietary guidelines and recommendations urging a shift toward plant-based diets". 
Plant-based diets are called "vegetarian". So, what is a vegetarian, and what does a vegetarian diet consist of? The New World Dictionary defines a vegetarian as, "A person who eats no meat, and sometimes no animal products (as milk and eggs, etc.); one who advocates a diet of only vegetables, fruits, grains, and nuts as the proper one for all people for reasons of health or because of principles opposing the killing of animals."
There are different kinds of vegetarians:
M.E.E.T. Ministry adopts the statement that a total vegetarian is one who completely avoids all animal flesh, including fish, chicken, turkey, eggs and dairy. Vegetarianism has been a dietary option since the dawn of recorded time. The Designer gave man a diet in Genesis 1:29, “ ...every herb-bearing seed,...every tree…to you it shall be for meat." 
Today, professional interest in vegetarian nutrition has reached unprecedented levels. This growth has been explained by various reasons, one of them being the mounting evidence of the health benefits of certain vegetarian diets as presented in biomedical literature on the subject. Another reason may be attributed to the increase in the understanding of the role of vegetarian diets in human health and disease.
Growth in the vegetarian movement today is greater than at any other time in history. The emphasis on the nutritional value of food is a mirror of the increasing interest in the relationship between disease and diet. It does not take much study to find the potential link that exists between the Standard American Diet and the rise of degenerative diseases. The World Health Organization (WHO) has compiled a report published in 1991 stating that there are clear links between dietary factors and the risk of developing some chronic diseases such as coronary artery disease, hypertension, stroke, and cancer. Look at these disease prevention statements in favor of a plant-based diet, coming from the book, The New Becoming a Vegetarian, by Melina & Davis:
A PLANT-BASED DIET (FROM S.A.D. TO G.L.A.D.)
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