Animal Ingredients A to Z and Health Benefits of Veganism

(September - October 2005)

So now I'm on a Vegan diet. I am happy and I feel amazingly good. My skin looks great. My hair is growing fuller and growing back. I've always had baby fine hair and since I was about 25 has been thinning in the front on top.

The biggest health benefit is that my chronic daily sinus problems are gone. 2 days after I went Vegan I could breath. I hadn't been able to breath clearly in the past 16 years.

The other benefit is that my eczema is now gone! I had hand eczema for the last ten years or so. It is where my hands would get red, cracked and blistered. It was embarrassing and awful and now it was gone!

I am committed. I will be Vegan. But the more I learn the more I realize I don't know. I need help with all of the hidden animal ingredients in food and everything else. Why can't they just call it what it is? No, they give all of these ingredients creative, deceptive names.

"Animal Ingredients A to Z" Compiled by the EG Smith Collective became my vegan bible to live by. For example: "ELASTIN which is found in the neck ligaments and aorta of bovine. Similar to collagen." Oh, but there are also synthetic sources. That adds a new level to the land of confusion that I'm in. Many of the ingredients could be animal derived, synthetic, or plant.

What is a new vegan to do?

Even my wine may not be safe! Isinglass is a form of gelatin prepared from the internal membranes of fish bladders. This can be used in clearing wine. YUCK!!!! Is nothing sacred?

The more I learn the more daunting this feels. So I come up with my own way. If I can't read the label in plain English then I don't buy it. Well at least not until I get a real handle on what is animal derived or not. .....