On the Benefits of Blogging, Bird Flu, and Protein Nutrition
I’ve been listening to a lot of great podcast episodes lately, wow! What with the return of the Vegan Freak Radio, as well as the continuing high quality work done by Animal Voices and Vegetarian Food for Thought, I am always keeping up with vegan news and well-researched information. I’ve also been regularly reading lots of great blogs for news and reviews. I feel like this blog has really gotten me more involved in researching about animals; keeping me in touch with the information that really matters to me. Somehow the process of reading and writing on the web (not just passively reading but actually being a part of a larger virtual conversation) has refocused my attention and has essentially made me a better vegan by helping me to keep more up to date on animal rights issues and to become more critical of everything that I read and experience from a vegan perspective. Before that I was getting lost in a world of raw foodism and fun web 2.0 technology, losing touch with animal rights research. Recently, I dug an entry from Taste Better:
I’ve been meaning to write up a story on bird flu all week, what with it showing up at least twice in England recently, as well as in Saudi Arabia. I was having some trouble figuring out the right way to present the story, since we’re approaching a holiday season where turkeys get eaten more often, but getting people to switch from turkey to ham isn’t really a win (although technically fewer animals would die due to the size differences between pigs and turkeys.)
So I kept searching for the right story until my head exploded when I saw this headline: Bird-flu alert in Britain: 22,000 turkeys make ultimate sacrifice.
If a cull of 22,000 birds to contain the potential spread of disease is the “ultimate sacrifice,” what does the writer think of the 10 billion animals killed for food each year in North America alone? Does the author think that cows, pigs, and chickens are noble creatures who willingly give their lives to ensure humanity’s freedom to stuff unhealthy fast food down our gullets?
I track this stuff every day, but sometimes I’m genuinely surprised with how out of touch the world is with the food system, nature, and animals.
Something that came at just the right moment for me - 80-10-10 raw foodist Sarah at Going Bananas wrote an entry on “5 Ways To Deal with People who Act in Judgmental Manner” (concerning your alternate lifestyle):
1. Keep telling yourself repeatedly, that your lifestyle (and parenting choices, btw) are no one else’s business but yours. It takes awhile for this to sink in, but eventually you will realize it is true, and you will learn several ways to deflect hurtful or irritating criticisms. Just keep blazing your trail and enjoy your personal journey. Don’t worry about others, leave them to blaze their own trails. (Yes, I know this is easier said than done.)
2. If you are new and just now adjusting to your lifestyle choices, be very silent about it for a long time (to the people in real life, of course, hehe.) For a long, long, long time until you are a) completely emotionally & intellectually secure and confident in your choices and the whys and hows, and b) you have transitioned successfully and are living the way you want to on a regular basis. There are some people like family and perhaps close friends that you won’t be able to avoid sharing this with, but even with them, you can be very slow and careful with what and how much info to leak out. This way, most people won’t know until you’re so confident in your new lifestyle that you don’t care what they think anymore!
3. Surround yourself as much as possible with people (even if it’s only online) who are pursuing the same goals as you. This is not to say that you should drop your old friends, of course. But especially in the beginning, it is so much easier to stick with something if you are constantly talking to people who understand and support what you are doing. I will tell you that I would not have gotten through this year without several people - mainly, my husband, Harmony, Tyha, Bethany, Lennie and Dr. D. When you are routinely talking to people who are studying and pursuing this as much as you, or have lived this way for a long time successfully and know many of the answers to the questions you have, your self confidence is bolstered greatly. So when you get the occasional negative snipe from someone in real life, it doesn’t seem to matter as much, because you don’t feel so alone and it’s easier to know that maybe, just maybe, you’re not crazy.
4. Keep an open mind. Keep learning, researching, listen to the people you respect and trust. But never claim something as absolute truth unless you’re 100% sure it is absolute truth. This way, if you ever have to change your mind about something, it will not look flaky or unhealthful to the people who do not know or understand natural hygiene and the raw diet - your critics.
