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When I turned 21, instead of indulging in the alcohol that I was now legally allowed to imbibe, I gave up dairy.

Yes, this is the kind of 21 year old I was.

A fun sidenote to further provide you with context of my youthful reckless abandon: my birthday is near Christmas, and the evening I turned 21 I was at home with the entirety of my mom’s side of the family for our holiday shindig watching Princess Diaries with my 6 and 10 year old cousins. I think I was in bed by 11PM.

I know what you’re thinking. I was, indeed, a wild child. Some might even say a party animal. Ruler breaker. Hell raiser.

But in truth, in the Midwest (I’m from Iowa and went to college in Missouri), not eating dairy was breaking a cardinal food rule.

It boggled people’s minds.

But in that pleasant oh-that’s-nice-dear way, because we Midwesterners are a people of politeness, even when internally we’re thinking, “can you believe that weirdo?"

If you’re not from the Midwest, it’s hard to imagine the sheer amount of dairy that's stuffed into everything. And I mean everything. And I literally mean stuffed.

This is the land where instant vanilla pudding studded with bite sized snickers and apple chunks is referred to as salad (I’m not joking, here’s the recipe), and ranch dressing was elevated from lowly condiment status to a legitimate part of the food pyramid.

If a recipe didn’t involve at least three kinds of dairy, it was underachieving.

So renouncing this creamy substrate was unheard of at the time. I can’t comment on the current state of things, as I haven’t lived in the Midwest in over a decade, but it is a stalwart place filled with those who pride themselves on tradition.

But why did I want to stop eating dairy? What clued me in?

I was very active athletically and as a result became interested in nutrition. So I started researching. My queries quickly turned to food quality and learning about the food industry, so I picked up the book Mad Cowboy: The Plain Truth from a Cattle Rancher Who Won’t Eat Meat.

The marketing team for that book did their job as they certainly sucked my impressionable mind in with their tantalizing title. Intrigued, I was sure that someone who had been a professional in the food industry could tell me accurately about the state of things.

And boy, I certainly got more than I bargained for.

I was so dismayed, shocked, and horrified at the practices in modern agriculture and treatment of animals in factory farms (I learned the term “factory farm” from the book) that I went full vegan overnight.

 

My world had been rocked, my food consciousness cracked wide open.

I started buying organic immediately, even though it cost more.

This was 2001 in St. Louis. There was one Whole Foods in the entire city and it had just opened.

Awareness about the devastating consequences of modern farming practices was not high, especially among those whose families had made their living farming for generations.

So I generally kept my mouth shut and my opinions to myself.

I felt alienated, isolated, and misunderstood.

But out of this self-inflicted food exile something amazing happened.

My chronic congestion and allergies cleared up within a few weeks.

That spring, for the first time I could remember, I had no sneezing or stuffiness.

For over a decade, I’d been taking allergy medications like Claritin and Nasocort (a nasal steroid spray) daily.

I remember telling my mom when I was little that my nose felt “peppery” from the pollen, my version of itchy and like I had to sneeze.

I was also diagnosed with exercise-induced asthma and put on an albuterol inhaler.

I believed that I needed it even though I really didn’t have any asthma symptoms and shot my lungs up with steroids most days.

So I asked myself what the difference was that year and it became pretty obvious that one of the food groups I had eliminated was the serendipitous culprit.

I didn’t actually discover that it was a dairy issue until a few years later in naturopathic medical school.

I still had no idea what a food allergy, sensitivity, or intolerance was. I just knew that I felt better and that was reinforcement enough to stay away from dairy, eggs, and meat.

This was the beginning of my 12 years of being mostly dairy free.

There were slip-ups from time to time, especially when I was dating.

Who wants to be the high-maintenance girl on a first date who needs to go to a special restaurant or asks the waiter to hold the cheese and butter and gluten (yes, I avoided that, too), and oh can I get oil and vinegar dressing? That’d be great. There’s ice cream for dessert? Do I want to split some with you? Oh... Sure! Why Not?

Part of this charade was my desire to connect over sharing a meal, and another part was denying that I had an issue and desperately wanting to appear normal, whatever that means.

The vast majority of those dates weren’t worth the sacrifice, but you live and learn to respect yourself and your needs as you get older.

My third date with my now-husband involved fig, feta, and balsamic pizza, and a stroll along Seward Park in Seattle on a warm evening in late spring where I casually used his favorite word (intrinsic) and he decided he really liked me. That was worth it.

 

Smash cut to 3 weeks ago, in Iceland.

My husband and I had finally taken our long-awaited Iceland vacation. We were 2 days in and I had judiciously been avoiding all of the foods I’m sensitive to — dairy, gluten, eggs, citrus, to name a few. Who wants to feel awful on vacation? I sure don’t.

But then there was warm, fresh-baked Icelandic rye bread and butter for breakfast, and I caved.

I love bread and butter so much. It’s one of those simple joys for me. You know the ones. You could do them every day for the rest of your life and they’d never fail to make you happy and content.

It was glorious, to say the least.

And, it was a calculated risk. Rye bread is lower in gluten and I only have a mild sensitivity. Butter’s high fat content minimizes the typical inflammatory components in milk.

And I was just fine for the rest of the day. Success!

The following day I felt more daring. All over Iceland in grocery stores and gas stations there’s something delectable called skyr. Technically it’s cheese, but it eats like a really thick, creamy, out of this world a-ma-zing yogurt. My husband had been snacking on it since we arrived.

Unlike most people whose favorite dairy delight is cheese, mine is yogurt. I have dreams about yogurt. I love the sour tang paired with the silky smooth texture. YUM.

I was emboldened by my bread and butter experience the previous day, so once again, I caved.

I bought some skyr and ate it with pure delight, telling myself that this would be the one indulgence if I reacted.

This is the actual skyr. I took a couple photos to preserve this delightful historic experience.