People think I'm crazy...

Yep, they do. Well, I probably am in many ways that seem normal to me...but the one that most of my "normal" friends and family think I'm over the top about is what I eat.

I'm usually the lone one who asks for a veggie plate at a banquet. I'm the one my Mom calls before I go visit to find out if I'll eat this or that...and no matter how many times I tell her I'll find something to eat she still wants to try. I love her all the more because she does try, even though she thinks I'm crazy! I'm the one who gets the call asking if I'll bring my own food at Board meetings or other day-long events because they can't figure out what to order for me.

Now I'm kind of inching toward going vegan. I'm already a self-titled vegetarian. I will drink milk, eat some cheeses and eggs and haven't cared if my gluten-free, sugar-free waffles were made with dairy (I just discovered they aren't!). Going vegan means I'd give up all by-products with dairy, cheese, eggs and other food items made with animal products.

I'll tell you up-front that I think animals are on this earth so we can eat them and / or wear them. I've been a vegetarian since my teen years. I've probably bought and cooked meat three times in the past 20 years --- to feed someone else. Grass fed, hormone and antibiotic meat raised the way they used to be raised, of course.

I've known that it was kind of hypocritical to not eat meat because of the way they're processed, fed, treated, but give a pass to the milk, eggs, and other products produced from those same animals. I buy organic, cage free, but haven't been as stringent when it comes to the mixes, frozen waffles, etc. that I buy for convenience.

As I wrote in a previous blog I have been watching all kinds of food and health related documentaries while I'm walking on the treadmill. They have finally convinced me to give it a shot.

I'm going to move slowly, not go hog wild (pun intended).

I am going to majorly increase my veggie and legume consumption. I am going to only buy vegan processed foods (like my waffles). I pulled the cheese out of the fridge and tossed it in the freezer so I can give it to someone in the family who eats cheese. I left some things in the fridge because my husband is not on the same page and so we'll have dual eating habits.

I'm doing this for two main reasons that have a lot of subsets.

1- the health benefits. I watched, and then read, enough to see clearly that meat, dairy, etc. eaters had much higher incidents of a wide, wide assortment of illnesses. I won't bore you with all the details but it was enough to make me dig further and ultimately decide that our food and diets have changed over the past 50 or more years and it just ain't healthy to eat them pigs...

2 - the way we raise and process our meats is disgusting, criminal, horrific. Castrating animals without any anesthesia? cramming them into pens? cutting off beaks? grinding up live chicks? Not to mention the deplorable working conditions for those who work in the meat processing plants.

This isn't a "new years resolution", it's something I've been moving toward for a while and yesterday watching one of the movies again things crystallized in my mind.

Here's my plan:

• No cheese.
• No eggs.
• No butter.

Just doing those three is going to be a major adjustment but I'm not stopping there...
I will:

• Use organic, non-GMO, farm raised cow milk in my morning tea for a while until I've cleansed my palette and adjust to the other changes. That's the only time I use milk and I that tea is a vice I enjoy too much to ditch. Gosh, I am already doing enough crazy without depriving myself of my early-morning enjoyment!
• Substitute vegan foods (waffles, mayo, butter, etc.) for some of my current choices.
• Include a daily veggie smoothy with some fruit (decided the juicing was for the devout)
• Eat more legumes, seeds and nuts.
• Make my plate 70+% veggies.
• Take a B12 supplement off and on. 

Those are some major changes for yours truly. I'll keep you posted. I had a vegan waffle with half a banana, natural peanut butter and organic raisins for breakfast. Wonder what I'll do for lunch?

My friends and family thought I was crazy before. Now they are going to think I'm certifiable.

Giving up milk...

A lot of people right now are swearing off meat. It will be temporary in most cases but a few will stick with it. They probably aren't thinking about milk and cheese though.

Recently the government recalled 143 MILLION pounds of beef as a result of a video by the Humane Society. The video showed cows staggering and being tortured as they headed to be slaughtered. You may have seen the video on TV. It's horrible to think that people could be that cruel.

What's worse is that the meat was headed toward our children's schools. A lot of the meat had been eaten prior to the recall.

What's all the hoopla about eating the meat? It's possible, although probably remote, that some of the cows had bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), more commonly known as mad cow disease. If a cow has it and you eat it, you have a high chance of someday having your brain turn to mush. From what I've read the brain ends up looking like a sponge. There is no cure.

I think the fact that the cows in question were DAIRY cows has mostly been overlooked. Prior to ending up on the chopping block these older cows spent their life squirting milk into containers that ended up in refrigerators across the country. Processing doesn't kill mad cow disease.

They've done experiments where the turned infected cow parts into dust at temperatures that kill everything, reconstituted the stuff and voila, you could still get mad cow. They haven't quite figured out how to make it go away. I read about one case where tools used in surgery where disinfected, heated, etc. then, after a lengthy period of time were used in eye surgery. The person contracted the disease from the equipment. You'll have to look it up 'cause I don't remember the particulars.

I don't eat meat. Haven't since I was a teenager. It started out as a teen-age protest of some sort, partially because I didn't want to kill and eat Bambi or some poor cow, partially I think because my parents enjoyed it so much. My personal stand for independence on some level probably. Whatever the initial reasons, over the years I've read enough about our food processing to convince me to stay on the straight and narrow in regards to meat. Now it's a habit and a way of life.

I don't like milk, so I've never been one to drink full glasses of the stuff unless it was drowned in chocolate or mixed with ice cream. However, as you can already tell, I eat dairy products. I keep it to a minimum and shoot for tofu or soy products whenever possible. But I do have a sweet tooth that only chocolate ice cream will satisfy at times, albeit sugar-free in most instances.

The fact that the cows in question were dairy cows opened my eyes yet again and I'm going back to soy, tofu and similar. The only time I drink milk anymore is in my hot tea, so that's not a problem. I have a yogurt a day, so am gonna have to switch back to non-dairy, again not a problem as I like it.

I've already cut cheese out of my diet. Not for mad cow reasons, but because I've been watching my hips widen and cheese is high in fat and calories. I can't stand the low-fat cheeses so it has just been easier to bump it from my diet.

Enough about what I'M going to be doing. What are YOU going to be doing? Have you wondered how long this plant has been supplying meat to our kids and fast-food restaurants? They recalled 143 million pounds of meat. How much meat has been processed by this plant during its history? How many other plants have similar practices? How many dairy cows are out there potentially pumping mad cow milk?

I seriously don't expect we have many, if any dairy cows with problems. From what I've read these cows were simply abused, tired cows. They were older dairy cows that were past their milk-producing prime and thus were headed to slaughter. They traveled a great distance, probably in conditions that had them standing packed into cattle cars for a long period of time. They were more than likely just wanting to sleep.

However, cows with BSE symptoms aren't noticeable until the cows are older. In the United States we kill our cows young, long before symptoms would be visible to the naked eye. We don't check them for the disease.

And here's another scary fact. If one BSE infected cow gets in the mix, it affects the entire batch of meat. Plus, since you can't kill it, they can sterilize and clean those killing machines and processors all they want but they can't get rid of the stuff. The next batch of meat going through the system is going to be tainted.

If you eat it, chances are someday your family will think you're suffering from dementia. But it will be mad cow. Read about it. It's not common, but it IS scary.
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