My journey towards Vedgedom: Part 1
3 years ago I decided to stop eating meat, poultry, seafood, eggs and dairy. I’m telling you now that I never thought I would EVER become anything close to vegetarian or vegan and at that time I didn’t know much about what being vegan really meant…nor did I care. I was one of those people that thought you needed to eat meat and dairy to stay healthy (wrong! but I didn’t know that then). I built my passion of health and fitness around meat, eggs and dairy. I used to compete in figure competitions and I even helped promote animal based protein supplements as a side job. I was on a path to becoming a personal trainer but during my preparations for competitions I began to realize that nutrition played a role that was more significant than I initially thought it to be. My passion for nutrition began to grow and I knew that it was something that I would want to eventually pursue as a career. After two years of competing overseas I moved back to the states and something strange happened. Within the first month of being back in the United States I started noticing that I was having a bad reaction whenever I consumed dairy products. It was like I suddenly became lactose intolerant and I was left feeling confused about it. I thought sure that it was just my body readjusting to the lesser quality of the dairy products that I was now consuming in the states so I decided that I would do a cleanse (I will explain more about this in a later post). I also decided to search lactose intolerance and the effects of dairy on the human body on the web. I came across a few links such as this one from the U.S. National Library of Medicine http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000276.htm and this article and video http://drhyman.com/blog/2010/06/24/dairy-6-reasons-you-should-avoid-it-at-all-costs-2/ by Mark Hyman, MD. I continued to research the topic and I learned a lot about the dairy industry and how “1 and 6 cows suffer from clinical mastitis” and that “90% of somatic cells are neutrophils, the inflammatory immune cells that form pus” when a cow is infected; according to the USDA which Michael Greger,M.D. mentions in this article http://nutritionfacts.org/2011/09/08/how-much-pus-is-there-in-milk/ These articles and videos really forced me to reevaluate my consumption of dairy. I will continue part 2 of my Vedgedom journey tomorrow… Until then…I would love for you to check out these links and leave a comment below. "~Be Veg. Get Fit. Live Well.~" Jessica Ivory Sutton
Comments
|