16. The Elephant in the Room

What’s all this about then? I’m using the metaphor of the elephant in the room as a starting point to discuss the use of animal products in many of our handmade soaps. For someone who follows a whole-food, plant-based lifestyle surely the two are incompatible. Or are they?

Notice that I didn’t label myself as vegan. That word carries much baggage: it reeks of nutters chaining themselves to trees and crystal-toting hippy dippy types. In fact, I have total respect for people who will go to any lengths to save our planet. And, if souls are empowered with mystical knowledge from Mother Nature’s gems, I salute them.

For you to understand where I’m coming from, I’m going to lay bare the bones of my dietary evolution.

As a primary school kid I didn’t see the sense in food — it didn’t taste too good to me. I preferred lollies. I’d go though my father’s jackets looking for change to buy them with. I was the eldest of five children in a middle class family — there wasn’t any pocket money. I used to hide my school lunches in a cupboard when I brought them home. It didn’t occur to me to dump them at school!

In my secondary school years, it was meat and three veg. for most dinners, with the occasional casserole or roast. Packaged cereal was for breakfast with milk and sugar, and sandwiches and a piece of fruit for lunch. I milked a house cow daily to supply the family’s milk. It kind of turned me off drinking any of it — I saw what went into it: rainwater off the cow, ticks, dust, flies got squirted in, there was occasionally blood from the teats and goodness knows what else!

As a young adult, I followed the somewhat Spartan Pritikin diet once, and even bought and used aligned cookbooks.

Pritikin’s 1979 book.

Nathan Pritkin: American Inventor, Nutritionist, Engineer and Longevity Researcher.

Why? My father was a hobby pilot and became interested in Ross Horne’s teachings. Horne was a QANTAS pilot, instructor and author of health-related books such as Health and Survival in the 21st Century (1992) — freely available in PDF format.

He and his brother came to stay with my family for one night in the 1980s. They got up early for a morning walk and then ate porridge for breakfast. I was intrigued. Horne’s motivator was that pilots undergo a rigorous medical check annually, yet many died five years after retiring at the age of 60. His book, Improving on Pritikin: You Can Do Better (1988) is a testament to his conviction.

Horne’s 1988 book cover.

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However, Pritikin died at 69 years of age after taking his own life in a private hospital (he’d received a diagnosis of terminal cancer) while Horne succumbed to prostate cancer when he was 79. He’d only recently published a book called, Cancer Proof Your Body (1996)! It seems a small consolation that he outlived Pritikin by ten years. Fast forward to the present ... maybe the meal preparation teams at Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace and other royal residences should write a book. Prince Philip, husband to Queen Elizabeth II for 73 years, passed away on 9th April, 2021 aged 99! A royal chef revealed secrets of the royal kitchens in a documentary. The food mostly comes from the royal palaces organic kitchen gardens and estates. Home-grown food is something in common with people living in the so-called ‘blue zones’ — areas in the world recognized as having the longest-lived peoples, according to research conducted by Dan Buettner.

Buettner’s ‘blue zones’.

The cover of Buettner’s book, first published 2008.

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Back to my story ... Even before leaving home and going off to live in campus and study (at the University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales), I drank alcohol and went back to eating meat and dairy products.

Over the years, I kept up fairly active habits like horse riding, gym weight workouts, lap swimming and power walking. By the way, I’m asthmatic and have been since I was two years old.

In my forties, I came across a book in a library, The Bone Density Diet, by Dr George Kessler, and something struck me. While I was trying to be healthy (and taking calcium supplements), other factors were depleting my body of calcium, like my asthma drugs and alcohol. I couldn’t give up my asthma medication, for obvious reasons, but I could stop drinking alcohol. And, I did!

Kessler’s book on achieving optimal bone density — originally published in 2000.

I also cut out salt, sugar, milk products, caffeine and fast food at different stages. Who hasn’t been addicted to chocolate?

Then, there was my mother’s influence. She’d once been a real beauty and won Miss Coffs Harbour. ‘I had a 24 inch waist!’, she liked to tell me. Sadly, when mum died (aged 76), she weighed around 150 kilograms! Poor mum had taken to smoking, comfort eating and not exercising. She’d been diagnosed with bi-polar, personality disorder and developed many comorbidities. Confined to a wheelchair, her bone-on-bone knees were left alone. According to her doctor, she was too large to risk operating on!  I’d become her legal guardian and eventually found the best aged care home that I could for her. She was a good mum to five children. I have wonderful childhood memories and I learned an almighty life lesson of what not to do!

