The Centers for Disease Control estimates that around 30 percent of Taiwan’s population will be infected with the novel A(H1N1) influenza when it reaches the peak infection period. It will be very hard for people to avoid contact with the virus.
In addition to frequent hand washing and wearing surgical masks, the most effective way of protecting oneself is to eat at least five servings of fresh seasonal fruit and vegetables a day, as recommended by the Bureau of Health Promotion.
Even if novel influenza viruses come in contact with one’s respiratory tract, the presence in the body of natural plant-based alkaline peptides will make the virus unable to open the lock to cells in one’s lungs, so it will not be able to infect a lot of lung cells and it will not lead to fulminating pneumonia.
Research done in Canada has shown that the number of people infected with novel influenza in each province bears a 99 percent correlation to the number of intensive piggeries in the same province. In Manitoba, where there are 2.4 times as many pigs as humans, residents are three times as likely to be hospitalized and 3.7 times as likely to die from swine flu than the Canadian average.
So I advise everyone to eat more fruit and vegetables and less meat as an effective way of improving one’s resistance to viruses, even when they mutate again to create new flu strains.
As well as fighting disease and keeping people healthy, a vegetarian diet can help reduce the great number of animals kept in pens under conditions that greatly increase the chances of virus mutation. It can reduce carbon and methane emissions, protect the environment and check global warming and the natural disasters it causes. Then all living things can live peacefully together in a healthy, happy world.
If you want to fight the epidemic, your dinner plate is the right place to start.
Chen Wei-hwa is an associate professor of medicine at the National Defense Medical Center.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
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