Finding the Plant-Based Path

I’ve always been a passionate environmentalist and pride myself on being a good steward. With each passing decade, I’ve poured more energy into experiencing and protecting the Earth: mountaineering, ocean swimming, composting, dutifully recycling, rarely eating meat, mostly eating plants. About 15 years ago, I essentially stopped eating animals for environmental reasons. But it took having my daughters to wake me up to the opportunity of going totally plant-based.

When my oldest daughter stopped breastfeeding, I was forced to reckon with dairy. After a lot of reading and (unproductive) conversations with our pediatrician, I said “no” to cow’s milk, and we became an almond-milk-drinking family of three. 

Then, shortly before the birth of our second daughter, a trusted and very bright contemporary suggested my husband read Dr. Michael Gregor’s book How Not to Die. We read it and instantly went plant-based. While it has its flaws, How Not to Die was a big unlock for us because it presented simple facts about personal health: Eating plants is simply better for your body. And importantly, it helped shift our focus to everything we could eat versus what we could not eat. Abundance rather than restriction. Did we still occasionally eat cheese? Yes. But did we exclusively eat plants 99% of the time? Yes.  

Within a few weeks of eating plant-based, my husband enjoyed deeper sleep, easy weight loss, and higher energy. I too started to feel more energized, but the biggest shift for me was mental. I discovered a deep sense of pride in the positive contribution I was making to environmental health every time I chose to eat plants.

And the environmental benefits of being plant-based are huge. Scottish data scientist Hannah Ritchie says it simply in her uplifting book Not the End of the World: “Eat less meat and dairy, especially beef. This one will make the biggest difference. It’s one of the most effective things you can do to cut your carbon footprint.” Quite simply, we cannot hope to mitigate climate change while continuing to consume meat like we do now. If you need more convincing, but don’t have time to read her book, check out this podcast with Dr. Ritchie. On the plus side, eating fewer animal products doesn’t just help with climate, it helps reduce global hunger, deforestation, overfishing, water use, water pollution, land use, food waste, and biodiversity loss.

But an all-or-nothing approach to eating less meat and more plants isn’t going to get us very far. I was hardcore (and obnoxious!) in the beginning, preaching to friends and sending soup that accidentally contained fish sauce back at restaurants. I cringed when my kids ate dairy-based chocolate on Halloween. Thankfully for everyone, I’ve softened with time. I still don’t eat fish sauce, but I’d rather eat the soup than waste it. If the occasional slice of egg-and-butter-laden cake helps my kids (or husband) feel included and fulfilled, they are more likely to continue walking the plant-based path forever. We are playing the long game.

Since we started this journey, I’ve had two more babies, making six of us. We feel great and our doctors are always surprised by our labs; they wonder how plant-based people can be so supremely healthy (I wonder how doctors can be so clueless). Our kids are thriving — growing, learning, playing, pooping(!), sleeping — and we feel great in our bodies. We are heartened by the mainstreaming of eating plants. You no longer need to be punk rock to be plant-based. But it remains a radically impactful act for our bodies, the Earth, and the animals. Plants are powerful, and so are we.

And yet, somehow being plant-based is still perceived as hard, arduous, no fun. If you're curious but have no clue how to start, what to eat, or where to go, read Resources for Plant-Based Living.