When I met my husband about 20 years ago, he’d already been a vegetarian for about a decade – well the type of vegetarian that still eats fish, eggs and dairy. This suited me fine as I had some experience from other vegetarians I knew, and it was fun to try new foods and recipes together.

Slowly over time, and as our family expanded with the birth of our daughter, he somehow strayed and reintroduced meat and chicken into his diet. We were always pretty healthy eaters but as time passed, we made a conscious effort to move towards organic, whole foods. Who wants to eat all those toxins anyways?

Credit my daughter for pushing us further by bringing home films such as Food, Inc.; Super Size Me; Forks Over Knives; and Burzynski, Cancer is Serious Business. Other efforts made, such as reading The Veganist by Kathy Freston reaffirmed our resolve to move back to being essentially vegetarian although we are now striving to be vegan at least 95 percent of the time.

It’s funny how people rarely think of health issues, until they’ve fallen ill and would do anything to feel better again. One thing that makes a lot of sense to us is our interconnected with the environment and food we eat. How can we not be? Do we really believe we can poison our land, air and water and that it won’t affect us? While we might turn a blind eye to pesticides, factory farming, genetic modifications and the like, these things have no problem finding us. Notice the increases in cancers and sickness everywhere? I don’t think it’s a coincidence.