By Sherry Seeley:
The brownies were in my locker. As requested by my seminary teacher, Brother Krebs, my mother made a treat to share with the class. When class started there were no treats. Rather than share my family secret, I endured a five-minute lecture on being responsible while I stared at my shoes. The secret was my mother cooked everything from scratch with healthy ingredients! Those brownies were sweetened with honey and contained 100% whole wheat flour. I couldn’t face the imagined ridicule from my peers.
Every Saturday morning my mother ground up wheat that was made into delicious bread for the week. Whole wheat toast with honey was my comfort food. You could measure the kind of day I’d had by how much bread was eaten after school. Breakfast was a large pot of cooked cereal or whole wheat pancakes. Dinner was a large casserole of beans, rice or potatoes loaded with homegrown vegetables with only one serving of meat to feed eight people. There was always a salad and fruit at every meal.
The problem in this wonderful diet was dairy. We drank milk! Lots and lots of milk. As an adult this came back to haunt me. I thought it was healthy for my body and bones. A few years ago I received my first bone density test, and it showed I was losing bone density. I was furious. I felt betrayed. When the nurse tried to put me on a series of drugs, I wouldn’t listen. I started a quest of investigation and learning that was intense because I was fighting for my bones without taking drugs.
My search led me to the video documentary Forks over Knives and all the related books and movies on whole food, plant-based nutrition. I found Jane Birch and Discovering The Word of Wisdom on Facebook. This was an answer to a question I’d had my whole life. When I first read D&C 89 as a child, I noticed the part where it says to eat meat sparingly. The answers I’d received were very unsatisfying. People would say, “Oh well,” and “it says that but, that’s not what it really means.” I knew it was time to change. I started drinking plant-based milk and stopped eating meat, dairy, and oil.
By: Wendy Hardy
