Every day I see those ads on TV where they try to make it look SO COOL to have diabetes. You know the ones, where all the neighbors come gather ‘round for a giant block party, dancing, smiling and laughing …acting like joining the chronic illness club is a fun new phase of life. The underlying message is that all you gotta do is take their medication and you can keep right on dancing! 

And of course, right before and right after this commercial will be the ads for a mouthwatering juicy burger, fries, and a soda, and then a $5 large one-topping pizza full of gooey cheese and pepperoni. It's absolutely maddening to witness them openly mocking us like this!

At 45, I look at those ads and think about the second half of life. We all want freedom and mobility as we get older, not some grim dreary future sitting in sterile waiting rooms filling out medical history clipboards just to get prescriptions refilled every month. ​Have you ever looked at all the health changes you've made recently or maybe over the past several years and wondered why things really aren't improving all that much?

You put in incredible amounts of effort. You've bought the supplements they pushed on TV, tried the green elixirs, the liver cleanses, and the expensive protein and meal replacement shakes. You cut the calories, tried portion control, and you definitely cut the carbs. Maybe you even jumped on the keto train or went vegan because someone told you it was the ultimate health hack.

And yet, so many of us are still struggling with excess weight, dealing with joint pain, and running on absolute fumes …which is absolutely maddening because you're doing everything the popular diet books told you to do! Plus, I think so many of us believe that eating well is mostly only about our weight, right? I know I used to.

I had been a mostly organic vegan for two decades. I cooked with some oil, and ate vegan cheeses or meats mostly as a garnish. I ate some chips and crackers sometimes, but I thought heck, by every societal metric we're taught to care about, I looked and felt healthy enough. I only weighed about 100lbs, so I just assumed my body was functioning perfectly on the inside.

But then I got my bloodwork back. My fasting glucose was 105, my total cholesterol was 216, and my "bad" cholesterol was 141. Seeing those numbers was a jarring reality check to say the least. Knowing the impact that even small amounts of processed foods had on my bloodwork made me wonder …had I fallen into my own weird organic vegan version of the "everything in moderation" trap without even realizing it?? 🤦🏽‍♀️

Once I actively tried to remove the oils, sugar, and refined grains, I realized just how pervasive these things really are. It’s frustrating as all get-out just trying to find something simple like chips without oil, crackers without palm oil, or a Celiac-safe bread without refined grains and added sugar, even from the organic mom and pop brands! 

As soon as plant-based eating gained traction, big food companies hijacked the vegan label to sell us boxes of inflammatory junk disguised as the “healthy” choice. It started really bothering me seeing every vegan event and every online vegan megastore packed with endless amounts of junk. It became glaringly obvious, when we attended an event at Animal Place and there was a whole slew of vegan cookies, muffins, donuts, candy, 12 types of vegan cheeses, and 10 types of vegan meats, but ZERO whole food options to be seen.

As industry always does, they saw the chance to capitalize on our desire to make healthier choices and they flooded the market with highly processed products full of isolated plant proteins, refined flour and sugar, high salt and oils, marketing them as “healthy” simply because they lacked animal products. It sure makes you realize that slapping a green leaf logo on a box of processed veggie snacks does a mighty fine job at hiding how detrimental these foods are to our health!

If you're dealing with joint pain that makes a simple flight of stairs look daunting, or you're so exhausted you get winded just walking from the car to the store, it isn't just normal aging. Your declining health is almost always the result of following dietary guidelines funded by the corporations that profit off our sickness. This is true for my fellow vegans as well. No matter how we eat, they lure us in with inflammatory foods and profit off the resulting symptoms.