5. Realize that most of the time, when people criticize you, it is because they feel defensive and judged, like maybe your choices are a reflection on THEIR lifestyles. Are you judging them? If so, stop. But if not, realize that there is really nothing you can do about it except to never talk about your lifestyle unless someone asks you with genuine interest. Learn to accept this and if you feel the need to talk about your diet, talk to me or someone else who agrees with it instead.
I wish I had read this before going vegan; it would have helped me with many of the social problems I experienced in my transition. I actually spent a good deal of time reading lots of the entries in her blog and she’s really inspiring me to get back on the mostly raw food bandwagon. Like me, she experienced many nutritional ups and downs in the raw food lifestyle and learned a good deal from the experience - I feel a strong connection to her story. She discovered optimal health on the 80-10-10 diet by Dr. Douglas Graham - which basically consists of a diet of 80% carbohydrates (fruit, greens, vegetables, etc), 10% protein, and 10% fat (nuts, seeds, avocadoes).
While it may seem like that percentage of protein is low - we actually have exaggerated protein requirements set out by national nutrition guidelines since meat protein is often denatured from cooking. So the emphasis in our society is protein, protein, protein (which is why that’s the main question I get asked about my diet) - and we end up eating too much protein, leading to lots of health problems. I recently found out that human breast milk contains a very low amount of protein, somewhere around 5% or less? I then came across an article on breastfeeding by AskDrSears - a network of trained MDs who write about various parenting issues. Surprisingly, the article broke down the unique components of human breast milk and compared them to cow milk to prove that babies should not be eating non-human dairy. Unwritten in this article of course is … if it’s unhealthy and difficult for human infants to digest and process cow’s milk, then should adults be drinking it?
Milk is milk, right? Mammals make it (humans are mammals) and babies drink it. There’s more to the story than that. Each species of mammal makes a unique kind of milk, which meets all the nutritional requirements of its offspring at the beginning of life. Each species’ milk has specific qualities that insure the survival of the young in a particular environment. This principle is known as the biological specificity of milk. Mother seals, for example, make a high-fat milk because baby seals need lots of body fat to survive in cold water. Since brain development is crucial to the survival of humans, human milk provides nutrients for rapid brain growth.
No matter what animal it comes from, milk contains the basic nutritional elements of fats, proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals. Let’s look at each one of these nutrients in human milk, comparing them to the same nutrients in formula or cow milk, so you can further appreciate how your milk is custom-made to meet the needs of your baby.
Unique nutrition for unique humans. As hormones levels change in the days after birth, the mother’s body starts to make more plentiful amounts of milk. Colostrum gradually changes into mature milk–the stuff babies have been thriving on for thousands of years. Milk’s basic ingredients are fat, proteins, lactose, vitamins, minerals, and water. This is true of milk from all kinds of mammals. Yet, the proportions of these ingredients differ, as do the kinds of protein and fat. This is what makes each species’ milk uniquely suited to its young. It’s also why cow’s milk and cow’s milk-based formulas are not the ideal food for human infants.
I’m really going to be trying to rejig my lifestyle in the next few weeks. A lot of things are out of balance. I’m an honest television addict, eating too much sugar (delicious vegan desserts), feeling the negative effects of eating a high-cooked food diet, not being active enough, and just generally being self destructive. I know that most people go through cycles like this, but I can’t understand why it’s so difficult to live the way that I simply know is best for my health and happiness. I continuously sabotage myself. I want to be able to get out of the cycles of guilt and oppressive perfectionism that make me unhappy, but at the same time I need to try harder to live better in a way that does not put any pressure on me to be perfect.
I can’t continue to treat my body this way out of a desire to be free of my own self-improvement paradigms. It’s complicated, as you can see. I have been focusing for so long on “being the best I can be” that I often get into an unhealthy mindset which causes me to feel terrible whenever I make a mistake. I’m still negotiating with myself and hope that through yoga and meditation I can find a peaceful state of mind that allows me to act from a place of understanding and compassion for myself. I think that the issue of finding balance is one of the most difficult things about living well - I just hope it doesn’t take me a lifetime to learn it!
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