By: Marian Stewart
My journey to eating a whole food, plant-based diet started when I was young. I was lucky enough to have a very health conscious mom who was always seeking to learn truths about healthy nutrition. She was vegetarian (and then vegan), used all whole grains, sweetened things with honey, and we never had junk food around. I was mostly vegetarian when I got married, though I did it mostly because I didn’t like the taste and texture of most meat, not because I fully understood the health benefits.
When I had my first daughter a few years later she was very colicky. My mom told me to try giving up dairy to see if that would help, so I decided to give it a try. It worked amazingly, and as an added bonus, I felt so much better when I wasn’t eating dairy. At that point, I started to learn a little bit more about nutrition, especially how animal products affect our health, but it wasn’t until after I had my second child a few years later that I really started to integrate what I was learning into my life. Up until this point, I wasn’t eating meat or dairy, but I was eating a lot of “fake” meats and cheeses to take their place. I also was eating a lot of processed food. I read a few books and listened to a lot of lectures about eating a whole food, plant-based diet, and it all made so much sense to me. The more I learned, the easier it became to give up the unhealthy foods I had been eating and start adding more whole foods into my diet.
