Which first? Chicken or egg?

Ask a vegetarian / vegan which they gave up first, chickens or eggs, and you’ll likely get the answer: “chickens.” OK, and cows and pigs too, but let’s just stick to chickens for a moment. For me, the specter of brutalized chickens made it easy to give up flesh. But dipping a warm piece of buttered toast into a silky, shiny yellow yolk… that was heaven. And let’s be honest, terrible images of egg farms are pretty easy to suppress. So like most, I ditched “meat” and held fast to eggs and dairy.

Ah dairy. That’s an emotionally loaded food group for this Wisconsin girl. I always hated milk. It made me gag as a child. Loved ice cream though (it has sugar!). And cheese? You’d have to rip it from my cold dead hands. Whenever someone asked, “Are you gonna be a vegan?” The answer was immediate: “No. I absolutely cannot give up cheese.” Enough said. I did my part for animal cruelty and the environment. I gave up meat.

But it turns out that I had things a little backwards. Health was never at the top of my list of reasons for eating lower on the food chain. I knew that vegetarians had lower risk of heart disease but I didn’t change my diet to avoid disease. Like most people, I walk around in deep denial about disability and death. But my own aging and the constant exposure to the ravages of chronic illness in the clinic, has made the relationship between health and nutrition more prominent. My denial is being steadily chipped away.

I just finished the book “Healthy Eating, Healthy World”. This fast read is a well-written and researched overview of the interconnectedness of eating, planetary health, and human health and disease. Right up my alley! The author, Jim Hicks, was a management consultant who got interested in nutrition and set out to research a book on the subject. He ended up in a place he never expected to be: eating a vegan diet. He spent a lot of time with T. Colin Campbell, of “The China Study” fame and with Caldwell Esselstyn, the Cleveland Clinic surgeon who has done research on reversing heart disease with diet interventions. Dr. Esselstyn is also the father of “The Engine 2 Diet” guy Rip Esselstyn, who promotes a vegan diet that appeals to (he)men. You’ll see Rip’s approved foods on little seals pasted up all over the Whole Foods shelves. Much of the research done by Drs, Campbell and Esselstyn concludes that as bad as meat is for people, dairy is far worse. It has carcinogenic properties as well as increasing heart disease risk. So if you’re eating for health, you’d stop dairy first. Then eggs. And last …meat.

I immediately covered my eyes and began to sing the denial song … “la, la, la, la …” long and loud, to drown out this tidbit. I do not need to be this well informed. I have a terrible flaw: once I know something, I can’t un-know it and ignore the implications.

But now I know. So now what?

If you read this blog, you know that I’ve been eating at least a 99% vegetarian diet for three years (has it really been that long?). Over the last year, that diet has become really unhealthy. Yes, vegetarians can have unhealthy diets. One of my mainstays has become high fat dairy. Dairy replaced some of my salads and dark greens, which take more time to prepare, and soy protein. My LDL deteriorated and my overall feeling of well-being plummeted as my nutrition tanked. It’s been a multifactorial path that led me here …poor stress management, career dissatisfaction, and little exercise being big confounding factors. But when other things in life are gnawing at your immune system, it behooves you to be even more scrupulous about your nutrition. I have been anything but scrupulous.

I’ve reduced dairy intake in the last couple of weeks as I prepare for the 21-Day Kickstart Diet challenge. The cheese is nearly gone now but imagining giving it up for good is still really hard for me. With one benign colon polyp already removed, my risk of colon cancer is higher than average. It is a nasty disease and one I’d rather avoid. Dumping cheese to avoid chemo is a no-brainer. But it is also easy for the mind to lull you into believing that the risk isn’t really there as you opt for short-term pleasure. The decision to choose health is one we have to consciously make when the environment presents us with so many delicious and easily indulged in unhealthy options.

If a physician had told me 10 years ago to eliminate dairy, would I have made that choice? I don’t know. But I know what I’d do today.

Does anyone want my cheese?