MY CHOICE TO TRANSITION TO A PLANT-BASED DIET

INTRODUCTION

A new article for a new blog, little intro before I really start to share about my personal experience as a new plant based. I decided some time ago that I wanted to change the look of my blog, and I also wanted to change the plateforme for many reasons.

As I wanted something totally new, the name will change too. So many questions came like if I would continue to write in English or come back to French. But since I began to write in English I really like it and I think that for a blog about food and travels it is more affordable that way, so I will continue.

For the name it was quite difficult because I wanted something new, not similar to others blog and not to long like the first name: food & travels are life. I think it was too long for people to remember it. So I took the main subject of my blog and was thinking about a name, and I came with “the foodie girl”, it’s not the most original name I agree with you, but I like it and it totally defines me. I really wanted to add both food and travels in the name but it was too long or didn’t look good.

There it is, a new name, a new interface and a new category. This new part of the blog is all about food again BUT more precisely about health food. so It’s linked with this new article and I will explain it later so you will all understand was this part means.

MY CHOICE TO TRANSITION INTO A PLANT-BASED DIET :

I’m now transitioning into a plant-based diet, I choose to not make this decision overnight because I wanted to know why I was stopping to eat food that I was used to eat. Also because I’m not the kind of person to do something without know what I’m doing.

Firstly, I wanted to ask myself why I ate this or this and how does it affect my body. Because before that, I had never asked myself about my food habits or what do I have in my plate and for what reasons. I think it’s not a mistake, every child eats what their parents cook them without asking tons of questions but with years it was important to think about it since the food we eat is so important for us and how it affects us.

It started with a documentary on Netflix, during my flight back from Amsterdam, last September, it is called “What the health”. This movie was made by the creators of the movie “Cowspiracy”, you can find both on Netflix and it’s really interesting even if you don’t want to move to a plant-based or vegan diet. Just to be informed on how work together the government, the food company, pharmaceutics, the commercials and all things we have been told was in fact myths or simply not true.

I’m not a documentary lover at all. In the past, I found it boring, but I must admit that this one is really good. The impact this movie has for me is that we believe what we have been told since day one without doubting about it because it was some governmental recommendations or health basis. So when I found out why I shouldn’t drink cow milk I was like: what? I drank it since forever… But it was not the only thing about my diet that was not healthy so I was asking about a lot of things since this documentary. I decided to do my research on my own with some good health books. I share this journey with a close friend who told me a lot about this subject and how the food affect our body.

MY BOOKS RECOMMENDATIONS :

MY MOVIES RECOMMENDATIONS :

YOUTUBE RECOMMENDATIONS :

After watching What the Health, I read The China Study book, it’s really good and with good explanations to all questions I have. If you need to read just one book with everything in it, will be this one. Then I bought the Whole : Rethinking the Science of Nutrition, it gives you again good information about a plant-based diet but with the truth about all nutrition information government and health care told us and how this business works with the food industry, pharmaceutics and the government. It’s a really good book but a little bit more complex I found.

My third essential book to a plant-based diet is How not to die from Dr. Michael Greger. This book is divided in two parts, first with all the most important diseases and the explanations why our food is linked to them and the second part is about a healthy plant-based diet.

I began this journey, with cutting off meat and eggs, it was the end of September when I came back from my trip to Amsterdam. And to be honest I really thought that it will be difficult to not eat anymore red meat, chicken and eggs but it didn’t. I didn’t miss it at all and I’m totally surprised about myself!

On the other hand, the dairy was difficult, not because I was not informed about how it affects my body but because it was a deep habit, it was so normal to drink cow milk with my cereals, my coffee, to eat cheese with everything. It was quite hard to explain. My close friend and I talked a lot about it because she is the kind of person that made her decision overnight and the next day she changed her diet. I’m not like her and it was difficult to explain my side and how habits are a part of your life and when you decided to stop them for some people it more difficult.
For the milk, I literally tried every different plant milk to add to my coffee but it was a fail everytime… It’s always in process.

Despite this abundance I didn’t know why it was so difficult to cut, why cheese and dairy were more difficult than meat and chicken? I found the answer with my close friend I told you before, she learnt why cheese was so addictive and so difficult to cut when you chose a plant-based diet. I think it’s important and interesting to know why.

For this article I was thinking about how to write it to be interesting and not too boring for you and I choose to separate each food in theme like : red meat, fish, chicken, dairy, cheese and explain how our body react when we eat these foods and what nutrients, minerals and vitamins did our body take from these. Like pros or cons but with some explanations.

