Meat Retreat

Many of you who have come here regularly over the past year know that I have struggled with some health issues. Despite having the flu shot last year I contracted influenza which led to bronchitis and a few months later pneumonia. I haven’t stopped coughing since. All summer I had very little energy and I just felt sick all the time. I knew that it would take some time to recover from the pneumonia but when September came along and I was still coughing it was time to do something. So off to the doctor I went and they could find nothing. I decided as well to see a naturopathic doctor and she put me on a strict diet called the Brown Rice Diet, which meant I could eat chicken, fish, brown rice and fresh vegetables. I was to try and eliminate things like caffeine, sugar, wheat and alcohol. Slowly my health improved.

Just after Christmas we went to visit friends in another city, I was telling Dee about my strict diet and she looked at me and said in a peculiar tone “WHAT do you EAT!”, I asked her why she asked and she told me that they were now Vegan and she was struggling with trying to find the right foods to eat. I just about fell off my chair; these were full fledged meat eaters and I was so very surprised. Dee went on to tell me that she and Dave had read a book called “The China Study” by T. Colin Campbell, PhD. So of course I had to read the book; I finished it in two days and haven’t eaten meat or dairy since; Al the Man has embraced our new found Veganism and our children have fully transition onto soy products.

This is a startling book and I realized that we really needed to totally revamp our diet in order to have productive healthy lives. If you would like to read a few excerpts from the book you can go here. The underlying basis for the book is this:

“People who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease … People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease. These results could not be ignored,” Dr. Campbell.

He goes on to talk about the Western diet and how fat we have become, how fat and too much animal protein in our diet causes disease like Cancer, Diabetes and Heart Disease.

So we have embarked upon a journey into a strict vegetarian lifestyle and I have learned more than I ever thought I would about food. We no longer eat meat, eggs or cheese, nor do we drink milk. This for us is not an ethical issue although the more I delve into this lifestyle the more environmental and animal rights issues come to light; this is for now an issue about health, a healthy life for Al, the children and myself.

I’m sure many of you have questions about our children and not drinking milk, questions about calcium and protein and I hope in the coming weeks to write a little bit more about how all of these elements are incorporated into a Vegan diet. I would like to share some great Vegan recipes and I would love to hear about your Healthy Living Resolutions.

This post was written for the February PBN Blog Blast on "Healthy Living: The Perennial Resolution" in association with Kroger.