“Dairy Free” Not So Much of a Choice for Me

Two weeks ago, I got the opportunity to speak with members of the Gallatin County 4-H club who have beef projects for their county fair. My speech focused on transparency and finding your place in agriculture, and as most public speakers, I opened the floor up for questions following my half hour lecture. One of the questions I received was from someone who’d done their homework on me, as they asked to talk about the time I went vegan.

For those of you who are new to this blog: two years ago I went vegan for the season of Lent to 1. see if the vegan diet really was all it’s cracked up to be; 2. to learn more about how the vegan diet affected my carbon footprint; and 3. to better understand the vegan community and hopefully relate to them a little more. I won’t get hung up about this experience, but if you want to learn more about the nitty-gritty of my experience, visit activistsvsagriculture.com.

One thing I will get hung up on, however, is the one thing the vegan diet taught me that I don’t think I’ve really discussed: I’m lactose intolerant (or allergic to diary — that one is up in the air right now) and it sucks.

When I went vegan, I had to give up eating animal products meaning dairy products were off limits. For six weeks, I yearned for string cheese; I longed for ice cream made with real milk; I loathed everyone who ate a slice of pizza in front of me. When my six weeks was up, naturally, I promptly ate a massive amount of cheese. In case you’ve never been on a diet before, I’ll let you in on a secret…when you give something up, then go whole-hog and eat it (the opposite of quitting something cold turkey), you get a slightly sickly — which is exactly what happened to me. But I thought “no biggie, it’ll take my body some time to get readjusted to consuming dairy again.”

Then, “some time” came and went and my body still wasn’t readjusted. After a year and a half of not eating dairy for a while then eating it because cmon, I didn’t want to give up cheese, I finally went to the doctor. After lots of tests and some different dietary restrictions, I became a card-carrying lactose intolerant.

My friends and family tried to help me reason through this: was I born this way? Did going vegan make me this way? It felt dramatic, like a bad high-school, Lifetime movie centered around the fact that I couldn’t indulge in dairy products anymore. Nevertheless, all the crying and whining in the world can’t help me, so, I decided to roll with the punches.

I’ve learned to substitute some recipes with non-dairy (not as good, in my opinion) options such as coconut milk or nutritional yeast. And yes, I do buy “fake” dairy products every now and then, but I make sure to only purchase them from companies I have researched and know for a fact don’t speak out against animal ag. I know, some of y’all may think I’m a phony as an agvocate for using margarin instead of butter now, but c’mon, I can’t help it!

One of the key take aways I have from this whole ordeal is that there’s dairy in soooo many of the food products on the market right now. No complaints there from the agvocate side — bring on more dairy, support the industry — but from a personal, will toss my cookies if I eat some good old, buttered pumpkin bread or a bowl of my Nana’s homemade vanilla ice cream side, it’s not fun. The past few months, however, have made me be more creative in ways that I support the dairy industry. I’m currently exploring the lactose-free side of dairy industry. On my quest for the best lactose free products, I’ve also been exposed to many, family owned, farm-to-table dairy producers as well. And the coconut-milk Reddi-Whip on top of all this, is that my husband could drink a gallon of milk a day if he wanted so I feel like he consumes enough dairy for the both of us.

It's not so fun being dairy free, but another silver lining is that this has forced me to learn more about an industry that I was not raised like I was with beef. I’ve learned to appreciate the dairy industry a little more, have learned some interesting facts, and met incredible people along the way.

I don’t really know how to close this one out, so I’ll guess I’ll end it with a dramatic but true statement: enjoy your dairy filled lives, because there’s some of us out here who really wish they could; roll credits; eat your last handful of heavily buttered popcorn for me.