J on a Podcast, Q on "Truth", A Pediatrician & Two Pediatric Dietitians on Healthy Feasting
Ignorance is bliss until you learn better: then it’s either growing forward with the information or willful disregard.
None of us are without stumbles & forehead slaps, and a ripe/raw example on this end is the photo above. Q & I took our first trip to Green Lakes since he was a toddler, we spent about 20 sunny minutes of him roaming this point in sheer joy, then we walked a few yards up the trail & saw a sign urging people to not stand on what is apparently a freshwater reef with a pic of folks identical to Q captioned w/ “Don’t be these people!” 😵💫We were both horrified & will obviously never do it again.
Tangentially, most of us had no idea (I didn’t at first!) that animal agriculture is the leading cause of climate change, biodiversity loss, species extinction, land waste, water loss/pollution, ocean dead-zones, etc; & if we were raised in cultures/households where meat & dairy were served since childhood we may’ve not contemplated the inherent cruelty of the process or known that we can actually thrive & prevent (even reverse) our leading diseases via plant-based foods; but Boy Howdy if you’re listening to our leading doctors, environmentalists, Nobel scientists, the WHO, the UN, the American College of Cardiology, Mayo Clinic, etc or this lady for the last several years, you sure as heck know now. :-)
What will we do with that information? When will we all step forward?
I stepped out of my comfort zone & went on our dear friend Lauren’s podcast, filled 1.5 hours rambling passionately to her & Jodi, & they’ve whittled it down to an easily digestible 33 minutes. There is a feast of things I forgot to say (or were understandably edited out), but it’s a good start & I’ll be back again.
Continue for: a link to J on a sustainability podcast, the full script Q used to use (and still does) to push me past the discomfort of illuminating folks on the imperatives of moving forward, more helpful info from a Pediatrician and two Pediatric Dietitians, plus some nature scenes & meals eaten this week.
So, as stated above, what had been 1.5 hours of conversing was condensed into 33 minutes of video, so there is understandably some bits left out (either via editing or my own rambling brain hopping to the next passion point), and there’s a few things to note:
In the list of heroes, I forgot to mention my dear friend & nutritionist Kiran Deol. She is an incredibly helpful soul who takes time out of her busy practice to lead free workshops/classes (I’ve done a few) showing parents how to properly feed their children, and she’s an endless font of inspiration & guidance.
If you want an easy path to Genesis Butler & Youth Climate Save, simply click on those links. She’s an inspirational hero to both Q and me.
The compassionate reasons for transitioning away from animal agriculture were mostly lost in the podcast editing, so I’ll reiterate that this household is 100% vegan. We say “Plant-Based” because that term originates with T Colin Campbell (another hero I failed to mention <— he’s the creator of Cornell’s Center for Nutrition Studies <— where I got my Plant-Based Nutrition Certificate) and it differs from “vegan” only in the sense that what we eat isn’t just free from animal products: we aim to be as healthy as possible so we can prevent disease in our son, ourselves, and help folks learn to do the same. You can eat vegan and be 100% compassionate, but also be eating total junkfood. However, I feel it imperative to mention that our entire ethos is vegan. Though the studies may point out that health benefits & CVD prevention may still be achieved with a reduction of animal products (ie you’ll hear a lot of 80/20 <— 80% of a diet comes from plants and about 20% from animal), and we advocate that step-by-step is a great way to start, but we feel that the environmental implications are enough to avoid it all together (ie even regenerative farming has a negative environmental and biodiversity impact), and most importantly: if you can nutritionally thrive without hurting another soul, why would you want to needlessly hurt one? There’s absolutely no reason other than taste or convenience, and neither rank higher than a life. We additionally avoid animal products to the extent that we won’t dine with folks that are consuming flesh or stolen milk anymore (it breaks our hearts, the smell/sight nauseates us now, & we feel we need to hold the line of forward movement); we don’t buy products made from animals or tested on animals, and the list goes on.
And in the editing process the full story of Quillan’s “But it’s true” was cut, so I’m going to show a bit of that below. This is taken from an assignment during the nutrition courses. I had been astounded to see Dr Bruce Monger spearheading one of the lectures. He was the fire that lit up this whole household, and hearing him at the 2019 CNY Youth Climate Summit (giving a mind-blowing lecture on ocean acidification & the direct tie to animal agriculture) was what prompted the first essay on Jasquatch “It’s Time For Us To Make Some Changes” and also what kicked us away from dairy.
Yet even with all of the above, and years of my harking it, I know it can be difficult to move forward, so I’ll say what I always say: start meal-by-meal, step-by-step, and hopefully you’ll find yourself 100% too. It’s the best thing you can do for yourself, your kin, environmental sustainability, and the other species we share this planet with.
