T Stands For WFPB Vegan Anniversary, Crochet, Currently Reading and AJ

Hi Friends!

Happy Tuesday!  Hope you are having a good week.  Today is cold, frosty but calm, which is a welcome change to the weather we had last week, which was very stormy, wet with 61mph winds.  It caused a lot of damage to house and garden, and I will have to replace some fences which were destroyed by the weather. After getting some fencing replaced last summer I was looking forward to a winter where fences didn’t fall down, but alas it was not to be.

Today I am celebrating another anniversary which is technically tomorrow, but I won’t be posting tomorrow, so here we go!  Fourteen years ago I switched to a vegan diet, or if you prefer, a plant-based diet.  I was already vegetarian so you probably think that it was an easy change and it would have been if not for the evil cheese!  I tried to give up cheese three times before I was finally able to kick the cheese addiction!  Have you noticed how quick people are to defend their addictions?  That was me with cheese for sure!

“Loaded with calories, high in sodium, packing more cholesterol than steak, and sprinkled with hormones — if cheese were any worse, it would be Vaseline …Some foods are fattening. Others are addictive. Cheese is both — fattening and addictive.” ~ Dr Neal Barnard

Finally the only thing that worked to stop me wanting to eat cheese was watching documentaries and reading books about the dairy industry. You can’t unknow what you know, and once I knew, I realised that I didn’t want to be part of that system. As a vegetarian, I used to think vegans were crazy for not eating cheese, I didn’t “get it”, why were they not eating cheese?  How did they get their nutrients? Protein?  It was only after reading and watching documentaries like Forks Over Knives and others that I finally did “get it”.

However, following a vegan diet doesn’t mean that you are healthy. It should mean that, but there are so many vegan junk foods, and vegan alternatives for meat and dairy, plus all the sugar and oil that are still available to you, that it can still be a very unhealthy diet – it is possible to be both a junk food vegan and a fat vegan (or vegetarian).  Same thing can apply to vegetarian diets, all the fat, the sugar, the cheese and the eggs etc.  It’s possible to be either a vegan or a vegetarian and never eat a vegetable!  I saw someone interviewed recently (I forget who at the moment) but they said that vegetarians can end up eating more fat than anyone else, as they have all the fats and oils, eggs and cheese from the vegetarian diet plus they can eat all the nuts and seeds, avocadoes and coconut available on the vegan diet – they eat it all!

Anyway, I knew I was in trouble when the thing that I was most concerned about was whether I could still bake cakes!  I used to joke that I was following a Whole Cake Plant Based diet instead of a Whole Food Plant Based diet – funny joke right, not really!  I spent a lot of time perfecting my vegan baking, converting recipes, discovering and inventing new recipes, and eating it, or giving it to other people to eat.  My mum never refused a sweet treat.  I think a sweet tooth runs in the family.  So although my friends would refer to me as being healthy because I was vegan, I knew that I wasn’t because I was eating a lot of sugar and oil in all the baked goods, vegan cheeses, loads of bread etc. and I still had all the same health problems I had before.  Although I love fruit and veggies somehow I was eating more of the other stuff.

Fourteen years ago, being vegan wasn’t as easy as it is now in that there are so many vegan options available both in supermarkets and restaurants (mostly unhealthy!) and also less people knew what a vegan was or what they ate.  I am only talking about the food part of being a vegan, there are also obviously other parts where some ethical “vegans” don’t use any animal products at all (no leather, no wool, no silk, no honey etc). At the time, I donated nearly every pair of leather shoes and boots, every leather handbag and jacket, and all woolly jumpers from my wardrobe because I was disgusted by what I read and watched.  However, some of these things are not very practical or not sustainable for everyone and you have to do what’s right for you. I do have a few leather things that I kept, but I have never bought any more. It wouldn’t help anyone if I threw them out.  I do have some wool in my yarn stash because it will always be warmer than anything acrylic and I am always cold.  I only buy products that are cruelty-free and ethical.  So for those reasons, I prefer to use the term “plant-based” eating rather than “vegan” though vegan is simpler for people to understand nowadays.  I am making more of an effort to be more whole food plant based and shake those final addictions to sugar and fat and refined carbs etc.  I do feel like it is finally having a positive effect on my health but it has taken some time to get there and eat clean. Happy Anniversary to me!

Today’s Art . . .