The New Normal

When things get back to normal, you may be thinking that a lot lately. Normal may be a bit different, at least that is what I am hoping. Recently many smart people have advised taking some time to figure out what it is that you want to keep or discard during this unusual time.

A bit of spring cleaning for your life.

The new normal for me would include less of our old ways of thinking when it comes to what makes a typical diet.

Last week the man and I celebrated 25 years together and the beginning of our mostly plant-based life 25 years ago this September. I say mostly because we didn’t immediately eliminate all animal products at once. We started with the easiest beef, pork and chicken. 

It was the man’s idea. We didn’t eat a lot of animal protein, but after one meal he said “I don’t need to eat that again” and that was it, we didn’t.

Originally, it was because of our health.

There is a mountain of evidence that meat increases the risk of cancer, heart disease, inflammation, cholesterol, and type 2 diabetes. 

Eating a vegetarian diet has been shown to reduce your risk of heart disease by more than 30% according to an Oxford study of 45,000 people on diet and heart disease. The researchers point out that their findings reinforce the fact that diet is critical to the prevention of heart disease.  Reinforce the fact is correct because there are many studies on how your diet can prevent, treat and reverse heart disease.

If significantly reducing the risk of heart disease was the only thing eating a plant-based diet did that would remarkable since it is the single leading cause of death in developed countries.

What about cancer?

Processed meat is classified as a carcinogen.  A few slices of processed meats, like bacon, sausages, sliced meats, pepperoni, salami can increase your cancer risk by 18% while one serving of red meat, lamb, pork, beef or goat increases your cancer risk by about 6%. A serving is the size of a deck of cards, it isn’t much when you consider what is now a portion size.

The two most common causes of death, heart disease and cancer are the top two killers in my family too. Heart attacks and strokes on both sides of my family are the norm, not the exception. 

Breast, colon, prostate, pancreatic, esophageal, skin, bladder are a few of the kinds of cancer my relatives have been died with. 

I have seen the future and I am doing what I can to change it.

The more I know about the risk of chronic disease, whether heart disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes or dementia the less appealing eating an animal becomes.

The more I know our latest infectious disease it becomes clear that having a healthy lifestyle, maintaining your weight, avoiding getting diabetes, having low blood pressure and cholesterol will improve your odds of staying alive.

Although we started our plant-based lifestyle by eliminating meat, a few years later we couldn’t justify eating fish either. If it wasn’t the warnings about mercury, it was the devastation to the oceans and ecosystems that took fish off the menu. 

I grew up on a farm on the west coast. We always had chickens and got our milk from the dairy farm across the street. Fresh eulachon and salmon were part of our diet. Eating meat and fish was the normal thing to do. 

Until it wasn’t.

A few years later, we were going to the United States for Christmas and decided to eliminate dairy products while we were away because of the added hormones. In Canada and Europe, it is illegal to use growth hormones in cows to increase milk production, but it is common practice in the US. It is legal in Canada to use growth hormones in beef cattle. When we returned we decided that dairy wasn’t worth it.

I didn’t want to be drinking more hormones.

Let’s be clear, no animal product is hormone-free as some dairy producers would like you to believe. All animal products have hormones, because all animals have hormones, just like us. They are what helps us grow and develop. There may not be added hormones that increase the rate of growth or the size, but there are hormones.

When we first started eating a vegetarian, then vegan, and now mostly plant-based diet there was no faux meat/cheese/milk “alternatives”. No vegan options on the menus. No internet with any kind of recipe for any kind of vegan dish. It was not easy. It was not popular. Even on the West Coast, it was a choice that required thought and planning.

It was our choice because the alternative wasn’t worth it.

Today we have a new choice. 

There are so many ways to start eating a plant-based diet. There are great recipes everywhere, plant-based milk options, faux meats and plant-based cheese. You don’t have to look very hard. You can even eat junk food. You can start here.

We need a new normal

Pandemics and disease have highlighted the dangers of eating meat. It is not just in some faraway country where people eat weird things. The risks are here and equally, if not more dangerous than a virus to which we have never been exposed.

Factory farming is dangerous. For the animals, the workers and all of us. The widespread use of antibiotics is reducing their effectiveness and increasing the likelihood of antibiotic resistance.

Not only is factory farming dangerous because of the disease and drug misuse, it is dangerous because it is destroying our water systems, our ecosystems and our climate. 

Overfishing is destroying the oceans.

This was normal.

Now the question we may want to start asking, is not why do you eat a plant-based diet? But why don’t you?

Because there really is no downside.

Change your mind, change your health,

Shayla