My sixties are looming in a couple of years. I’d resumed a no-meat diet after watching The Gamechangers (2018) documentary on Netflix. My doctor had run some random blood tests on me about a year before that. She’d reported that my cholesterol was not of concern yet, but there were signs that it was increasing. Hmmm, I thought. I stopped eating dairy cheese and eggs. (It’s only been confirmed lately that cheese is addictive too!)

I also happened upon the book, via a friend, How Not to Die (originally published in 2015), by Dr Michael Greger. Dr Greger advocates a plant-based diet. Then, I heard about his latest book on a podcast: How Not to Diet ( 2019). Greger was inspired to start writing by his grandmother’s experience. She was wheeled into a hospital to die (due to terminal heart disease), yet, she walked out weeks later after following the Pritikin diet. Greger’s grandma went on to live to the ripe old age of 96! Wow!

The cover of Greger’s book, How Not to Die [young].

Dr. Greger with his latest book, How Not to Diet. It focuses on the world’s obesity crisis.

I’d been on no-sugar-added, non-GMO soy milk for some time. My husband noted afterwards how I sailed through menopause. I chose not to have any hormone replacement therapy (though a doctor did offer it). Interestingly, during the later years of menstruation (and pre soy milk), I had suffered from monthly headaches. I have not touched headache meds for quite some time, as I’ve had no need.

Where am I at now? I’ve recently stopped adding oil to what I eat. The catalyst was learning from Dr Neal Barnard (Google anything by him) that concentrated fat (aka plant oils like olive oil) is really not what our body was designed to process. He serves as president of the (US) Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and Barnard Medical Center, non-profit organisations providing education, research, and medical care related to nutrition. He was instrumental in ensuring that every hospital in Canada and the US offered a vegan option.

Dr. Barnard advises that our plates should contain plant-based food with the least amount of processing possible.

Dr. Barnard with his beloved supermarket section: fruit and vegetables.

I’ve upped my intake of beans, legumes, lentils and seeds. I make my own (fermented) sauerkraut and kimchi, sourdough bread, beetroot, hummus and soy milk. I cook large batches of whole grain rice and beans and freeze them in ready-to-add-to- meal portions.

What an evolution it’s been. And, I couldn’t be happier: I feel great, I have energy and I have enthusiasm (joie di vivre!). Isn’t  everyone’s goal to be happy?

I also feel blessed to be able to use the soaps we make. Apart from the vegan (it’s a one-word identifier!) skin care soap and toothsoap, we incorporate wholesome animal products such as grass fed beef tallow, goats’ milk, dairy yoghurt, honey and beeswax. Like all of the ingredients we use in our soap recipes, they contain evidence-based skin-enhancing properties (see learn more about the ingredients on this website. The natural ingredients change their molecular composition and become soap during the soap-making process. Then, they are only on human skin for a brief time before being washed off. According to Dr James Loomis, medical director at the Barnard Medical Center, ‘put it [oils] on your skin, don’t ingest it [them].’ And Dr T. Colin Campbell, Professor of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University stated in a 2019 article that, ‘fats [used on the skin] do not get into the circulation in any way’. Therefore, I have no problem using my oil-rich soaps.

While our baby skin care soap doesn’t contain tallow, we do like to incorporate it in some of our soaps because we believe in upcycling it and respecting the whole animal. On the other hand, goats’ milk, dairy yoghurt, honey and beeswax are by-products and an animal, or insect, doesn’t give up its life.

The elephant in the room has been exposed. So, you can freely choose whether to use our vegan or/and non-vegan soaps. We know that it’s a personal choice. At Tasmanian Soap Farm, we respect that everyone is free to choose which products they want to use. I know that I’m biased, but I love them all!

I wish you, dear reader, a long lifetime of health and happiness.

P.S. Consider the longevity of elephants and what they eat (Elephants, humans and some whales share a lifespan of 70 to 100+ years, making them rare among mammals).

GENERAL DISCLAIMER

The contents of this sharing are for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment . . . Read More →

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