Food as Healing

06 April 2010 ~ 0 Comments

From 2001 to 2004, I was a strict vegetarian. I didn’t eat eggs, dairy, fish, poultry, meat, or any animal-derived product (except for honey – for reasons I’ll explain later). I wasn’t on a fundamentalist meat-is-murder bent, I was just tired of being sick all the time.

I stopped eating meat a few years before that, because I had lost the taste for red meat. Seriously. It didn’t matter where it came from or how it was prepared – it tasted awful and I couldn’t get it down. I decided to forgo pork as well, and poultry and fish soon followed. It wasn’t long before my family and friends began to notice – a great way to lose friends and alienate people, let me tell ya – and started calling me vegetarian. I didn’t consider myself vegetarian at the time, but since it was easier than explaining that meat didn’t taste good, I reluctantly embraced the label.

So how did I get there? I don’t know, actually. I was a pretty healthy kid. I had perfect attendance until 8^th grade, when I came down with Strep throat, but until then, I was never sick. A runny nose here and there, but never the flu or a cold. My mother attributed my good health to daily doses of Cod Liver Oil and Scott’s Emulsion, two wretched concoctions I vowed never to subject any future offspring to but now swear by. But towards the end of high school, I started to develop seasonal allergies, and was told by doctors that this was “natural”. I didn’t know it then, but this development would mark the beginning of my journey to self-healing.

In art school, attempting to juggle a full courseload with full-time work, I lived on bagels and daily slices of pizza and Peach Snapple Iced Teas. My weight ballooned from 180 to 225 over two years, and I had what appeared to be a year-round cold. My life was a mucusfest, accompanied by boxes (not those handy little packages) of tissue, and sinus infections every time the seasons changed. I went to bed blowing my nose and woke up needing to expel mucus from my throat first thing. My boyfriend at the time, complained that my “snot rags” were taking over the bed (from me waking up in the middle of the night to blow my nose or cough up phlegm). It was nasty, and I didn’t know what to do about it.

A family friend suggested I visit an allergist, so I did. Following the results from the allergy test, (I’m mildly allergic to onions!), I was prescribed a common allergy medication and nasal spray, and had to report back to the office once a week for a shot in the arm. After about two weeks of brain fog, dry, painful sinuses, and a swollen arm, I gave this “remedy” a big ol’ fuck you and goodbye, and threw the meds out. And then I hit the web, the books, and enrolled in Institute for Integrative Nutrition.

I discovered that I was a junk-food vegetarian, relying heavily on white foods – bread, pasta, dairy, and sugar – to sustain me, and began incorporating more colors into my diet. I discovered the farmer’s market and the value of local honey and bee pollen (essential for lessening and perhaps even curing allergies). Dairy is a major aggravator to my sinuses, so ice cream and cheese, my main comfort foods, had to go.

Fast forward to today: I no longer call myself a vegetarian (or vegan for that matter), even though I practice a plant-based dietary philosophy, maintain a health coaching practice for vegetarians, and have an essay in an anthology that takes a critical look at the role veganism plays in the lives of black female vegans. I prefer not to be defined by any one dietary philosophy or movement, as my life and my work intersects, overlaps, and challenges rigid social paradigms, but my research helped me to recognize the role that food plays in our health and healing. I have come back to eating dairy, after my stint as a farmer’s market manager introduced me to raw milk aged cheeses, but I try to keep it to a minimum.

The neti pot, green smoothies, and seasonal cleanses are my allies, and I am no longer a slave to drugs or food.

Have you healed your body from allergies, illness, or disease through food? How did your relationship to food change when you discovered the connections?