Four Reasons Why I Went Plant Based (and why I started this blog!)

I never thought I’d set out to start a blog, but here I am. I figure my first post should explain why I’m doing this and the purpose of this blog, so here it goes!

I had a long history of being vegetarian, pescatarian and flexitarian since my university days. It wasn’t easy in the 1980’s and I didn’t have a major reason to stick to a plant-based diet. Like everyone, I’m against hurting animals and for animal welfare, so the goal was to minimize eating a lot of meat if I could do it, but it had to be convenient.  

Photo by Anna Pelzer on Unsplash

Fast forward to March 2017 and I officially decided to swear off all meat, dairy, fish, eggs, cheese and only eat plants.  There are four reasons why I decided to do this, in order of importance: my health, the environment, ethical reasons and the future impact to the planet.

Health Improvements

Like most middle-aged women, I kept battling the last 10 pounds. I felt like I had tried everything – crazy diets, counting calories and exercising daily.  Nothing ever worked for me.  Along with this, I developed uterine polyps which caused chronic abdominal pain.  I was told I’d need to get an operation to remove them.  I’m not a fan of hospitals or going under the knife so I asked the specialist what I could do to make them go away and the answer was “nothing”.  In fact, I should expect to come back routinely to have them removed because there’s a good chance they would come back.

That set me on a quest to find out what I could do to prevent a reoccurring issue.  This is when I found lifestyle medicine doctors who prescribe a whole food plant-based diet for hormonally driven diseases.  Polyps are caused by excess estrogen and here I was eating milk, yogurt and cheese daily.  These foods have a high concentration of estrogen because cows are constantly impregnated to continually produce milk. Cheese is the worst since it is concentrated milk – and who doesn’t love cheese??

When I eliminated these foods, my abdominal pain disappeared virtually overnight. My LDL cholesterol dropped. All my blood markers improved. I lost 10 pounds and went back to my high school weight. The key was keeping away from vegan junk food, particularly high-fat products with coconut oil (vegan ice cream is delicious but my cholesterol goes through the roof if I eat it). I also learned about the calorie density of foods and emphasize vegetables, fruits, starches like potatoes, whole grains and beans. Wherever possible, I avoid “free” oils and instead use raw nuts, seeds and olives in recipes – unadulterated real food.

Scientific evidence shows that a whole-foods plant-based diet can reverse and prevent heart disease. This diet can also prevent cancer because of the high number of antioxidants and phytochemicals. Being a healthy body weight reduces the odds of developing diabetes, and a low-fat plant-based diet is proven to eliminate diabetes within two weeks.  All these chronic health issues run in my family, so it’s a no-brainer to eat this way.  If the Blue Zones eat 99% plants and have the highest number of 100+ year olds, it must be good!

Environmental Benefits

I’ve always thought of myself as an environmentalist, studying this as part of my undergrad degree.  I do what I can to minimize my impact to the earth, no one is perfect, but I make an effort.  Animal agriculture and factory farming are a major contributor to greenhouse gases like methane, which has a much higher global warming potential than CO2. Growing plants, even monocrops which aren’t the best, requires less land, water, and energy compared to animal farming. This also helps prevent deforestation and biodiversity loss, and reduces pollution of air, water and land.

Upwards of ten times the plants are needed to feed the animals we eat to produce the same amount of food for humans.  By switching to a plant-based diet, we reduce our impact to land, air and water without much effort.  A lot of water is used in conventional farming and during the slaughtering process. Clean water is becoming scarcer and avoiding the runoff from animal poop is really an obvious choice.

Ethical Reasons

This is a much more controversial topic for many because humans are viewed as higher on the food chain, the apex predator and it’s part of the natural cycle of life.  I’ve watched enough factory farming and slaughterhouse footage to decide that’s not how I want to treat animals. It was the third reason why I changed my diet, because I decided I didn’t want to fund these practices with my hard-earned dollars. I know I couldn’t kill an animal, I can’t even handle watching a fish die. 

As an animal lover, it feels wrong to love cats and dogs but then turn a blind eye to lambs, goats, pigs, chickens and cows. There’s evidence that shows these animals are sentient and feel pain and fear just like we do. This was the final nail in the coffin leading me to eat only plants. 

Future Impact

When my husband and I took our two children camping, we always had the mantra to leave the site in better condition than the way we found it. We’d clean up litter and throw out beer caps. That’s how I look at the planet, let’s do what we can to minimize harm to mother earth.  I see it as setting an example for my children with the hope that they have a livable future.

The more people who eat plant-based, either 100% or mostly there, the better off we all are. We all want to live in a world where we can drink clean water, breath fresh air and eat fresh food.  It’s all about supply and demand and the almighty dollar. If we stop buying animal products, then corporations will stop selling it. It really is that simple.

What this Blog is About

Eating whole food plant based isn’t always easy because it isn’t the norm.  Many restaurants still don’t accommodate this way of eating and sell greasy processed slop. My intention with this blog is to show examples of what I eat, restaurants that support this way of eating, and how I manage when travelling. When researching places to travel, it is often very difficult to find out if I will be able to eat while I’m away so I want to share my experiences.

I plan to cover other sustainability related topics too. We don’t own a car and choose to ride our bikes, walk and use transit instead. We have an urban butterfly garden in the front of our house and an organic permaculture garden in the rear. My hope is this blog will help you on your personal journey to a plant-forward and earth friendly lifestyle.

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