A bit more about me...

So what do I want to write about in my blog.  I think that I need to start with where I’m at right now.  First and foremost, I want to eat in a way that is life affirming, for myself, animals and the planet.  I am currently striving to eat animal products no more than twice a week.  Using T. Colin Campbell’s guidelines, I hope to keep these quantities at below 10% of my daily intake.  While eventually I hope to be completely vegan, this seems more realistic for me right now.

When I talk about eating animal foods, I don’t differentiate between flesh and animal “products”.  If vegan literature has taught me anything, it is that eating dairy or eggs is no different from eating meat.  Animals die for both, but in eating animal “products” we are somehow divorced from this death, believing that we are somehow innocent of eating an actual dead animal.  In some ways I find it more honest to just eat the meat.

I do make every effort to ensure that the animals who I am consuming are treated humanely and live a life with little suffering.   Many websites and investigations will tell you that merely eating organic and free range tells us little about the quality of the animals’ lives.  So I dutifully go to the farmer’s market and buy from farmers who’ve been humane society certified.

But why eat anything that comes from animals at all?  While I do hope to eliminate them completely, I find this daunting and difficult.  And really, that’s the point of this blog.  There are several areas that I feel I need to become more comfortable in before I can be fully vegan. 

First, nutrition, while there are numerous people claiming that it’s easy to get all the nutrition one needs from a vegan diet, I believe that my intense cravings during pregnancy were a sign that I wasn’t.  I would like to better research and understand nutrition and how to get the most out of my diet. 

Secondly, my husband is not a vegan and has no intention of becoming one.  I have asked him to make a commitment to eating only bits of animals that were humanely raised and so agreed to cook these for him as part of that bargain.  This makes it difficult for me to never eat these myself.

Finally, I do find that there are times when my convictions go out the window and I find myself eating foods I wouldn’t normally eat.  It’s as though an inner rebel finds any dietary restriction too constraining and has to rebel.  I don’t know why, but I want to figure it out.  In the meantime, I find that permitting myself small amounts of animal foods prevents binges on foods that I really don’t want to eat, such as restaurant chicken wings (which I know come from factory farms).

So that’s where I’m at today.  This blog is my open journey to continue to improve my diet for the planet, the animals and my own well being.