Dr. Roberts (m): I’m afraid that most of us conduct our lives as if we were omnivores, in that we eat flesh, and we also eat vegetables and fruit.

But there’s no question as some philosophers indicated 2000 years ago that human beings are far more like herbivores than carnivores.

HOST: Greetings, vibrant viewers. Today’s edition of Healthy Living features an esteemed vegan cardiologist from the United States, Dr. William Clifford Roberts. For more than 30 years Dr. Roberts headed the pathology section of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, a division of the prestigious National Institutes of Health, the official medical research agency for the United States.

As a prolific author, he has published over 1,400 articles and authored or edited 24 books to date. He has served as the editor-in-chief of the highly regarded publication the “American Journal of Cardiology” since 1982 and is executive director of the Baylor Cardiovascular Institute in Texas, USA.

In the following excerpts from an interview with Dr. Roberts, he discusses how the diet we choose often determines whether we live a life of wellness and vitality or suffer from one or many of the devastating chronic or so-called “lifestyle” diseases that are now prevalent throughout the world.

Dr. Roberts (m): Cardiovascular disease kills about 45% of adults in the USA. The most common cause of heart failure is hardening of the coronary arteries, atherosclerosis of the arteries that supply our heart muscles. We have a heart attack, the cavities dilate, and then they can’t pump as well.

So blood builds up, our feet swell, we get short of breath and we can’t walk up hills. This is heart failure. And we can’t sleep flat in bed at night.

Heart failure is the biggest cause of hospitalization in the USA in people aged 65 and over. It is a huge expense! We have at least 5 million people with heart failure in this country, at least! It’s like having cancer.

HOST: Meat consumption creates a high risk of one contracting a host of lifestyle diseases including cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes. It has been estimated such chronic health conditions cost the US economy US$1 trillion a year in terms of treatment expenses and lost productivity. 

Dr. Roberts (m): Most of us grew up in the US eating flesh virtually every meal. Breakfast, bacon or sausage. Lunch sandwich with pig in there, or cow, chicken or turkey. And then some kind of different flesh at night. So 21 meals a week, flesh at every meal. Now, there is no way that a society can live long and live healthy until they are 90 or 100, not (with) chronic diseases for the last 25 years of life.

Dr. Roberts (m): If you are (a) vegetarian, you can keep your waistline flat, you live longer, your blood pressure is lower, cholesterol levels are lower, and you don’t have to worry about excessive adipose tissue.

When your body weighs less, you’re not putting so much damage and weight on your hips and your knees. You got more energy.

For more information on Dr. Roberts,
please visit
www.Baylor.edu/Biomedical_Studies