For the love of Dairy – Posted in: General

I have been a veggie for most of my life.  I also wanted my family to have the most ethical and  nutritious diet that I could provide for them. This meant a decisive shift away from highly processed convenience foods and a commitment to cooking from scratch. I also decided to grow our own fruits and vegetables and found myself falling asleep with “Diet for a Small Planet” propped up as my bedtime reading. My children’s favorite retort for those who thought not eating meat was “wierd.”

                                                                                             “If it can run away, we don’t eat it.”

When it came to providing protein though, the building block for humanity, I admit I was nervous. Peanut butter and wholemeal bread was encouraged and when I wasn’t sneaking tofu into the children’s carob pudding, I was reading up on which pulses and grains mixed with what, provided the elusive perfect protein. So it came as a great surprise to me when I found out that I was Vitamin B12 deficient.

The really low point came when I had to have daily injections because I was so depleted. My adrenal gland had pretty much given up the ghost too by this time, so I was also left with virtually no working metabolism.

A good friend told me about dairy produce, which enables people like myself who find it difficult to absorb enough B12, to lead happy healthy, meat free lives. The fact that he is also a scientist and so could explain exactly why dairy products are of such benefit was a bonus.

Slightly increasing my consumption of milk, yoghurt, cheese and so on provided me with the perfect diet. But the dairy industry practised such questionable ethical behaviour, I wondered how I could reconcile our needs with the needs of the cattle used by this industry.

Well I’m more than pleased to announce that we have taken a tiny step towards providing slaughter-free milk, right here in the UK.

Like most people I don’t live on a farm in the country so having our own cow is pretty much beyond our dreams. But Ahimsa cows are the next best thing to our own.  Soon I’ll be profiling all of our ladies and their three beautiful calves. (The picture here is of one of our dairy cows.)

The herd will all lead happy, healthy, productive lives. They will never see the inside of a slaughter house, whether they are born male or female. Our “happyhealthycows” will be making “happyhealthyfamilies.”