Starting tomorrow

Starting Saturday, I will be eating vegan.

I went to whole foods today to stock up on my vegan food products:



I had my last burger at BGR in Clemson. A real burger. It was delicious, but tomorrow I will be vegan.

Why? Well, my motto is everyone is a little bit crazy, so I might as well be a little vegan crazy.

In the fall, I had to put my foot down. Put my foot down to non-processed foods and get on the real foods kick. I still am, I try to eat as many real foods as I can. I read all the real food books and the real food blogs...and they were ok.

My doctor is also my friend. Well, his wife is my friend. It is a small town. This happens a lot. But they are vegan for health reasons. They are vegan because of a book called The China Study.

I read "In Defense of Food" and it was ok. This book is very anti-processed foods. It makes some good points and everyone should definately read it.

I read "The China Study" and it blew my mind.

The China Study lists the experiments that have been done on the correlation of animal protein and diseases. As the amount of animal protein has increased, the incidence of many diseases has increased. I know what you are thinking. You are thinking "there they go with those western diseases: heart disease, diabetes, obesety." But they found other correlations: liver cancer, breast cancer, other cancers.

At first this did not affect me. I am not scared of hospitals. I am not scared of cancer. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. I started thinking about the changes I could make.

So I decided to become vegan. Not forever. I am doing a 10 day vegan challenge. After 10 days, I hope to find a certain amount of moderation that I am comfortable with.

Vegan means no animal protein. No meat. No milk. No eggs. No yogurt. The China Study found it was actually more proteins found in dairy (caesin) that led to cancers. There can be no cheating on this. The results were very clear. Once they were apparent to me, how can I not tell this to everyone I love?

Are you listening?

I am putting this on my blog to make me do this. I had been putting this off for one reason or another (we got a box of Omaha Steaks...pretty good reason) but now it is time. The one rule is that I will not be eating animal protein for at least 10 days. Mark is not vegan. The kids are not vegan. Just me. However, by me making that choice, this does reduce the amount of animal proteins they will be consuming.

I know you are thinking this is crazy and it is, but look at it this way. I am moving from an animal based diet to a plant based diet. Who can argue with that?

I am starting tomorrow.