The average American surmises on some level that, if I should be eating a vegetarian, or vegan diet, wouldn’t my doctor be the first to tell me? After all, this individual is my healthcare professional. Actually, not really, they are your illness-care professional.
An illness-care system is a system where the medical profession treats our illnesses with the goal of getting us healthy; the system we have. A healthcare system implies a system that cares for and maintains our health, keeping us from getting sick—presumably the state we would all prefer. Why do we have the system we do? Simple. Doctors were educated and trained to diagnose illness, prescribe medicine, and cut disease out of us; they were not trained to keep us healthy. Also, there is no income in “health.” Does the medical profession have an ethical responsibility to keep us in good health so we don’t return to their business, a business that brings in an estimated $123 billion a year in medical revenue by treating diseases caused by poor diet?
With no training, no motivation, and other reasons outlined in this report, our doctor may be close to the last person to recommend a vegetarian diet to us.