I am not a vegan. I live and share food with obligate carnivores. However, before glyphosate, I phased in and out of being vegetarian or vegan; I still enjoy individual vegan meals.
Grandma Bonnie Peters originally wanted to have a blog where we'd write about all the delicious gluten-free vegan meals we cooked and ate, when she and I were "best case" celiacs. When being "Celiactivists" mean primarily being active, healthy celiacs. When I was paying my bills by writing for Associated Content, a height I reached within a year after posting there that "of course I didn't depend on AC to pay the bills! No one could!"...so I didn't have time for blogging, but there were a few ominous signs on the horizon...
A teenaged writer from India, writing for AC just to show off her English, described having gone from being sensitive to wheat to being sensitive to everything. She didn't write for long, God rest her. And people in Africa, where the celiac gene does not exist, started complaining of pseudo-celiac symptoms. AC was interested in articles about life with celiac disease because the numbers of reported cases of celiac disease were exploding, worldwide. What could Irish and Irish-American celiacs who'd been living comfortably with the celiac trait for years say to all those people?
GBP and I noted flares of celiac symptoms, increasingly, between 2009 and 2015. We received review copies of books that argued that people just might not have been meant to eat grain, that genetically modified wheat might be the problem, or selective breeding of wheat was, or this, or that. What worked out for us when tested was that glyphosate was to blame for our symptoms. Entirely and alone. Increasing use of glyphosate had probably had something to do with my developing celiac sprue, traditionally a late-stage symptom Irish celiacs used to develop after middle age if at all, around age 30. While all sorts of chronic conditions and general malaise had defined the lives of at least three previous generations in the maternal bloodline in our family, and those symptoms were a textbook case of the Irish celiac trait and our symptoms disappeared after the year or so it takes for celiacs to recover from a lifetime of eating wheat products, we also had pseudo-celiac reactions to glyphosate that were worse than our celiac reactions to wheat.
I'm told that not all celiacs have pseudo-celiac reactions to glyphosate. I've never actually met any of the ones who reportedly don't have those.
Well, that story's been told here. Anyone who's managed not to read it can use the search bar on this page to search this site for "glyphosate" or "Glyphosate Awareness." I'll probably never be famous for anything else but I am the Principal Revolting Hag of Glyphosate Awareness. Worldwide. I do it so The Nephews don't have to do it, I hope.
(Mary Daly, the glorious, uproarious Revolting Hag of Boston, often affirmed that the different meanings of "Revolting Hag," a female activist who rejoices in increasing age, and "revolting hag," a repulsive female, is easy to hear in speech. I've always been sort of glad I never met her and tested this. But it's easy to see the difference in writing. I used to intend to become a Revolting Hag and now I've become one. Anyone who thinks I'm a revolting hag can go and take a long walk off a short dock.)
But I digress. Enough about me. This post started out to be about a blogger I e-met on Associated Content, just before it fell apart. Her screen name was Bethany. She, too, moved to Blogspot and started the Vegan Venus, or sometimes Veg*n Venus, blog.
There's not much of it.
But there ought to be.
One day soon, please God and Robert Kennedy and the survivors of the late lamented Dr. John McDougall, a plant-based diet is going to be a healthy, delicious, and frugal option again. No, all the people who've taken vegetarian or vegan vows and remained healthy, slim, active, and even good-looking in their nineties weren't lying. Yes, although in a world where most plant-based food is loaded with toxic chemicals some people feel good on a carnivore diet with only the occasional "seasoning" of garlic or onion, food crops were not always genetically modified to survive absorbing appalling amounts of toxic chemical, and people used to feel even better on a cleansing, healing vegan diet with only an occasional "feast" of eggs or fish. We will make that possible again.
I don't know whether Bethany will revive the Vegan Venus blog when it becomes possible to talk about the health benefits of a plant-based diet. But I hope she does. I added this blog to my reading list just in time to watch it die. I hope to see it return to active life.
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