Cheese is definitely my favorite food. I am a strong advocate of cheese, have eaten it daily almost religiously, and believe that it can be incorporated into every meal of the day. Breakfast? Cheesy eggs. Lunch? Grilled cheese. Dinner? Fettuccine Alfredo. Dessert? Cheesecake. You name it, I will find a way to put cheese on it. Except not anymore, because I’m finding that cheese and my body no longer agree, and the way that I think about food and my body has been completely shifted.
I tried to go vegan at the beginning of 2014, and failed miserably. My self-control could not win out over the temptation of meat and dairy. I’d been a vegetarian before, but I had cheese and eggs and ice cream to satiate me in the absence of meat. Going vegan cold turkey was just too much for me. I started eating meat and cheese again, and felt comfortable with myself until recently.
Watching my friend eat chicken wings one night, I had a strange realization that changed my feelings on eating meat. Seeing the chicken wings made me think of the full, intact body of a chicken, and I was repulsed by the idea of eating another being’s body. I swore off meat in that moment, and have had a few slip-ups since then, but have been determined to avoid meat at all costs.
This confidence has faded recently as I feel as though my body has turned against me. It started just a week ago, but I am almost positive that I can no longer consume lactose. The experience has gone from one of pleasure and joy to one of gastrointestinal pain and anguish. This comes at a time where my conviction to stop eating meat has been at its strongest in years, but a fear of having to go vegan cold turkey again is surfacing with the realization that I may not be able to continue to eat lactose.
Underlying all of these feelings of fear and doubt about my diet is a stronger fear, one that my body has broken somehow and no longer works properly. My body has always “worked” according to my own standards in the sense that I’ve never had any real injuries, health issues, serious allergies, or dietary restrictions. Sure, I get sneezy when the seasons change and my throat gets itchy when I eat certain fresh fruit, but never before have I had something as severe as this level of lactose intolerance. So of course, my initial reaction to what I saw as a problem was to try to find a solution. The first thing that came to mind were these nifty things:
Yes, Lactaid pills, the simple one-stop answer for lactose-intolerant dairy lovers everywhere. My first thought was that I needed to get my hands on a bottle of these pills, just as I’d told all of my lactose-intolerant friends to do themselves. Our bodies didn’t work the way that they were supposed to, and so Lactaid was offered as a solution to alleviate that.
I soon began to question why I had the opinion that my body wasn’t working because it could no longer process dairy. Did it not work in many other ways, such as keeping my heart beating and my lungs breathing so that I could stay alive? I thought of how selfish I felt prioritizing what I thought my body should be doing over what it was already doing, trying to “fix” my body without recognizing that differences aren’t always flaws. What comes to mind is the idea of multiple intelligences, and how certain forms of intelligence are privileged over others. The same can be said about our bodies, and how we must carry out certain bodily functions in order for our bodies to be seen as “working” properly.
“Enjoy Dairy Again!” the Lactaid packaging proclaims, words that are meant to be reassuring but are actually quite unnerving. Enjoy dairy again, but at what cost to me and my body? Why should I need assistance to enjoy dairy? Should I be consuming lactose in the first place if I can’t digest it? Is it wrong for me to think that I should not enjoy dairy because my body can’t digest it? The storm of questions in my head is unending, but my decision is rooted in the same philosophy of animals rights that caused me to stop eating meat.
I will not continue to eat dairy, and I will try my best to stay true to veganism despite how hard I know that it may be for me. I will listen to my body, and I will understand that even though my mind may not know that I am ready for this transition, my body knows its limitations.
Unruly Bodies 
I found this post interesting because I am also a vegetarian and I tried to go vegan once. I am a vegetarian because I do not like the taste or texture of meat as well as the process to which we get meat. I tried to go vegan for no real reason and stopped after a few days. I think that if you have a distaste or cannot physically consume the food then you can stick to your diet, but I think if you do it for no real reason, like I did, then it doesn’t work very well. I think it is interesting that the thing you love most, your body rejects. My sister loves shrimp, but always feels ill after eating it. She takes the gamble sometimes and it is interesting to see when it is worth consuming and feeling sick.
Having a balance between your convictions and your desires is so important. Peppering in a little dairy is a great way to practice moderation, so if you slip don’t beat yourself up. I began my vegetarianism at age 13, and throughout the years have dabbled in veganism, but now eat cheese AND seafood. I buy leather shoes and sometimes forget to recycle, but we all do what we can. The fact is, we will never live a day free from harming animals or the environment. The fact that you are conscious of it is beautiful. So recognizing that we’re all going to be a little hypocritical at times, by simply doing as much as we can on a daily basis is important. When I stopped eating meat I told myself that if I spent my entire lifetime without purchasing meat from the grocery store, I will have made a fair impact for one person, and I still believe that.
I relate so much to this post. I was fairly severely lactose intolerant as a kid, but cheese was pretty much my favorite thing in the world. My parents would take my siblings and I out to dinner at Old Country Buffet about once a month, and I would always–without fail–take 2 lactaid pills and then eat a mound of macaroni and cheese. The pills didn’t do much–after these episodes I would remain curled up in a fetal position for about two hours until the stomach cramps went away–but damn was it worth it. I’ve been vegetarian for about almost three years now (mostly out of concern for the environment/my abhorrence for the meat industry), and I’ve toyed with the idea of going vegan, but I’ve always thought that cheese was the one thing I couldn’t give up. But the questions that you raise here are so interesting, and they are ones that I’ve never thought about before before–why do we try to “fix” our bodies and force them into one particular definition of normalcy? And what are the broader implications of this? These are questions that I don’t have the answers to, but I will be mulling them over for the next few days. So thanks for giving me quite a bit of food for thought.