The growing interest in plant-based eating presents a unique evangelistic opportunity for Adventists. This presentation explores this topic as well as the relevance of the health message in light of global concerns over health, pandemics and the environment.

<p>The growing interest in plant-based eating presents a unique evangelistic opportunity for Adventists. This presentation explores this topic as well as the relevance of the health message in light of global concerns over health, pandemics and the environment.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Pathways Lifestyle Medicine Clinics

Daniel Cho

The Plant-based Revolution: A Unique Opportunity for Adventists

I want to thank Pastor Pearl for the invitation.

So yeah, thank you so much for having me today.

I hope to just share something a little bit about health that I hope you'll find valuable and something applicable to your walk with the Lord, especially during these times that we're living in.

I think the times are not really kind of emphasizing the importance of our health message and that's what I want to talk about today.

I just want to because I'll be sharing some health information I just want to put a disclaimer.

So this presentation is for educational purposes only.

So please do speak with a health care provider before applying any of the info that I'll be sharing with you.

I am speaking on behalf of a couple of organizations I'm part of.

So I'm involved with Pathways, Tohono's Lifestyle Medicine Clinics.

We have 3 clinics in Toronto focused on lifestyle medicine.

We try to reach people for Christ through serving them through health.

So I'm also involved in an organization called Lifestyle as Medicine.

It's a not-for-profit we put on Lifestyle Medicine programs and also Lifestyle Medicine Institute.

Basically it's a institute here that we what we do is we try to train Adventists in health evangelism.

Pastor Pereira just asked me to briefly share about some programs that are coming up.

So we are putting on an intensive, so it's a one-week online intensive where we provide health evangelism training.

So we have a 1 week on plant-based nutrition, how you can use that to better reach people, natural therapies, and lifestyle medicine in general.

So if you're interested in that you could just go to the website www.lininstitute.org Alright so the presentation today is called the plant-based revolution.

Why Adventists should embrace plant-based eating today.

So, you know Adventists are we're quite unique among Christians because of our promotion of plant-based eating.

And you know when we first got the message, you know Ellen White got a vision, I believe it was 19, sorry 1868.

Pastor Pearl, you might want to correct me, but there was, she got her first vision and when we first started sharing the message, you know, it was kind of difficult.

It probably sounded ridiculous to people back then to think that you would, you know, not eat meat as part of your diet.

And of course, there wasn't the science that we know today.

And also, when we first had the health message, it was a bit controversial during Ellen White's time.

Many Adventists and many pastors were very resistant to the message when John Harvey Kellogg and Ellen White would try to share it.

And even today I think, you know, sometimes this topic, It becomes a little bit awkward sometimes.

Maybe a little bit controversial or divisive.

So but I think that right now with what's happening in the world, I do really believe that our health message is more important and relevant than ever before.

And I just want to share with you a couple reasons why I think that's the case, and I hope that again this will hopefully encourage us to live a healthier life for the Lord so that we can serve Him better and serve those around us better and just experience better health and a better life that He wants for each 1 of us.

So the first thing I want to talk about and for this message I'm just going to really focus on plant-based eating.

I know that our health message is much more than that but I'll just focus on plant-based eating for today.

I think the first thing I want to really talk about is that right now there's an explosion of interest in plant-based eating and the vegan lifestyle.

Just a couple years ago, Dallhausen University out of Halifax, they did a study, or rather a poll, assessing the level of vegetarianism among Canadians.

And what they found was that, I think around 9% of Canadians now identify as being vegetarian or vegan.

And what they but what they found out that out was that among those who are identified as plant-based more than 50% are people under 35 years old.

And the authors of the study, they say that this is a mind-blowing rate.

That young people in Canada are going vegan and plant-based at mind-blowing rates.

And they think that the percentage of Canadians who are going to go plant-based is just going to continue increasing because of this young demographic.

So as you can see, you know, I think there is a tremendous interest in plant-based eating.

I'm sure we can identify many of these here.

They're going plant-based for many different reasons.

Many – Paul McCartney is a famous vegan.

Many athletes as well are going plant-based.

Here you see Venus Williams, Kyrie Irving, an NBA, Cam Newton, the NFL quarterback, Lewis Hamilton, five-time champion of the Formula 1 race, Megan Duhamel, a Canadian Olympic gold medalist figure skater, and many others are going plant-based as well.

In an article published at CNBC, they say that there's a new performance hack taking hold in the NFL.

It's not a new supplement, it's not a new protein shake, it's not a new workout, it's going vegan.

So many athletes now are catching on to the trend of plant-based eating.

