(No) Life without Cheese?

Background
A week or so before Christmas, I got a call from my Uncle Melvin. He phoned to thank us for our Christmas card, and then somehow got onto the topic of diet and nutrition.

It turns out that over the past year my uncle has become a vegetarian, mostly because of a book he had read called The China Study--a book that he highly recommended to me.

He told me that since he had stopped eating meat and dairy products he had been much healthier--to the degree that he hadn't been sick with a cold or flu all year.

Well, anyone who knows me can guess what I did next. I logged onto our library website and requested the book.

The China Study became available to me just before Christmas Eve, and I picked it up. With every page I turned, I became convinced that I needed to make some dietary changes.

 

The author--who is a leading cancer researcher and fully credentialed nutrition expert--promotes a plant-based (vegan) diet. He claims, very convincingly, that animal products--including meat, milk, eggs, and cheese--can cause a range of serious health problems.

 

Meet Veganism
I knew I couldn't start right away--what with two turkey dinners coming up over the next few days--but I decided that after Christmas I would give up meat and dairy products. I thought I'd hold off on serving a vegan diet to my children until I had researched their nutritional requirements a little further, but I made a personal goal to resist these foods.

 

I checked a vegetarian cookbook out of the library, marked a few recipes that looked promising, and started to prepare plant-based meals: spinach and mushroom lasagna (kind of yucky), all-vegetable spaghetti sauce with multigrain pasta (not quite as yucky but still a little gross), and--tonight's dinner--Greek Bean Soup.

 

Tonight's Dinner
As I put together a dinner of white kidney beans, carrots, celery, and tomatoes, I couldn't help but think, "There is no way my kids are going to eat this." Even though they had had ham sandwiches for lunch, I felt as though I should give them a little more than the tasteless broth I had boiled all afternoon.

 

I decided to whip up a couple of cheese pizzas.

As I looked at the plate of homemade pizza in the middle of the table, and tasted my Greek Bean Soup, I had to admit . . . there was a problem.

 

The Problem
HOW CAN A PERSON WHOSE FAVORITE FOOD IS CHEESE, AND WHOSE FAVORITE HOBBY IS BAKING, BECOME A VEGAN?

 

I took this question to my husband of 9 years, who asked, "You're still going to make cookies, though, right?"

I followed up with, "You aren't saying that you married me just for my cookie baking skills . . . ?"

 

Jason had to admit that he had.

This certainly may be a barrier to my success as a vegan.

Conclusion
I must say, I am not sure how this is going to work.

Even my first week as a vegan has been compromised by the overabundance of chocolate and specialty cheeses in the house--the ratio has been something like 50 percent vegetables/whole grains, 40 percent peppermint bark, Toblerone, and Ferrero Rocher (Jason is a little enthusiastic with the chocolate stocking stuffers) and 10 percent Swiss cheese.

I'm sure it's not exactly what the China Study author had in mind (chocolate is not really a "whole food," is it?). And the prospects for future success don't look good.

 

BUT it is still my goal to become at least somewhat of a vegetarian--if not a full-out vegan--over the coming year.

I guess we're about to find out if I really can live without cheese . . . or chocolate. . . .