When I was vegan, I started to believe that I could cure anything if I just ate well enough.
Kriss Carr used a plant-based diet in her battle against cancer. Dr. Esselstyn wrote about how a plant-based approach can prevent and reverse heart disease. Dr. Fuhrman suggests that you can speed up your recovery to the common cold by eating plant-based.
Every holistic person I encountered had some elaborate concoction for curing any ailment:
"Oh, are you knees hurting? You should avoid nightshade vegetables and drink cinnamon."
"You're getting sick? Take this green drink with a ton of ginger and garlic"
It felt like information overload. It felt like I was personally responsible for anything bad that happened to my body.
I started to panic that I was somehow inferior because my cold lasted for more than 3 days. I'd worry about whether I put enough garlic into my vegetable broth. I'd wonder if I shouldn't have had that sip of milk two weeks ago. That small sip was the reason why I still had mucus in my nose. Was milk a bad choice?
I'd get so sucked into it that I'd forget that I live in New York and I'm exposed to a gazillion germs.
This is something you've heard me talk about before.
If people are responsible for their health, then we also believe people are at fault if they are unhealthy.
The common cold is famously incurable, yet there are plenty of articles out there claiming to save you from it.
Many people approach food like the high sparrow approaches Kings Landing. If you're not perfect, then you must atone. (Just watch Game of Thrones already).
That's the slippery slope when it comes to weight loss. Sure, eating an orange is good for you. But, I seriously doubt that you deserve to be sick for not eating 4-5 servings of fruit one day.
And, as they taught me in nutrition school, nutrition is a "fledgling science."
For real: why do we change our opinion on egg yolks every 6 years?
Nutrition is a weird science because you can't treat human beings like lab rats. You can't eliminate all the confounding variables. It's hard to control exactly what any study participant eats. As a result, you can't know definitively what foods to eat.
What works for some people may not work for you. Since we're using the example of the common cold, what works for one cold might not work for another.
This is all to make you feel better, dear reader. It's not your fault you have a cold in the summertime. You're sick because of GERMS, not because you skipped your green juice Tuesday morning.
Now watch this video. For fun.