Pets bring unconditional love and immense joy to many families. They also consume nearly 1/3 of the animal products in the United States — creating what is, for many people, an ethical and environmental dilemma. What’s the answer? Can dogs be vegan or vegetarian? Can cats be plant-based? Or must they eat meat to survive?

I grew up with cats. The sound and warm vibration of my beloved Popo purring in my lap is one of the happiest memories of my childhood.

Companion animals teach us about unconditional love and devotion, and they often bring out the very best in us humans.

Now, studies are showing that having a companion animal can be good for us, too.

How Dogs and Cats Can Improve Our Health

It’s no secret that children often love pets. But recent research has taken it a step further.

Children raised with pets are less likely to become asthmatic, more likely to be kind to other children, and more likely to have healthy self-esteem once they reach their teens.

Researchers are also finding that having pets positively influences children’s physical and emotional development and even their scholastic achievement.

But it’s not only children who can benefit from a loving relationship with a furry friend. One of the most celebrated “pet studies” was undertaken by Erika Friedmann and her co-workers at the University of Pennsylvania.

They found an unmistakable association between pet ownership and extended survival in patients hospitalized with coronary heart disease.

Those patients who had pets at home were far more likely to survive — even after accounting for differences in the extent of heart damage and other medical problems.

In 1991, the medical value of pets became unexpectedly apparent to researchers who were conducting the Cardiac Arrhythmia Suppression Trial. They were studying the effects of two pharmaceutical drugs (encainide and flecainide) on men who had had heart attacks and were now experiencing irregular heartbeats.

Paradoxically, the drugs were found to cause an increase in cardiac deaths. At the same time, however, it was noted that those patients who had dogs were only one-sixth as likely to die during the year of the study as those who did not have dogs.

Can you imagine what would have happened if the drugs rather than the dogs had been shown to cause a six-fold decrease in deaths?

The drugs might be prescribed for every heart attack patient in the world with an irregular heartbeat. And drug companies would be spending hundreds of millions of dollars telling physicians and the public how great the drugs were.

But because the loyalty and loving friendship of a dog cannot be bottled and sold, there has been no such publicity campaign. And most people to this day do not realize how much healing can be found in loving relationships — including ones with companion animals.

But There’s A Shadow Side, Too

No offense to Fido or Buddy, nor to Leo or Cleopatra, but there are also shadows to pet ownership. It’s worth taking a fair look at them to round out the picture.

Are you concerned about the safety of the food you eat and feed to others? I know I am, which is why I’m so glad I had the opportunity to sit down with Institute for Responsible Technology founder and GMO activist Jeffrey Smith.

Jeffrey shared with me some critical new developments related to genetically engineered foods and glyphosate, which is the primary active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup.

In the following video, we discuss the main problems with genetic engineering, the dangers of glyphosate, new genetic engineering technologies, and what you can do to protect yourself and your family.

How People from 103 Countries Lost and Kept Off Over 300,000 Pounds

The statistics are grim. Billions of people, including more than 2/3 of Americans, are overweight or obese. More than 108 million people in the United States are on a diet. The average dieter makes three or four attempts each year. But less than 1% of these attempts lead to sustained and successful weight loss.

Is there any other domain in which so many people are trying so hard with such miserable results?

Imagine sending your kid off to college – and then learning that the graduation rate at the college is less than 1%. Would you blame your kid? Or would you blame the college?

The weight loss industry is raking in tens of billions of dollars feeding off of people’s misery. But, despite all the slick sales pages and fancy marketing, when you look at the actual results it’s generating, it’s been an abject failure.

Every day, millions of people drink chlorinated tap water.

Chlorine is used to keep our water clean by disinfecting it and killing germs. And it does a marvelous job at eliminating most pathogens from the water we drink.

But the use of this powerful chemical has a downside. According to a report from the U.S. Council of Environmental Quality, the cancer risk for people who drink chlorinated water is 93% higher than those whose water does not contain chlorine.

Does heart disease run in your family? What about cancer or diabetes? Maybe you think your genetic code is fairly set, and that many of the health problems you’re predisposed to could be unavoidable. If so, you’re not alone. It has been a long-held belief that, for the most part, genes shape destiny. But research is showing us a deeper truth: Your genes are not your fate, and through lifestyle and diet choices, you have more control over your health than most of us ever could have imagined.

Imagine you or someone you love are in the hospital. Breakfast is a tasty oat and chia porridge with walnuts, blueberries, and hemp seeds. Lunch is a large black bean salad made with a large variety of local greens. And dinner is a delicious and filling lentil soup with another large salad and quinoa. All of it is delicious – and all of it is grown organically.

Food is the foundation of health. But if you ask your doctor about nutrition, they probably won’t be able to help you much. 

From Ocean Robbins: This is personal. It affects every single one of us, and it affects the people that we love the most, and it’s also global. In 2013, a global collaborative of scientists led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington completed the largest study of risk factors for death and disabilities ever conducted in human history. 

See what the meat industry doesn’t want you to know in this powerful video …

Factory farms are responsible for the vast majority of the meat, dairy, and eggs sold in the United States. And factory farming is the fastest growing method of animal production worldwide.

Discover the secrets of the world’s healthiest, longest living people, so you can live life to the fullest…

Why do people in some regions live longer — and healthier — than others? This is a question upcoming Food Revolution Summit speaker and National Geographic Explorer Dan Buettner wanted to answer.

There’s nothing quite like curling up with a good book. Especially if the book isn’t only enjoyable to read, but also gives you insights that can change your life for the better!

As you probably know, eating a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables promotes good health and helps to protect against many chronic diseases. But did you know that for almost 30 million people in America, and billions more worldwide, healthy, affordable food is difficult if not impossible to obtain?