How I came to be a Vegan

First off, I never planned this. At the time, I was happily unconscious about food, although choosing organic as much as possible. I had been a vegetarian in the past, but had gone back to meat-eating when somebody told me about the 'Eat right for your type' theory, which states that I, as bloodtype O+ positively must eat meat, especially the red kind. I was at a conference, in Portland, OR, and I went right back to the counter for the barbequed chicken. They hadn't really done a good job with the tofu dish I had been picking at. Maybe that's why my energy was so low, I thought. Basically, an excuse as good as any other at the time.

I had often heard that cow's milk wasn't that great for humans, that the molecules are larger, and therefore we can't really digest it. So I tried at numerous times to use less of it, to substitute milk with soy or rice or almond milk, I tried various cheese substitutes. And I could never get used to it. I always had to go back to drinking cow's milk in my coffee. Nothing else tasted right. And I thought I could never live without cheese. I was a bread and cheese kind of woman. So when my doctor suggested I try to lay off all animal products for a while to see if I would feel better, I tried. I tried lactose-free milk and cheese, which didn't work for me. I tried different plant milks, and relapsed back to the cow stuff in no time.

And then, one day in April 2010, I had a very bad day, for numerous reasons, and one thing that stuck out to me was the graincoffee-latte I'd had the night before. That had been a lot of milk. I wondered if there might be a connection to the humongous headache I was having. Next time when I was at the healthfood store, when I was standing in front of the meat-and-dairy isle, I just didn't want to buy any of that stuff. I went home with oatmilk and an assortment of vegan spreads, which turned out to be delicious. And that was it, and I haven't really looked back since. Strangely, I now really like plant milk in coffee, on cereal, everything. Those first few weeks, I baked a batch of cookies with butter, because I still had some, and found the buttery taste gross.