I'm not sure if you saw the film Game Changers, a documentary on how athletes are going plant-based, but it's been getting a lot of recognition and many people watching it, especially young men, it's more geared towards them.

But again, just emphasizing how important and beneficial plant-based eating is for athletic performance and overall health.

And I'm sure you, we've all recognized how many fast food restaurants are now kind of jumping on the bandwagon.

So you know if you look at Beyond Meat for example, you know I think first it was probably A&W who got their Beyond Meat burger.

And then after that, almost like a domino, Tim Hortons got their Beyond Meat breakfast patty, and then their burger, and then Subway.

I think McDonald's is tweaking their Beyond Burger.

All these fast food restaurants are now jumping on the plant-based bandwagon because it is exploding.

Also the Canadian food guide here, I'm sure we all may recall the previous 1 where it used to be a quarter plate was fruit and vegetables, a quarter plate was grains, and then there was meat, and then there was dairy.

But now the new Canadian food guy gets rid of dairy completely and meat as a category and kind of lump them in into a protein section with beans and peas and tofu and the rest of them.

So again, a shift in our understanding of how important plant-based eating is.

And basically, the point I'm trying to make is that I do believe that this explosion in interest in plant-based eating really does present a remarkable opportunity for us Adventists to present ourselves in a positive way.

Here Ellen White in the third selected message she says, health reform wisely treated will prove an entering wedge where the truth may follow with market success." So you know if we through health we can really connect and break down prejudice and barriers toward our message because as we as Adventists we recognize that our message is very unique and very counter-cultural in many ways.

If you look at it vis-a-vis the Christian world, we go to church on Saturday which is strange to many people.

I know because I was a convert and I used to be Presbyterian and I became an Adventist and I know my mom and us we faced a lot of challenges from our Presbyterian family.

They're saying you know that You guys are becoming heretics and you're going joining a cult and all this stuff.

They just think it's really strange, you know.

So how is it that we, with such unique beliefs, can make inroads and connect with people?

And I think that right now with this tremendous interest in plant-based eating and health, really does provide a bridge for us to connect with people.

I'm very much, I know many people in the vegan community, the secular vegan community, and it's quite interesting.

You know, the people in the vegan community kind of tend to be more kind of left-leaning or liberal, if you will say, at least on the social political spectrum.

And we of course at Adventist we tend as a general group tend to be more right-leaning or conservative at least in our social views.

So you know you might think that there's no connecting point but it's really interesting in the vegan community who are much more liberal, they do see Adventists in a very favorable light because of our promotion of a plant-based diet.

So here is just 1 example of how our message about health is really able to enable us to connect with groups that maybe many other Christians have might have a hard time connecting with.

So I want us to turn to Genesis chapter 1 verse 29 to 30.

If you have your Bibles there, Genesis chapter 1 29 to 30.

I'm sure we all know this text well, but let's just read it.

Of course the Genesis creation account and here God tells us our original diet.

In verse 29 it says, and God said, see I have given you every herb that yields seed, which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed to you it shall be for food also to every beast of the earth to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth in which there is life I've given every green herb for food and it was so you know I always kind of chuckle to myself, you know, can you imagine lions and polar bears and these other carnivorous animals eating fruits and vegetables for their food?

But that's how it was when God first created the earth.

We, and animals, God gave us essentially a plant-based diet.

Fruits, vegetables, not vegetables initially, but fruits, seeds, grains, nuts.

And I do think that simple as this text might be, that it might be actually 1 of the most powerful and relevant texts for us today, just given how much interest there is in a plant-based diet, and especially as a witnessing tool.

And just let me share 1 experience that we had.

Our clinic and Lifestyles Medicine, we put on events called Dinner with the Doctor where basically we partner with local churches and we put on, we give guests a free plant-based meal and we do a health talk.

George Cho, my brother, he often gives these health talks.

And we usually get like almost 100 people from the community, mostly people who are non-Avengers, they come into the church and we serve them.

And It's been really wonderful as an opportunity to connect with the community.

But there's 1 guy, a Chinese guy, and he's like a really hardcore vegan and he does the activism and all that stuff.

And he was having a conversation with my brother and he was saying, you know, like, why is it that like every time we like go and like you know we do vegan activism The people who oppose us the most are Christians he says that Christians will come and they'll say that all God allows us to eat meat and blah blah blah and so So this Chinese guy who was saying that he had a very negative impression of Christians and just couldn't understand why they couldn't understand the benefits of plant-based eating.

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The Plant-based Revolution: A Unique Opportunity for Adventists

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