It was my pleasure to join the event held by DDYP at Chan Meditation Center for the Buddha Nature in Food-Part 2. DDYP invited an experienced nutritionist, Iraina, to share her professional knowledge about helping those people with nutrition and health issues.

Iraina mentioned that there was a common myth that human being could not get enough energy from being a vegetarian/vegan; however, many famous athletes were vegetarians or vegan. As athletes, they usually need lots of energy to support their physical activities, so they demonstrate that people can actually get enough energy from consuming vegetables without dependency on meats.

Another myth she mentioned was that most people believed milk was good for health. However milk is used to feed baby calves but not humans because the ingredients in milk is for calves to digest. Furthermore, milk is also a processed food which is not as natural as we think.

When talking about meat, a lot of people choose white meat such as chicken and think white meat containing less cholesterol and fat is a good source of protein; however, these people do not know that in order to increase the manufacturer's profit, poultry companies usually inject raw chicken meat with saltwater or some fluid that we might not even know to force the chicken to become heavier. Further, genetic engineering is also used to make chickens grow faster and larger. For red meat lovers, they also need to think about whether to reduce the red meat consumption. Even though livestock farmers insist that the livestocks are raised in an organic way, they do not want to see livestocks become sick; therefore, they use antibiotic to raise animals. When we eat them, we will have unnecessary antibiotic for our body. How scary!

On the other side, Iraina also reminded us that we, as vegetarians or vegans, needed to know how to eat healthy and how to get enough nutrients. It is important to take vitamin B12 supplement since that it is not easy to get vitamin B12 from vegetables. If necessary, taking multivitamin is also a great idea. To build muscles and heal a damaged/aged brain, protein is used by our body to build and repair tissues. Therefore, we need to realize where we can get the good protein from vegetables. As we know, beans are great sources of protein. Nuts are also rich in protein and Omega 3.

According to the research and statistics, the cancer incidence nowadays is climbing because people eat too much processed and oily food. So Iraina suggested us not only to reduce the frequency of intaking processed food, but also consume natural food that contained essential fat, e.g. avocado or coconut.

Last but not least, on the first snow day in this year, I was very happy to come out and join this event. I did learn a lot, felt relaxed, and enjoyed the crafted refreshments made by CMC volunteers! Thank you all for letting this event possible!