Thrive: The Vegan Nutrition Guide to Optimal Performance in Sports and Life

of time. Naturally resistant to most pests, hemp crops can be grown efficiently without herbicides and pesticides.
     
    In Canada, Japan, and Europe, hemp crops have been planted in over-farmed fields to rejuvenate the soil. (It is illegal to grow hemp in the United States.) Once the hemp has gone through its growing cycle, usually about three months, it is plowed into the soil and left to decompose. After a few rotations, the soil can be used for growing less productive crops. Hemp can thrive in arid conditions, making irrigation unnecessary and therefore conserving water. Since much of the water used to irrigate crops is far from pure, the risk of health concerns arising from irrigation is lower with hemp crops. And finally, in contrast to the protein sources of the standard North American diet, plant-based sources, and hemp in particular, have low oil requirements for their production.
     
    Other primary-source protein foods include legumes, seeds, and pseudograins. I explain each in detail in Chapter 5.
     
    A plant-based diet significantly reduces our dependence on oil.
     
     
    With the current price of oil, how is it that some foods requiring so much energy to be produced are still inexpensive to buy in the supermarket? Farming subsidies, still in place in many countries, including the United States and Canada, shelter us from the cost of food production. If the price we paid for our food were a true reflection of the resources that went into its production, the cost of inefficiently produced food would be sky-high. With the price of oil being what it is, we should pay more for food that requires more oil to produce. And in effect we are—since subsidies are provided by the government, a portion of our tax dollar goes into sustaining inefficient food industries.
     

soil quality
     
    The soil in which we grow our food is an important factor in its nutrient value. We get many of the trace minerals our body needs from our food. For several of these nutrients, plants are simply the conduit, pulling minerals from the soil. Whether or not these plants then pass through animals before making their way to our diet, the starting point is always the same—the earth.
     
    Organic farmers have been aware of soil value for centuries, even before they were known as “organic” farmers. Once too great a demand was placed on the soil, by too many crops grown without a field rotation, for example, it started to produce less vibrant plants—smaller, less colorful, and less flavorful crops that lacked the healthful qualities their counterparts grown in rich soil possessed. And so the farmers began to enrich the soil. Using decomposing plant waste in the form of compost was a common way of adding valuable minerals and nutrients back into the soil. Allowing worms to develop colonies within the soil was also a way of improving crop quality. Worms help speed the rate at which organic matter decomposes and enable a new crop to be planted sooner. These methods are still used today by some organic farmers. Most of the large food-producing companies, however, take less care in nourishing the soil. Instead, they focus on the plant, making sure it is not harmed by disease or insects, and so plants are sprayed with herbicides and pesticides, which, ironically, cause their quality to suffer. This manner of farming is perpetuated by the increased demand to produce food regardless of nutrient value. The vast majority of these crops are feed for animals being produced for food themselves. Again, passing food through these extra steps is a large energy draw, as well as inefficient use of land.
     

why the thrive diet is less demanding on the environment
     
    A diet consisting of food that has been minimally processed and consists of primary-source nutrition is less demanding on the environment. Primary-source nutrition means eating solely plant-based foods. As I noted earlier, without adding the extra step of feeding plants to animals and then eating the animal, as is the basis of the typical North American diet, a considerable amount of energy is conserved, about 30 percent—and 30 percent is huge. When energy gains measured in the 1 and 2 percent range are considered “significant,” 30 percent is massive.
     
    Imagine if North America reduced its energy usage by 30 percent? If every North American were to eat a diet based on primary nutrition, that is exactly what would happen.
     
    The Thrive Diet is an environmental friendly