How Has The Dietetic Industries View Of Plant-Based Diets Changed In The Last 30 Years?

I’ve been plant-based for I would say 30 years to be honest more like 40 years but the first 10 of those years was a slow transition so you know gradually dropped red meat and then slowly you know just eating less and less of the animal products and so it was it’s been 30 years that I can say I’ve been pretty much entirely plant-based I that happened after I became a dietitian so I’ve been a dietitian for 1982 I graduate 1983 so you know 35 years I’ve been a registered dietitian so so yeah it happened after and and I can tell you it was not an easy decision because I had actually only met one real live vegetarian in my life and it was my grade eight science teacher and he was a hippy he had the long hair and I thought he was really cool my dad taught in a classroom opposite him and and he thought it was just absolutely insane that he was eating a vegetarian diet and feeding it to his kids of all things so when I you know when I made the decision to become completely plant-based my family didn’t exactly do a you know celebration party I had at that time I had a four year old daughter and a one-year-old son so they were still very very young and you know what what triggered it for me I was actually at the time I was a community nutritionist so my job was teaching Canada’s Food Guide in the four food groups two of the four of which were animal products and and and so and I mean I I led a nursing moms group I did you know I I often spoke on CBC on the radio I did yeah had a column in the newspaper I just was doing a wide variety of things but it was really based on the traditional teachings of my profession and so the decision to make this extreme to a plant-based diet was a little you know is a little concerning because I didn’t know if you could be a dietitian and people that based but anyway what triggered my change was I I found myself shifting in a direction of more plant foods fewer animal foods because of health I thought it just made sense to me fiber and and all of the wonderful things you find in plants and it made sense to be eating lentils and tofu instead of you know red meat and and so I I slowly was making that shift but but what actually was kind of the final straw was an interaction I had with my husband’s best man at our wedding he was on his way deer hunting and he called and he said can I stop by for coffee on my way deer hunting and I said sure no problem and and so he as he’s driving over I’m thinking to myself how can I make this man feel very guilty about killing another deer because I just I didn’t like the idea of hunting and and so when he was when he was visiting I I said to him you know I I don’t understand how you can feel good about you know going into the woods with your big gun and shooting a beautiful innocent animal that to me doesn’t deserve to die what did that animal ever do to you and you know he call it a sport but it’s like usually in sports both teams have the same equipment I don’t consider it a sport it’s just it just seems mean-spirited and and it was what he said back to me that changed the course of my life

he said you know just because you don’t have the guts to pull the trigger does not mean you’re not responsible for the trigger being pulled every time you buy your piece of meat comma flushed in cellophane in the grocery store he said at least the animals I eat have had a life I wonder if you can say the same for the ones that are sitting on your plate and it he just i was silenced I was absolutely silenced because I knew that he was right and I had never taken responsibility for the food that I was putting in my mouth and and you go to the grocery store and it’s so simple and we we don’t look beyond that and and really understand where food is coming from and so after that interaction I really thought about it and I started researching how we’re raising animals and and what’s involved and what I learned filled me with shame guilt remorse you know I was raised as a little kid I can still remember picking worms off the sidewalk for fear they were gonna you know dry up after the rain I I used to talk to animals on my way to school I did I had a big heart for animals I can remember being at a bullfight when I was about three years old and you know it was elk or Dobies the hero of Spain and we’re there and and all of a sudden I realized what a bullfight was that we’re they were gonna kill this ball and and when the bull scored a couple of points or whatever he did I jumped up on my seat I mean you could have heard a pin drop in the entire stadium of 10,000 people there’s this little three-year-old jumping up and down yeah ball go ball Oh and so I always had that hard as I think many children do but we get desensitized as we grow up and we get removed from our you know where the food is really coming from and and so I made a decision at that point and I thought to myself I don’t want my life to be about contributing to pain suffering and death any more than it has to be I don’t need to be a part of this system of cruelty and you know my mom grew up on a farm and they had names for the animals and the animals did have a bit of a life until they went to the slaughterhouse or they were killed at the farm whichever it was but today animals don’t have a life they’re you know ninety percent are raised in Capo’s confined animal feeding operation and they I mean literally when you think about the you know the pig for example they you know pigs have been rated to have the intelligence of a three-year-old child and dogs about a two and a half year old child and they they are very intelligent beings and yet these pigs that would live 15 years live six months in in a prison hellish prison that’s so bad that they go insane they you know so in order to prevent them from biting one another’s tails off in that little stall they you know they they cut their you know tails off and they cut their ears they dock their ears they cut their genitals off so they don’t have as many hormones going on and all without any anesthetic when they’re just little babies it’s just horrendous what we do to these creatures and I can’t justify it I don’t understand how the human race is justifying it the only thing I can think of is that people have these blinders on because they’re just buying this piece of meat at the grocery store and it’s got to stop it we’re killing ourselves by eating animals that are you know raised and in this way we’re eating so much of it and we’re destroying the planet and we’re you know causing unthinkable suffering in these creatures for nothing it’s totally unnecessary and so when I came to that realization even as a dietitian I thought I I just I can’t do this and so I went to my husband of about ten years at that time we had been married about ten years and I said to mom would you be willing to become a vegetarian well he’d never even met a real live vegetarian I mean he you know he didn’t have the same science teacher I did and and he said I thought you’d never ask I’d love to be a vegetarian he said I’ve always wanted to live a lifestyle that would leave a softer footprint on the planet and I can’t think of a better way of doing that so I thought to myself boy I married pretty young but I’m very pretty well so it worked out very nicely

