Opening Your Eyes to a Vegan Diet

Waking Up is our new ebook from Vegan Fusion. Filled with testimonials and wonderful recipes to help you wake up to revitalized health and wellness, Waking Up has something for everyone.

Ty Jones Reno, Nevada

“I lost 30 pounds in two months…”

“How did I get here?” I asked myself one night after a big dinner of beef tri-tip and red potatoes.  I was 30 pounds overweight, moody and had a perpetually upset stomach.  It was right then that I decided to watch the DVD my friend had been pestering me about.  He and his wife had become vegans after watching it and he raved daily over how much better he felt and how he had lost a bunch of weight.  I had been putting off this video for quite some time… ok months.  I knew that I would feel guilty for my carnivorous habits.  Even so, I hardly expected to change my entire outlook on life that very night.  Sure, I knew that the world could feed a lot more people on plant based diets than on carnivorous ones.  This was basic environmental science… the energy pyramid and all that.  So, I finally sat down to watch this mysterious video, all the while feeling fat and lazy.

My eyes had suddenly been opened!  I had received the food gospel and I felt like standing up and screaming “Hallelujah!”.  But with my stomach full of fat-laden beef, I quickly thought better of it. Over the next few months, I soaked up information about plant based diets like a sponge.  I bought videos, books and surfed the web for articles and resources.
 
But why become a vegan?  From the day I modified my diet, I felt better. Not just physically either.  My cholesterol dropped from 230 to 140 since the only dietary source of cholesterol comes from animals.  I also lost 30 pounds in two months.  More than that, though, I felt fulfilled.  It feels good to know that by avoiding meat, thousands of gallons of government-subsidized water are conserved each week.  I was no longer contributing to the shameful abuse of animals by large companies.  It was also pretty nice to be able to eat a meal without wondering if some stray prion was going to infect me with Creutzfeldt Jacobs Disease.

My first instinct as my outlook on food and life changed was to run around trying to “convert” my friends and family.  I quickly learned that people take it personally when you inform them that their diet is detrimental to their health, the health of the planet and the sustainability of our food supply.  Apparently, it doesn’t matter how politely you say it.  Since then, I have found that simply living a vegan lifestyle is quite contagious.

What of the “benefits” of a carnivorous diet though?  Are they valid? Obviously I don’t think so and here’s why.  The convenience of being able to eat whatever I want is a moot point since I honestly don’t want to eat animal products any longer.  I’m not claiming that they don’t taste good.  I am simply saying that I can eat whatever I want.  And what I want to eat consists entirely of plants.  As for the social stigma of being a vegan, it is a badge of honor as far as I’m concerned.  Besides, how many times have we all heard the old cliché: “If all your friends were jumping off the Empire State Building, would you do it too?”  The last reason is really a big one for most people.  Darn it, animal foods taste good!  John Travolta said it best in Pulp Fiction: “Pork Chops are good!”  While that may be true, I must emphatically say “Plant foods are good!”

 
I would love to see a vegan world, and I believe it’s entirely possible.  In fact, I believe it is inevitable.  I also believe that in the same way that a waterfall begins with a single drop of water, a vegan world starts with individuals opening their hearts and minds to doing what is right more than doing what is easy.  If we want to see a world where water is not squandered on raising livestock and a world where everyone has enough to eat, we all need to make the right food choices as individuals.  We need to eliminate the demand for foods that are detrimental to our world by no longer demanding those foods.  A vegan world is possible, we just have to make our own small contributions and it will happen someday.

Get your copy of Waking Up today!

Feel Lighter and More Full of Energy

Waking Up, our new ebook is now available. This testimonial from Bonnie Grubbauer is an excerpt from Waking Up.

Bonnie Grubbauer

Culver City, California

“The bottom line is that I feel lighter and more full of energy…”

I’d been happily vegetarian for two years and never missed meat. I was, however, a confirmed cheese lover. Or at least I thought so. On a trip to Central and South America I stopped eating dairy products due to their association with stomach distress and it was easier than I’d feared. When I returned home, my mother asked me about the diet I’d fallen into and handed me a copy of Vegan Fusion World Cuisine. Opening the book made me realize the benefits of adopting a vegan lifestyle and offered mouth-watering ways to make the change. Thus began my delicious and reaffirming search into the why’s and how’s of becoming vegan.

