Why I became a Vegetarian
I have been interested in learning about health and wellness since I was 16 years old. That is the year I became a vegetarian and eventually a vegan. I decided to become a vegetarian to lose weight and feel better at such a young age because I was overweight and felt burdened by society to fit in with my skinny peers. I was told from a young age that the thinner and more beautiful I was the more worth I had. It did not help that I was a teenage girl in the early 2000’s when our role models were Brittany Spears and Christina Aguilera. Bodies that were skinny, tan, and clothed with Abercrombie and Fitch was in style accepted and everybody else did not quite fit in. It also did not help my feelings of acceptance that being a vegetarian was seen as unhealthy, weird, and unachievable.
I started indulging in the diet culture and tried everything from the Atkins diet, eating once a day, joining sports, and becoming vegetarian and vegan. As much as I tried dieting nothing seemed to work. I was still overweight, felt insecure, and didn’t know how to become a healthier version of myself. I did however decide to stick with a vegetarian diet as I felt better and started to watch documentaries like “Cowspiracy,” and Peta videos that discuss the harmful effects on the animals and the environment by being a carnivore.
In the last 20 years I have been working on bettering myself with diet, exercise, breathing techniques, self-love and so much more. Here are a few things I learned about why eating plant-based is good for you and why increasing vegetable intake is good for everyone.
What Plants Do for You
I started to read health and wellness books and “self-help” books incessantly and these are a few things I have learned about what whole, plant-based foods will do for you. Joel Fuhrman in his book, Eat to Live says, “A diet in which fruits, vegetables, and other natural plant foods supply the vast majority of calories affords us powerful protection against disease.” That’s right research has proven that a diet rich in vegetables and fruits are anti-carcinogenic and have prosperities to fight diseases! In the last five years I have been fascinated with the Blue Zones or clusters of people around the world who live optimally into old age. All of them are plant-based or get most of their nutrients from whole foods including vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, and legumes.
Fuhrman goes on to say, “We are on the verge of a revolution. Substances newly discovered in broccoli and cabbage sprouts sweep toxins out of cells. Substances found in nuts and beans prevent damage to our cells’ DNA. Other compounds in beets, peppers, and tomatoes fight cancerous changes in cells. Oranges and apples protect our blood vessels from damage that could lead to heart disease. Nature’s chemoprotective army is alert and ready to remove our enemies and shield us from harm.” This is so fascinating as Hippocrates once said, “Let food be thy medicine.” It’s as if these foods have been put on “God’s Green Earth” to nourish and protect us from disease so we can live our best selves.
Andrew Weil, Functional MD, who wrote Spontaneous Happiness said, “The natural pigments that color vegetables and fruits; antioxidants in olive oil, tea, and chocolate; novel compounds in ginger, turmeric, and other spices and herbs; and the special fats in oily fish, all protect our tissues and organs from inappropriate inflammation; some are potent natural anti-inflammatory agents. Today’s mainstream diet is glaringly deficient in these protective elements.” Again, the natural, REAL, whole foods are the ones that will keep us alive longer in optimal health.
Eating Fresh Food
Eating fresh fruit vegetables and fruits matter because we live in era that we are over fed and undernourished. Many people in the Western part of the world are obese but undernourished due to eating processed foods that are filled with sugar and fat but lack any real nutrients. It is also important to note that be live in an era of globalism where most of our fruits and vegetables that we get from the grocery store are grown half-way around the world. Superfood Hunter, and star on Netflix show, Down to Earth, Darin Olien says in his book, Superlife:
In 2003 a conducted by the Laboratorio de Fitoquimica Departmento de Ciencia y Tecnologia de los Alimentos, Spain the vitamin C and flavonoid content of freshly harvested broccoli was measured, and then the vegetable was wrapped in plastic film and stored for a week at just above freezing, to simulate conditions during commercial transport and distribution. The speculative losses, at the end of cold storage and retail periods, were 71 and 80 percent of total glucosinates (cancer-fighting chemicals), 62 and 51 percent of total flavonoids, 44 and 51 percent of synaptic and derivatives, and 73 and 74 percent of caffeoyl-quinic acid derivatives.
This study in Spain has shown that more than half and often more than two-thirds of nutrients are lost when whole foods are stored in freezers across the world and shipped to your local grocery stores. The best solution to this is to eat as fresh and local as possible. Eat at your local farmers markets, health food stores, and grow a vegetable garden yourself! What could be better and more nutritious than picking a vegetable from your garden and eating it minutes later!
Raw Matters
I am not one to promote eating raw vegetables and fruits all the time, but if we can eat one or two raw meals a day the more nutrients we will derive from the plant and the more we will alkalize our bodies. I try to eat a smoothie for breakfast and a hearty salad for lunch. I then eat a cooked plant-based meal for dinner. Darin from Superlife says, “Raw food retains all of its water, which improves our hydrations. Raw food also alkalizes our tissues, while cooking it can make us more acidic, which can lead to problems. The heat kills certain nutrients. So whether we eat broccoli itself or the sprouts we need to get at least some of it raw.”
Toxins and Inflammation
We know why the good stuff is good for us, but why are the processed foods, fast food, and packaged foods bad for us? Andrew Weil, a Functional Doctor who wrote Spontaneous Happiness says:
We all know that fast food and junk food and the highly processed stuff that fills the shelves of supermarkets and convenience stores are not good for us. Now there is a powerful evidence-based argument for not eating this way: these new kinds of manufactured food promote inflammation. They are a principal reason why so many North Americans and people in other developed countries go through life in proinflammatory states with their cytokine systems in high gear. Industrial food fails to provide our bodies with protective nutrients (vitamins, minerals, and the phytonutrients—plant-derived compounds—most abundant in vegetables and fruits). At the same time, it gives us too many proinflammatory fats and carbohydrates.
It is scary and disappointing to think that the majority of foods sold in our supermarkets are causing our bodies to become inflamed and sick. As consumers we have to think about our health first because if we do not have our health, what do we have?
Fast forward 20 years and I am now 35 years old living in Central Washington. I could never in a million years imagine myself strong, fit, healthy, and beautiful living in one of the most jaw-dropping places in the world married to a wonderful person. It first starts with your health, putting the right nutrients in our bodies and choosing every day to be our best and healthiest selves. We do this first by eating fresh, local, organic whole vegetables, fruits, seeds, nuts and legumes.
