The idea of going full-on VEGAN seemed daunting at first. After all, I have always especially LOVED the creamy taste of dairy products. Meat would be fairly easy for my girls and I to let go of, but dairy?….. maybe not so much.
It’s been 2+ months now of making this somewhat dramatic change in our lives. At first, while it felt good and extremely cleansing,….1 ½ to 2 weeks into it, I was experiencing some pretty strong cravings for butter and cheese. At that point, the mere whiff of butter made my knees buckle and made me want to slather it all over myself, so I could smell it all day! The almost constant reminder that I would never take another bite of any of the numerous, glorious cheeses I have loved for so long was also a bit depressing. One huge weakness for me during this time was my pure LOVE for croissants….not the adulterated, filled kind, but the pristine shiny/crispy/flaky-on-the-outside with nothing but buttery, almost elastic, zillion-layers-of-goodness-on-the-inside kind. Obsess much?…Yeah! Soooo, in mid December when I opened my freezer and found a box of Trader Joe’s mini croissants that were begging to be baked and savored (not the ultimate croissant, I agree, but to someone with an intense craving for them, definitely taste-worthy enough to ‘fit the bill’), I thought, “Hmmmm, well….I DID purchase these prior to making this switch and it would be a waste to simply toss out perfectly good food, right? SO…. what could it hurt?” Suffice to say I made them, ate one and it DID hurt – it hurt quite a bit. I was doubled over in pain as a matter of fact. Turns out I had gotten used to not experiencing the ill-effects of dairy on my system whereas before, I was so used to it, I took it as par-for-the-course.
I have since learned that dairy is not kind to almost anyone’s system, save babies who are in the breastfeeding stages and the extremely small percentage of adults who have inherited an ability to continue to digest lactose into adulthood. The majority of the adult population is actually lactose-intolerant.* (Getting a little technical here but,…..in normal humans, the production of lactase [the enzyme required to digest lactose – the main sugar in milk and cheese], drops off radically between 2 and five years of age. Which, btw also coincides with the age at which a child would typically no longer be breastfeeding). Does that fact indicate it’s somewhat unnatural for older children and adults to continue to consume milk and milk products?… I think so. Not to mention the fact that we are the ONLY species to consume the milk of another species on a regular basis throughout adulthood. Hmmmm, kinda weird. I didn’t know anything about the whole ‘lactase enzyme thing’ when I decided to succumb to my craving ‘just this once’. Rest assured, now it’s not something I’ll ever forget!
After that self-inflicted, unfortunate incident (and another, accidental one after that with the same results),…. it’s become pretty easy for me to get used to the notion of being done with dairy! So long butter and cheese,… you are SO not worth the pain!