My initial physical reactions to the transition to a vegan diet passed quickly and all signs of detoxification are long gone. If anything, I feel better than ever; I’d chalked up my morning stuffy nose to allergies and assumed that it was normal. The bottom line is that I feel lighter and more full of energy. As soon as I realized that it was merely a question of getting past that routine, of reevaluating those tempting, comfortable habits and letting go of the idea that I’m a cheese lover, I was ready to start eating consciously. Once I just committed to take the step, the rest was simple.

The health reasons for staying away from animal products are staggering. I don’t want any part of the antibiotics, hormones and other unnatural oddities (like cement!) given to commercially raised animals these days. Animals act like filters – the pesticides and other toxins that animals unwittingly ingest just continue to build up in their hosts until they’re packaged and sold at the local deli. The irony is that most health reasons to eat animal products are based on outdated information or a lack thereof.

People can easily get the protein they need from a plant based diet without those saturated fats and bad cholesterols tagging along. The body actually uses up more energy to break down animal protein than plant based protein in order to get the amino acids it needs. And dairy products simply are not a good source of usable calcium. Most people are some degree of lactose intolerant by the age of three anyway. Human bodies prefer a finer grain of calcium than that made for baby cows and their four stomachs. Dairy calcium is tied up in milk protein, casein (a top ingredient in glue) and therefore largely un-assimilable anyway.

Thus there are plenty of reasons to stay away from animal products and largely misinformed reasons to consume them. Most animal products either carry toxins along with them, release toxins when cooked, or are toxic themselves. I don’t want to weaken my immune system by having it battle the food I’m supposedly eating to nourish my body; I’d rather have it in top shape to ward off assailants beyond my control.

Looking at the global effects of a vegan diet is even more impressive and once I began looking, I couldn’t turn back. Only one meat eater can live on the amount of land that can support 14 vegans! It takes 4,000 gallons of water to produce a day’s worth of food for a meat eater and only 300 gallons for a vegan diet. Over 80% of corn and 95% of oats grown in the U.S. go to feeding livestock, 16 pounds of grain go towards producing 1 pound of meat. These and other heart wrenching statistics began filling in some factual gaps that had been missing for me.

While traveling in the rainforests of Central and South America I had heard horror stories about the devastation caused by bringing in livestock. Tales of forests being cleared for grazing, land being stripped and washed clean of its nutrients, whole species disappearing and peoples being displaced, came streaming back to me as I flipped through Vegan Fusion World Cuisine’s pages. I had been confused by the amount of starving people in countries with such agriculturally rich land; suddenly I realized where the food was going. Reading the numbers in black and white behind the colorful nightmares I’d heard about made the situation devastatingly more real.

Seeing statistics exposing the habits of waste and misuse that we are notorious for completed the picture of the situation that I do not want to contribute to. It made my own decision and the little bit of difference I could make, that much more clear. Oh, what a wonderful vegan world it could be.

Reading Vegan Fusion World Cuisine and the books that have followed has completely convinced me that a vegan diet is the next step in our collective evolution on this planet, with this planet. I think my mother gave me the book because she knew that I would take the time to get into it and report back to her with a highlighted version. Recently she has been undertaking a slow but steady evaluation and makeover of her diet, with a vegan diet as the end goal. So now I’ve turned around armed with facts and recipes and soak/sprout times and am supporting her in taking the next step, too.

My body reaffirms my decision daily by feeling lighter and more energized than ever. I’ve been trying more of the lotus flower live recipes in the book and am feeling more empowered and hopeful with each one. I’m meeting more and more people who see the transition to a vegan diet as the logical move to make. The choice is ours and therein lies the power. It’s truly inspiring what we can make of ourselves and our world when we set that good intention. Our future is in our hands – we’ve got to dream it big.

Walking Up is filled with beautiful testimonials and recipes to help you feel lighter and full of energy in body, mind and spirit.