well I can tell you that the Dietetic profession 30 years ago I’ll even go a step further back when I was in university and again this was in the late 70s early 80s I learned two things about vegetarian nutrition in school one was that vegetarian diets were risky and should never be fed to children or pregnant or lactating women and vegan diets were downright dangerous nobody should be eating them period that’s pretty much all I learned so you can imagine five or six years later in practice the you know the the sentiment hadn’t shifted a lot so the idea of a dietitian being not only you know vegetarian but pretty much vegan was almost unheard of as a matter of fact I didn’t know if I was the only vegan dietitian on the planet and it was scary III thought I might be ousted from the profession but I and I considered you know another profession I thought do I need to leave but I thought you know if everybody who starts to see a bigger picture the the ethical picture the environmental picture the you know even the recommendations of the World Health Organization at the time that that a lot of North Americans weren’t very familiar with if if everybody who started to see these things just exited the profession I thought will never it will take much longer to affect change within the profession I thought I’ve got to have the courage to stay and to speak with some knowledge and I’m a I need to make sure that I am very very well-versed with the literature I need to be very professional and what I do and I just need to stay and I wanted so desperately to help people who were choosing a plant-based diet to do it well I thought I for my education that I can help people to design diets that work really well because to me a failed vegetarian or a failed vegan is really exhibit number one for why everybody around them is justified in eating meat they kind of prove you need me to be healthy and and so I was really determined to try to help change that and when I moved to you know within a year or two of becoming plant-based I I moved to Vancouver from Northern Ontario Northern Ontario is kind of hunting fishing beer and bingo kind of crowd and no wonderful people don’t get me wrong just wonderful wonderful people but but that more of that mentality where’s Vancouver much more veg friendly I thought I’m gonna meet real live vegetarians for the first time in my life and so we moved there and you wouldn’t believe the first few dietitians I met I met – one was moving towards plant-based the other one was a seventh-day Adventist vegetarian so I learned that there actually was more than even one other vegetarian dietitian on the planet so within fairly short order I met another one vesanto melina who became my writing partner and and we began writing books together and at the first book we had a third author as well Victoria Harrison but vesanto and I went on and we’ve written now many books together I’ve I’m on mine I’ve ninth I think she’s on her 12th or 13th we just are completing two more this year and so we’ve been providing the resources we believe people need and vesanto was actually the senior author on the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics a position statement on vegetarian nutrition as well so we and I was a past president of the vegetarian arm of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics so we’ve been very active within our professions and and as for the shift you know at first our peers were a little you know skeptical but they were inviting us to speak to what we had to say and I can remember feeling that it’s it’s we’ve really arrived when a few years ago I was speaking at dietitians of Canada and one of the the leaders the CEOs I was doing an interview like this and after the interview she came up to me with a little gift and she said I I just want to tell you how proud you make me to be a dietitian thank you for the work you’ve been doing for the last many years and it just it it just made me feel so validated and and it made me feel like what I’ve been doing is not just helping vegetarians but helping my fellow colleagues as well who are really coming along and then my my writing partner vesanto this year one I shouldn’t say this year last year 2017 one the highest award offered to only one person a year from dietitians of Canada the Riley Jeffs Memorial Lecture Award for her work over you know the past 30 or 40 years and so it’s our our profession many people think dietitians are in the dark ages still but it’s it’s really quite extraordinary the number of new young dietitians that are graduating as plant-based diet ish ins and also the number of older dietitians that are interested I can remember once speaking at the American you know it was at that time the American Dietetic Association but the you know Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and I was in a room and speaking on vegetarian nutrition and there was room for 900 people in in that room there were so many people there that I I bet we had 300 people on the floor and 200 people out the door and I was told when I went to pick up my little CD of the lecture it was the second biggest selling CD of the entire conference and so there’s interest and we as people that are especially interested in plant-based you know a plat based or more plant-based world don’t don’t discount that physicians even mainstream and means dream dietitians are interested in this you know this option for people it’s it’s really happening