Why I cut out red meat?

Since I was able to eat food, in my family, we were red meat eaters like too much, literally once per day, mostly every day it depends but 3 times per week for sure. It’s too much, they said we need to eat red meat but with the years and a ton of research found that red meat are carcinogenic, you have more risk to have cardiovascular, colon rectal cancer, kidneys disease, diabetes and atherosclerosis.

My question was : do we need to eat red meat to be on good health? Is it necessary? In my family they were sure that we needed it on a daily basis, because they told them like that. They didn’t search how and why we eat red meat. They believed pretty much like everyone the government and health recommendations.

• Meat is acidic

When you eat meat that increases the acidity of the body. It means that during the digestion process the meat breaks down into amino acids and uric acid. The body cannot quickly eliminate that uric acid, and muscles absorb a big amount of it. So they will be saturated with it and that will cause disease as neuritis, sciatica.

• Nutritious facts

Red meat is made of protein, fat, iron and vitamin B12. So yes it is high in protein and iron that our body needs but we can totally find the healthy minerals and proteins with a plant-based diet. We can find some difficulties with iron intake because there is two kind of iron, the one found in red meat we absorb it better that the one found in cereals and vegetables. That’s a difficulty that concerns me right now, I must find a solution.

• Carcinogenic

We know with many studies and research that eating meat promotes cancer in many forms. I’m not going deeper about this because I’m not a researcher or a specialist but this fact has been proven.

• Increases heart disease and diabetes

• Hormones

To make cows grow unnaturally fast, the cast industry feeds them with foods full of hormones. Don’t think that these hormones will be gone until you have your steak on your plate, that not true, you’ll be eating too like the cow before you. We talked about the sex hormones: progesterone, testosterone and oestrogens, so yes they are all naturally occurring in animals, but these are given artificially to them at so much bigger quantities.

• Antibiotics

Many farmers use antibiotics to treat animals that are sick or at a high risk of becoming sick. The problem isn’t that the antibiotics will be transferred to you but that they will increase the antibiotics resistance of bacteria that no longer respond to antibiotics.

• Animal causes

You just need to see the movie “Cowspiracy” on Netflix and you will understand the fact that it’s not right to kill animals like the food industry does and especially the conditions where these animals live and then killed. When we know that we can have a healthy diet with plant-based foods why do we need to kill animals to feed us.

Why I cut out chicken?

From my early age I ate chicken and eggs, not knowing why but eating it anyway. But one day before my transitioning step, I talked with my friend Mathilde, about this fact : why I was eating eggs and chicken?

And one thing came, before I didn’t ask myself what is an egg like their compounds. And she told that she listened a doctor says : eggs are the chicken periods, we humans don’t eat our women periods why in hell did I want to eat the periods of a chicken! And it sounds gross and stupid, but I never before thought about eggs like that, but it’s true.

There is two ways, the egg can be impregnated and become a chicken or the other way you eat literally the egg, but when you think when you cook your omelet in reality you are eating an unfertilized egg so that means that when you compare to our periods each month it’s the same.

When we look at the nutritional facts, eggs are composed mostly water with proteins (35%), fats (63%) and carbohydrates (2%). So to resume it’s all about fats and proteins. Yes we need proteins but not a high level despite all informations we have been given by the Food Industry and Health Organisation. We can fin these proteins with plants and not with all the fats.

• Carcinogens

The reason why chicken and red meat are carcinogenic is due to the chemicals they contain. Current research indicates that there are certain chemicals found in processed meats that are added, cause these foods to be carcinogenic.

• Cholesterol

Just one egg has 200 mg of cholesterol that making it one of the richest source of dietary cholesterol. It has been proven that eating eggs regularly contribute to diabetes and heart disease.

• Feces

Most chickens spend the bulk of their short lives covered or standing in feces, so we talk about the environment conditions where these chickens live.

• Toxic chemicals

Eggs are the most common source of salmonella poisoning. American research have found that 97 percent of tested chicken breast samples were contamined with bacteria that could make you sick.

The Food and Drug Administration has admitted that chicken is filled with arsenic, it’s a highly poisonous chemical that is four times more toxic than mercury. The substance is given to chickens because it promotes they growth. So this arsenic is a direct link to cancer.

• Animals causes

Have you ever seen how a chicken is killed ? It’s the most horrifying thing I swear.