Discovering our “why” is the first step of behavioral change, & my “why” for pivoting plant-based was a knotted lump of compassion twisted around the environmental impacts of animal agriculture. I loved the beauty of this precious earth too much to ignore the reasons for moving forward. The health aspects I did not know until later, but it cemented our “why” for never going back. It’s also why I ended up getting a Plant-Based Nutrition certificate, & continue reading newer Dr books: I hope to light up other folks to find their “why” and know they can do so while nutritionally thriving.
Is your “why” a love for the environment? Is it a love for animals and a pang of feeling hypocritical for eating some, being horrified at the thought of eating others, and not truly thinking about the millions of species affected by animal agriculture? Is it the health benefits and wanting to set a better path for the kids in your care? Those were all my reasons, and it bears to be mentioned that childhood atherosclerosis (directly tied to animal products) scares the dickens out of me, and we have CVD so rampant in our family trees that Q has a pediatric cardiologist. I didn’t want him to be set up for the same fate as my kin or Ian’s, and to be needlessly hurting animals & the environment in the process.
I started with small steps: by swapping out animal-product ingredients with healthier alternatives in meals I already loved to eat. It is untenable if you just leap right into the fire, you need to actually enjoy what you’re eating and know that it’ll be something you can come back to.
For example:
Instead of putting milk in our coffee, we started adding deliciously-creamy oatmilk and now we use soy.
If I was going to make tacos I used plant-based meat or beans or lentils, and we used store-bought plant-based cheese but now we just make cashew queso.
For pasta & polenta dishes we easily pivoted to almond parm, vegan pesto, and I made our homemade marinara taste “meatier” by adding in mushroom powder.
I still made mashed potatoes (better, actually) and we topped it with mushroom gravy and served it along things like lentil loaf
I still made curry, I just made it with more vegetables and maybe a member of the legume family
I made stir fry with extra vegetables & tofu, tempeh, or Pumfu; and we topped it with peanut sauce , or ate it with a protein-dense grain like quinoa & sesame dressing.
Instead of eggs for breakfast, I started making us oatmeal or berry bread, or various toasts, the list could go on & on
And in lieu of eggs in baking you can use chia, flax, aqua faba, banana, or applesauce.
Instead of ice cream I started making smoothies or nice cream
The list goes on and could do in any vector. I originally did a lot of googling. :-) I’ve mostly kept our entire menu the same, it just orbits around a different protein and is full of way more beneficial fiber. If I need to find a substitution, I simply look online… and if you don’t like cooking there is an absolute feast of vegan/plant-based options at your local grocery store. Even good ol’ Aldi has you covered.
And if you’re worried about the health aspects, you need not fret because the health benefits are well harked (that’s from the National Institutes of Health & Kaiser Permanente), but here’s a fresh clipping from Plant-Based Baby & Toddler by dietitians Whitney English & Alexandra Caspero. Not only does this book offer some truly helpful guidance to parents of young kiddos, it also has a bounty of easy-breezy recipes in the back.
And below is pediatrician Dr Jackie Busse and notes and slides from one of my classes.
Spoiler: human babies grow faster than any of us, and they double their weight on about 5% protein… in contrast, cow milk is 27% protein & is meant to make a calf (not us) grow into a roughly 600lb mammal. Ponder the absurdity, cruelty, & environmental/healthful harm therein.
The above is from Dr Dean Ornish and it shows perfectly/horrifyingly what our cardiovascular system looks like if we continue on our Standard American Animal Product feasting path.
We once didn’t go a single day without consuming some manner of animal product (especially cow-milk products like cheese or ice cream), and we would have sworn that we could never live without meat/cheese, but here we are several years completely vegan, happy-as-heck, healthier than ever, determined to never step backwards, and here’s a little of what we ate this week.
Q starts his day with a warm mug of soymilk, and the flavorings vary. Sometimes there’s a little cocoa powder, sometimes there’s berry sauce stirred in, some days there’s a little maple, and this week he got a little dash of Trader Joe’s Oatnog.
And his oatmeal bowls vary wildly too, but this week there was a lot of blueberry oatmeal with strawberry sauce (we take frozen berries, add to a pan, simmer, season with cinnamon or sometimes maple, puree, voila)
Whole-Grain Oil-Free pancakes are a weekend treat over here, and I make enough so that we can heat them up in the microwave through the week.
My plate: topped with berry sauce, and served with almond butter (<— high in calcium) and banana.
Kale (compliments of our CSA) & Arugula pesto, wrapped around whole-grain noodles, topped with a mushroom marinara and almond parm.
Lentil Tostadas with cashew queso, quick-pickled radishes (compliments of our CSA), mixed greens (also from the CSA), and olives.
**I put the queso down first so it protects the shell from soaking up all the juices from the hot sauce and pickled radishes**
Black Rice, Peanut Sauce, CSA greens, quick-pickled cabbage, more quick-pickled radishes, bell peppers, and seared mushrooms… also from the CSA. :-)
Used leftover peanut sauce for salads with more CSA greens, Pink Lady Apples, & sesame seeds.
And because we have CSA kale filling our fridges and we know that kale has more calcium that dairy-milk and is incredibly beneficial for our health, here’s another way to eat kale: we call it Beans & Greens Soup.
