The China Study

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts from Compassionate Cooks lately, and I must say that it's really made me stare my own vegetarianism in the face. I've been a vegetarian for about 20 years, and the main reason is because I don't want animals to suffer because of me and I don't want to eat them. Still, I buy leather shoes, I eat eggs and dairy (and you know by eating dairy products you are supporting the veal industry, right?) and I haven't given much thought for quite a while to the fact that worcestershire sauce and ceasar dressing contain anchovies and have just in general been very lax in paying attention to whether what I am doing is causing animal suffering or not.

The truth is, it's pretty hard to be vegan. It's an inconvenience to those around you in this meat-obsessed culture we live in, people tend to regard you with suspicion or perhaps fear you're going to judge them or maybe that you belong to some weird cult or something. Also, while it's somewhat challenging to find something to eat at some restaurants as a vegetarian, it's ever-so-much-more challenging as a vegan.

My boyfriend has known from the time he met me that I was vegetarian, and he's always been very supportive about it. We go to restaurants and I order something vegetarian and he...sometimes orders vegetarian as well, but he sometimes orders the lamb or the duck or some seafood. He made me feel so comfortable that, along with a little reading of Michael Pollan his proposal to fly a friend of his in from Texas to cook us some barbeque (made from whatever meat I liked, raised in any way that appealed to me...grass-fed, humanely slaughtered, organic, etc) if I would actually eat some of it sounded appealing to me for a while and I was incredibly close to saying "yes, let's do it."

Or at least I was incredibly close except for these podcasts I had somewhat randomly subscribed to on iTunes. Once I subscribed, I ended up with quite a few of them on my iPod and when I'd set it to shuffle it seems like they came up a rather disproportionate amount of the time in relation to the amount of content actually on this device.

Colleen from Compassionate Cooks talks about every reason under the sun to become vegan. Really, she has a reason for everyone, ranging from compassion (of course) to world hunger to health. She also teaches cooking classes right in the Bay Area, and has a vegan baking book and a vegan cooking dvd. The first time I said the word "vegan" to my bf, he visibly flinched, but he has enjoyed other cooking classes we have taken so much that when I mentioned these classes he said "I'd love to!" I also got him a copy of her baking book and he said he'd love to make us some of the recipes.

Still, for all his enthusiasm for baking, whether vegan or not, my bf seemed terrified that I might stop eating cheese.

Noooooo...not...cheeeeese!!!!!!

When he found out that I was eating vegan when I was cooking for myself at home, and realized that everything I had been making for him to take to work for his lunch was vegan as well, he was rather unsettled, but somewhat reassured that I WAS still eating cheese and butter and eggs in other situations. However, when I refused to order anything with dairy or eggs in a local restaurant and then burst out crying when he said he was going to be barbecuing not just beef but also pig and lamb at his daughter's birthday party, it looked like we might be headed for a major conflict.

Now, I don't know what was going through his head at that time, but I do know what was going through mine. I was wondering if there was some way to convince my bf that a vegan diet was a GOOD thing. I knew he wasn't going to switch the way he ate because some animals were suffering. He might be persuaded to seek out more humane sources, and he might be persuaded to eat less meat, but compassion wasn't going to be enough. Now, health on the other hand...I knew he cared about health. I knew he worried about one day getting heart disease or kidney disease and I knew (know) that he cares a lot about his health and that of his loved ones. I took a stab at throwing some facts his way...like, today's factory farmed chickens contain more fat than they do protein, stuff like that. It was too random, though.


professor T. Colin Campbell (author of "The China Study") discusses his decades of NIH-funded research which show that meat and dairy promote cancer growth and a plant-based (vegan) diet can prevent and even reverse cancer.

Finally, I found my perfect weapon. The China Study. This book explains in a clear and very detailed and carefully researched way exactly why you should remove animal protein and fat from your diet. How animal fat and protein CAUSE cancer, heart disease, diabetes and a lot of other diseases known to afflict mostly those in affluent nations. It's a scary book and a very eye opening book, and it's very persuasive, too. After relaying the facts presented in the book to my boyfriend, miracle of miracles he has gone from flinching at the very word "vegan" to agreeing to try and become a vegan! Really I don't know how anyone could read the facts presented in this book and NOT become vegan. I wish they would...if more people were vegan not only would national health care costs go way down but it would make it a lot easier to find a great restaurant to eat delicious vegan food at.

Of course after agreeing to become vegan and then telling some of his customers and business associates about it, he went out to dinner with them and had a steak.

Baby steps...