vegangirl.com

Diagnosing my gluten allergy immediately taught me two things: 1) My health is entirely in my hands. I am not a defenseless victim of poor health. 2) Eating well feels really great! At the time, there weren’t quite so many gluten-free junk food snacks. Or at least, I wasn’t aware of them. So I cleaned up my diet quite a bit and felt terrific.

That inspired me to get a health evaluation at a naturpathic clinic. Darkfield microscopy showed that I had candida, or yeast, in my blood. I picked up a copy of The Yeast Connection and discovered a whole host of other symptoms that I could potentially overcome as well. After reading this book, I gave up processed food and sugar. I had quite a sugar addiction, so it wasn’t easy, but I was committed to being healthy. After 30 days, I felt better than I could ever remember.

It wasn’t for another year or so that I started learning about raw food. By this time, I was hooked on the idea of becoming optimally healthy. A DVD about preparing raw meals and a lecture by Victoria Boutenko about the power of leafy greens was all it took to push me, full force, into raw foods. You wouldn’t understand unless you tried it for a few weeks, but trust me, eating raw food feels amazing. It’s a whole new world.

Yes, your cats and dogs can be healthy on a vegan diet. My cats and dogs were vegan for years with no problems. But don’t be stupid about it. Especially with the cats, make sure they are eating enough food and urinating properly. Get regular check-ups to make sure they are getting what they need. Don’t try to switch your animal’s diet overnight. Don’t get the Vegetarian PetGuard for dogs – they just don’t like it.

• Vegan Essentials – They took over operations for vegancats.com, which was the very first company to sell commercial vegan catfood online.
• Down Bound – They are a great company, with great ethics. Among other things they have a good selection of vegan pet food.
• Obligate Carnivore – A great book about the vegan diet for cats. A must read for anyone struggling with the decision to put their cats on a vegan diet.

If you haven’t seen video footage of how meat is made, then you have no idea of the horrors involved in factory farming. The cruelty, disease, and disgusting human activities involved in factory farming is beyond the sickest person’s imagination. The days of happy cows and pigs on a family farm is long gone. We’ve created hell on earth and filled it with innocent animal inhabitants. Please don’t wait any more to change your diet. The animals can’t afford it.

• Meet Your Meat (video) – This is the movie to watch if you really want to know where your meat comes from. Prepare yourself for the worst violence you’ve ever seen.
• Vegan Outreach – They focus on helping people go vegan and educating the public about the cruelty of the meat industry.
• Factory Farming – A great site dedicated to factory farming issues.
• Earthlings (the movie) – This movie touches on a whole lot of animal cruelty issues, but has a lot of information about various aspects of the animal food industry.

I am relatively new to town, so if you know of other raw and vegan organizations in Asheville, or if you have more information about those listed here, please let me know and I’ll update this list.

• Asheville Vegetarians
  The Asheville Vegetarians get together for monthly vegan potlucks and other fun social and educational events.
• Asheville Raw Food Meetup
  The Asheville raw food meetup gets together about once or twice a month for potlucks and interesting speaker events. It is a warm and inviting community of people who are at various levels of transition to a raw foods diet. Everyone is welcome.
• Mercy For Animals – no website found
• Carolina Animal Action – no website found