So you know where I am coming from, I was either lacto-ovo vegetarian or vegan for over a decade. I am not now.
I was told by a dietician that I knew more about vegan nutrition than she did, so to be clear it's not because I didn't know what I was doing. But I would get into arguments with my doctor about it all the time - I'm sure you too have had approximately 9,873 people tell you you "need more protein." Even when I kept a food log my doctor would wave me off and insist.
Well, after years of arguing about it, I agreed to try being pescatarian; if it helped my health issues, or not, I could at least say I had tried, right?
I started feeling better immediately regarding certain symptoms. Logically, I didn't understand it because I paid attention to my macros and vitamins and supplemented B12 and all that. My IBS symptoms drastically diminished, and I lost six sizes - from eating animal products (not just pescatarian anymore). I did more research and came across various new nutrition studies, which essentially say there is no one size fits all diet and your ancestral diet has a lot to do with what your body does well on.
Fast forward several months, and I finally saw an allergist and had lots of allergy testing done. AHA. I'm allergic to most of what's in the supermarket, and all of my veg staples. I could not be veg and avoid my allergens. The list is a mile long; I would literally die of malnutrition or an allergic reaction (those get worse with greater exposure). It's easier to ask me what I'm not allergic to (animal products, black (only black) beans, onions, sweet potatoes, white (not brown) rice, tomatoes, coffee, cocoa, cane sugar, ginger, apples, various spices, uh... peppers, cherries, tapioca ...I'm scraping the barrel here. Not a lot). Technically all wheat should be off the menu, but I rash if I eat whole wheat and don't if I eat white flour, so I cheat and eat white flour some.
It's possible that I am having a reaction there that I don't realize, though: I laid off most soy before I even found out I was allergic, because I read about the cancer connection, right. After doing that, for the first time in my adult life, my thyroid levels were normal, and my endometriosis pain went way down. Another thing I didn't realize: potatoes and green leafies trigger horrible digestive upset. I had been told I had IBS; yeah, if I avoid potato and green leafies, most of that goes away. Other foods now swell my throat and mouth (knock on wood, never had full anaphylaxis yet), that seven years ago I ate just fine. I had no food allergies as a kid; this started in adulthood.
So compassion has to include ourselves. It is necessary for some of us to eat animal products.
That being said, I'm not a carnivore. A big serving of meat to me is about two ounces. I don't eat more than that at once. I probably eat about a pound of meat per month, give or take. The major staple of my diet now is dairy products. My ancestry is Celtic and northern Native American; ironically, a lot of my safe foods align with what they might have eaten, too. Dairy is a very Celtic thing. 😁
I do my best to get the most ethical products I can, like I do in all areas of my life. But even vegans aren't deathless: every pest killed on the farm, the oil in the pleather shoes, the manufacture and distribution of everything we own; it's impossible to live without harm. I think if we all do what we can, where we can, and realize that systemic, societal change makes a bigger difference (whether we're talking weaning ourselves off oil or abolishing factory farms or what), then we'll all be better off - the world, and our psyche.
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