The Why

Last night I dreamt that I inadvertently ate powdered skim milk. I was breakfasting at a buffet in some nondescript hotel in an unidentifiable locale. Having passed over the eggs, sausages, bacon, smoked salmon, cream cheese, nutella and yogurts, I carefully selected a bowl of pre-made muesli. Back at the table, I combined it with some soy milk that I had stealthily smuggled in a miniature fish tank inside my handbag (no explanation for why I had chosen this vessel). It somehow came to light amongst the (also nondescript) company at the table that I had mis-read the ingredients listing on the muesli packet, and I was enjoying a cow product in ignorant bliss right before their eyes. I immediately woke in a light sweat, with the shadow of the sinking realization that I had blown it, and everyone knew about it.

You don't have to be an expert in Freudian theory to figure out that this dream was my psyche's way of working out some of the anxiety I am feeling with the knowledge that the world is now watching by vegan foray. The responses to yesterday's proclamation were exciting, and just a little dizzying. Yes, there are indeed now people watching. And yes, I'd better start memorizing the words for every four-legged, two-legged, flying or swimming creature, as well as all their by-products, in all four official Swiss languages, or I am going to get caught out.

In the dust of yesterday's blog launch, people are asking lots of questions. I've been asked what my diet is going to look like, exactly, how am I ever going to get enough protein, what's my plan to ensure my iron levels don't drop and most poignantly, what on earth should people prepare when I come over for dinner? All very valid, and they will all be answered in due course. For today, I promised I would outline why I am doing this. Why would a self-professed foodie who made it her business to evaluate every new restaurant in town by sampling from every section of the menu, decide to give up all animal products? Not just the animals, but all animal products?

I am going to keep it to a simple outline, and then I am going to do the lazy thing and include lots of links to other sources that can explain it better than I. Here is the simple outline:

1. I think that a plant-based diet is not only better for a human's health, but could actually be an optimal diet for athletic performance (this is, of course, the heart of my blog and the hypothesis that is now under test).

2. I think that switching to plant-based diets would almost instantly solve many of our environmental messes, and even better, it would be easier to do as a civilization than weaning us off our fossil fuel dependence.

In support of the first item above, it is really no secret that decreasing meat consumption and increasing fruit and vegetable consumption protects against two of the biggest diseases of Western civilization, cancer and cardiovascular disease. Then there is the side benefit of curbing our collective weight gain and the host of conditions now associated with excessive body weight. I am not going to examine any of this here; there is a plethora of empirical evidence that indicates that meat consumption is directly linked with our poor health in the West (some good reading on this) and in that sense, it's old news. Similarly, evidence that points to animal products' negative impact on our health has been trickling into the zeitgeist in recent years. Dairy product consumption has close links to cancer (in particular prostrate cancer and breast cancer), cardiovascular disease and poor immune system function. Most of us don't have the necessary enzymes to digest cow's milk, all of us produce an antibody against it, and it's linked to all sorts of issues with children's health, from asthma to diabetes (What's wrong with milk? is a good starting point). Again, this is not really news, regardless of the degree to which it has actually altered our eating habits.

But I'm not just interested in avoiding disease (let's be honest, how many of us under 35 give this serious consideration on a daily basis? Isn't that something we will worry about later - say, after 50?) I am more interested in having a diet that gives me the highest quality of health for my life right now. As an athlete, I'm interested in the optimal diet for performance. I think that plants might just be able to provide all of the protein, iron and calcium I need (and provide them in more digestible forms), as well as a host of other micronutrients that our animal-focused diets are missing, and this will allow me to train more, recover faster between trainings, and ultimately, race better.

My second motivation is less concerned with my own body and has more to do with an interest in how my daily diet is impacting the environment. It is now recognized that animal agriculture is making a much more serious contribution to climate change, air pollution and land, soil and water degradation than we've previously recognized (Livestock's Long Shadow, a report published by the UN in 2007, makes for good bedtime reading on this). 18% of greenhouse gases can be directly attributed to livestock production, making it the second highest contributor to atmosphere-alternating gases, next to energy production. It actually beats transportation. This, combined with my increasing awareness of the kind of lives that livestock animals lead, and the methods used to end their lives (just Youtube 'slaughterhouse practices', but I warn you, this is not for the faint-hearted), sums up what was on my mind when I made the decision to give up eating them.

So, that covers my motivation. This is the ideology that you can expect to permeate the discussion here, but the focus is really on what the real-world results are. With that in mind, it is early to bed to get on with some trianing tomorrow morning. Nobody ever got in Ironman shape by typing.