Synchronicity

In light of one of my recent posts (A Necessary Evil?), it was an interesting turn of events that I came upon this blog entry: A Vegan No More.

She is much better than I am at writing, so go there and partake of her words if you like. As I read it, my brain was in total agreement. Certainly, I'm having none of the severe health effects that she had, and I haven't transitioned to eating a fully omnivorous diet, but it was just so reassuring to read that someone, somewhere out there has had to deal with the same ethical dilemma that I've been dealing with.

Last Monday, I made some clam chowder. Onion and celery, potatoes, clams, and soymilk. There was enough for dinner Monday and lunch for the next two days. Has the amount of heme iron I picked up in those three days made a difference? It's too soon to tell, I think. I have been feeling more upbeat and energetic over the past few days, though this past weekend I was all tuckered out after a 2 hour hike on Saturday and a 1 hour walk on Sunday.

What is most difficult, on any subject matter, is to come to the realization that what you've been told (or what you've been telling yourself) all your life is not correct. The concept, for me, that a grain-based vegetarian diet is not the healthiest thing for myself or for the planet. If I were to eat locally, using the food that is available at my local farmers' market, I would be eating the foods that are laid out in the popular "Paleo" diets: fruits, vegetables, tubers, honey, nuts, eggs, pasture-fed meat and seafood. The only grains that show up are processed into bread, cookies, pies, and pastries. I stand corrected: one farm does offer wheat berries and their own milled flour. That is one booth out of four rows of them in a college parking lot.

Right now I've added some things to my diet: butter, yogurt, cottage cheese from pasture-fed cows; cheese from pasture-fed goats; and eggs from free-range local chickens. Plus I'm working to reduce my consumption of refined grains, increasing my consumption of potatoes and sweet potatoes to satisfy my carbohydrate needs. For Lent this year, I will be repeating what I did last year, giving up refined sweeteners. (Honey I do not consider to be a refined sweetener, since it's a product of bees rather than an industrial process.) The only exception will be dark chocolate, and since I tend to eat the darkest of dark chocolate, that amount of sugar is minimized.

Let's see how this works for me over the next many months.