I throw an onion and several cloves of garlic into our nutri-bullet and get them good and pureed (quicker than chopping and it allows them to cook up quicker too), saute until lightly browned, add in 4 cups chopped kale, 2 cups tomato (we used whole, canned), 2 cans of white beans (1 of which we’ll puree too as it makes the base creamier), 1 can of kidney, and cover with veg broth. Simmer for 30 minutes and you get yourself an incredibly filling and nutritious soup. We served it up with garlic bread topped with PMA pepperjack. And covered it in almond parm, because we top most things with almond parm. :-)
And for nights where cooking isn’t in the cards, here’s a simple pivot: vegetable gyoza from Trader Joe’s; served with a side salad of mixed CSA veg & mushrooms, covered in a Thai-style vinaigrette we bought from Strong Hearts.
And this was another easy/busy-night meal, that Q loved despite the fact that it looks like he’s giving it the bird. :-D It’s homemade rolls I’d made earlier in the week and there are beyond meatballs on it, some of that mushroomy marinara, some PMA plant-based Bleu, and a side salad with balsamic and sunflowers.
Chocolate Nice Cream with crushed peppermint candy
And this sweet cub was so thoroughly enjoying his (tempeh tostada) dinner that he didn’t realized he’d swallowed his first lost tooth until I bellowed, “Oh no! Where’d your tooth go?!” :-D This is his face just after realized it was on its way through his digestive tract.
And, as always, when we aren’t eating in a way to protect the earth and fellow species, we’re out enjoying the beauty of this precious planet; so here’s some scenes of Q out in nature.
Rand Tract
Rand Tract a few days later :-)
Green Lakes
Also Green Lakes
Our friend Bob’s backyard nature preserve
Helping Bob remove clogging weeds from his stream.
What’s the most impactful thing you can do as an individual to help your kin, community, millions of species, and planet? Transition as plant-based as possible.🌎♥️
Why? Plant-Based foods are environmentally imperative 🌎. They also promote ideal health💪 (which takes stress off our overburdened health care system), are inexpensive🙌, delicious🤤, & compassionate. 💕
Why imperative, though? 🤔We’re approaching (& have crossed) climate tipping points that will doom our kin & millions of other species. 😱📣Reducing/eliminating animal products is the *most impactful thing an individual can do* to prevent worse. 🌎🔥
Why? Animal Agriculture creates more emissions than the entire transportation sector combined, it’s tied to water waste/loss/pollution (<-- freshwater is our most precious resource💧), land loss/deforestation (<-- exacerbates climate change by reducing our ability to sequester carbon🔥🌎), ocean acidification (<-- FYI 50-85% of earth’s oxygen originates from oceanic plankton🌊) & vast species loss/extinction/suffering💔📣🌎
Plus, consuming animal products is tied to increased risk of cardiovascular disease❤️🩹, diabetes👎, cancer👎, and chronic disease👎; whereas Plant-Based feasting is linked to preventing/reversing some of our most common diseases (<— like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer); plus it promotes ideal health & robust strength (ie Olympians, Weightlifters, Endurance Athletes are thriving via PBWFs too). 🎉🙌♥️
What organizations are promoting plant-based diets for best health and environmental stability? National Institutes of Health, Mayo Clinic, the United Nations, Harvard School of Health, American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Association, The American Academy of Pediatrics, National Kidney Foundation, even the Parkinson’s Foundation.
We’re all overwhelmed in one way or another, but for the sake of our kin (and the millions of species we share this planet with) we need to start pivoting forward. As someone who once rarely ate green things & used to eat animal products at every meal, I can assure you that is possible, affordable, enjoyable, & purposeful to pivot Plant-Based. In fact, our whole family is now healthier/stronger than ever. 🙌♥️
Anecdotally, our son had failure-to-thrive, was also plagued with perpetual ear-infections/sinus-infections, and had an omnipresent runny nose. What was he eating? Grass-fed milk, organic/antibiotic-free/grass-fed/local meats, eggs from organic-fed/well-loved chickens from a neighbor, every meal came with vegetables, and we limited junkfood. He was healed via a plant-based diet: he’s launched out of that diagnosis and the last time he had a sinus-infection (or was sick at all) was in 2019 when he had some cheese at a school Christmas party. Before shifting to PBWF’s he was sick every month, and how he’s a robust, vital, thriving kiddo. 🙌🎉♥️
If you think any of the above sounds over-reached/absurd/impossible, please go read the links above. I understand the inclination to hackle-raise (<—because I was once totally there) but the science is clear: any step we make forward is imperative (<—and again “STEPS” is the focus. Don’t leap, just start making steps!). It’s as simple as starting with one meal a week and growing from there.💕
We have the ability (deliciously, healthfully, kindly, inexpensively) to *preserve/protect* the planet we share with millions of species & our kin. How are we going to use that power today?✌️🤟🖖