Why I cut out fish?

This category is always in process because of my addiction to sushis. I didn’t eat them since my London trip in December, so there was two months ago, but last Friday night I couldn’t resist when I ate at my favorite Japanese restaurant in town.

We have always been told that eating fish was healthy but how ? So yes fish contains omega-3 fatty acids which appear to be heart-protective. However, some research found that there are healthier plant based sources of these acids, like in flax seeds, soybean, walnuts, tofu etc.

These plant foods provide health fiber and antioxidants. And they don’t contain the toxic heavy metals and carcinogens found in fish. So yes fish can be healthy but not totally because you will have your amount omega-3 acids but with them you will have some heavy metals that is not healthy for your body.

Then think about the pollution of aquatic environments, now eating fish has become quite unhealthy. Between industrial wastes and agricultural chemicals found in the water they are absorbed the fish who lived there. Pesticides as well is a part of our aquatic environments.

If we talk about the nutritional facts about eating fish, it contains no fiber and no carbohydrates, it’s high in saturated fat so it will increase cholesterol in the blood.

Why I cut out dairy?

The most important thing to think about is why ever do we need cow’s milk to be in good health, why do we need to drink this kind of milk to have strong bones?

• It’s Baby Calf Formula

In the first place the cow produce milk to feed her new cow born right and not to feed humans? Milk is made to turn a 63lb baby calf into a 600lb cow in 8 month. There are 35 hormones and 11 growth factors in cow milk.

• It doesn’t build strong bones

One more thing is that dairy is highly acidic that means that when we consume acidic foods, they cause our blood to become acidic. The body will begin pulling from the calcium from the bones to restore the blood pH. Cow milk drains calcium from your bones to neutralize the acidity. It explains why we have osteoporosis, it’s not because we don’t drink/eat enough calcium to have strong bones, it’s because of that animal milk that we drink who is going to cause an extraction from our stock of calcium in our bones.

• Animal protein

The main reason that when you know it, it all make sense, in dairy products there is some protein calls « casein » that our body cannot properly digest the way a veal will digest it. That explains why most of the people have digestive issues when they drink cow milk.

• Inflammatory food

Research found that dairy was inflammatory food, that can cause some skin problems like acne, eczema and psoriaris. And we know that the milk processing is made with hormones and antibiotics to kill all the bacteria that contains initially.

• Cancerous

In cow milk you find a factor called Insulin Grow Factor 1 (IGF1) that research found that is linked to be carcinogenic. When I read The China Study, I found that this kind of protein is carcinogenic, it can cause respiratory problems and allergies.

• Poor nutrition

When you take a look about nutritious in cow milk you didn’t find what you have been told years after years, despite the fact that it contains calcium, in fact cow milk is high in saturated fat, cholesterol and last thing it contains no fiber. How can cow milk be a good nutritional food then?

way a veal will digest it. That explains why most of the people have digestive issues when they drink cow milk.

• Animal cruelty

Dairy production may be the most cruel and offensive of all animal farming. Baby calves are pulled from their mothers right after birth. While females are kept alive to produce milk.

Let’s talk about CHEESE …!

Because when you ask a plant-based or vegan person what was the most difficult thing to cut out, they generally will tell you that it was not dairy in general or meat but cheese. And yes there is a clear explanation. It kinda sounds ridiculous but I bought a book about it, written by a doctor named Neal. Bernard, with him all it’s well explained, really it’s a book for everyone and it’s all about research and facts that prove how cheese is wrong for you.

Because like I said before I wanted to know how food affect our body and why it’s healthy or not for us. I found the explanation about how cheese can be so addictive really interesting, it all make sense right after reading about it. Let me explain to you, but if you are interested and want more information I really recommend reading that book, you can find it on Amazon.

I will try my best to explain the best way possible, so as I understand the first thing to know is that to produce one block of cheese it requires ten gallons of milk.

Firstly, that is insane, think about all the environment issues and animals condition. During the process to make cheese, all the amount of water and whey protein is removed from milk. That means that’s left behind a concentrated block of fat and casein protein filled with opiate compounds.

Let’s talk about that last words: opiate compounds. Yes, you read correctly, they call “casomorphins” and they are protein fragments derived from the digestion of the milk protein casein. These casomorphins have the same receptors as morphine in the brain. They make the food even harder to resist. How can this be possible ? I would never have thought that cheese would be so addictive and that’s why.