A glorious spring day in Naples and I’m thinking about why I became vegan. As I sit here writing, the bougainvillea are in brilliant bloom and the scent of gardenias and jasmine are wafting about me. A truly magnificent day. Sigh! I’m content when I encounter nature such as this, and yet, on the other hand, I’m dismayed.
I’m dismayed at what’s going on around us in our society. Look at the sickness and death and obesity and suffering in our friends and loved ones, and taking to the knife for heart disease.
Chemotherapy for cancer. Blindness and lost limbs as a result of diabetes. It’s incredulous! The stunning part of all of this is that it doesn’t have to happen. We do not, absolutely do not, have to get sick along with getting old.
There are myriad studies and scientific facts that prove a diet with no animal products reverses and prevents countless diseases including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and a host of degenerative illnesses and conditions.
The Disease is Why I Became Vegan
Not mine. Someone else’s if you can imagine that. I am vegan, a whole-foods, plant-based eater for preventative health matters. You will read within these pages about why I became vegan.
My family history is rife with heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Research is in. Countries that do not eat the Standard American Diet (SAD) of animal products do not suffer from the diseases that are prevalent in our county. We are getting too much of the wrong kind of protein, too much-saturated fat and too much cholesterol.
Just stop and look around. We’ve all been touched in one way or another by one of these horrible diseases, not to mention obesity, lack of energy, aches and pains, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and on and on. Does it make sense then that it’s what we’re eating which is causing much of this?
Genetics and the Role They Play
The genetic predisposition to most common diseases is also hugely misunderstood by the general population. Yes, I have all of those diseases in my history.
I am genetically predisposed. If I had continued to eat the way my ancestors ate, chances are quite likely, I would succumb to the same diseases they did.
In a nutshell, that’s why I became vegan. To give me a better chance of NOT getting the diseases my ancestors had.
By changing my ways when I did, chances are quite good that I do not have to succumb to the same diseases.
Preventable Diseases
As Dr. Gary Null says, “We have an epidemic of preventable diseases.”
I ask you: If they’re preventable, why in God’s Good Name would we NOT WANT to do what’s been shown and proven to be healthier? Why?? Why would we not prevent them if we could? I’m perplexed!
I have been studying and researching this topic for several years. I have found, firmly believe, and am highly convinced that diseases can not only be prevented but also can be reversed by eating a whole-foods, plant-based diet. Don’t take my word for it. Do your own research, but at least do it.
There are many and varied reasons to Be A Vegan. I have attempted to give you my reasons for why I became vegan. In my sixties, no less when most people shun change, I became vegan. I took a drastic step and changed my entire way of eating, my entire lifestyle, really.
On a trip to Ecuador a few years ago, I was asked Why Ecuador? But that’s another story. Similarly, and oftentimes, I am asked, Why Vegan?
I think people, my family, and friends, alike, though I had gone straight off the deep-end, and wondered what in the world I was doing, or that maybe it was a fad with me. They couldn’t believe that I, who am fairly well-balanced and firmly grounded, had made this huge change. I think people were really confounded.
“Surely, she couldn’t be serious,” they all thought. I’m Italian, after all. Give up the good old-fashioned Standard American Diet (SAD)? I ate everything.
That I was doing something so radical as to stop eating animal foods, foods I had grown up on, and had eaten all my life? I had heard the terms vegan and vegetarian. And even though reasons were abundant, never ever once did “why not be a vegan” enter my mind. But indeed! Seriously, she was, they thought.
But becoming vegan was more than a whim; it was a decision that was to give me a passion, put me on another course, propel me to write a book about health, and to help others who are looking to maintain a healthy outlook, and/or to become healthy if they are not already.
How it happened is another story.
For delicious vegan recipes, go to my book: