Your dinner plate is trying to tell you a secret – will you listen to it or just ignore it?

One of the secret virtues of being vegan, I’ve recently discovered, is how easy it is to wash the dishes after dinner. No matter which plate, bowl or pot I’m cooking in, serving out of, or eating directly from, the clean-up is an absolute breeze. Plant-based meals rinse off instantly, even when left out for extended periods of time.

“Big deal,” you’re thinking, “I own a dishwasher and a sponge; you’re not going to get me cast off meat because it’s so easy to dispose of vegan meals.”

Well you’re right. I don’t expect this alone to change your mind that easily. But there’s more to this matter than saving a few minutes scrubbing or a few cents on dish soap.

Try making a pot roast, chicken flambé, or a New York strip without having to use some serious muscle scratching and scraping meat residue from your dishes after the meal. It gets baked on, then caked on, and can even be tough to remove from a dinner plate that wasn’t even directly heated up. Even an open-flame grill you have to mercilessly assault with a grill brush between uses in order to un-crust the grill of dried-on meat juices.

THINK: if it’s this hard to get the meat off of glass and porcelain, how much meat is clogging up our squishy, delicate insides?

empty_plate

It’s an eye-opening analogy. Yes, our bodies have lots of enzymes and bacteria to digest the food we eat, but how successful are they?

Meat is broken down in our bodies by a process called “putrefaction,” which is just a fancy way of saying rotting. Unfortunately, putrefaction isn’t all that efficient. A traffic jam of decaying meat is the culprit behind Crohn’s disease, colitis (an irritation and swelling of the colon) and inflammatory bowel disease.

Research shows that putrefaction also results in all sorts of toxic by-products, namely sulfides, histamines and ammonias to name a few, which are by definition poisonous to our bodies and minds. If and when these substances get into the blood, it puts strain on the liver to filter the gunk out. On the surface, you’ll feel fatigued and have a higher likelihood of getting sick. You’ll also look older faster.

That gelatinous brown film on the bottom of your dishes is also in the bottom of your intestines, slowly being churned around and quarantined. Not exactly my cup of tea!

The evidence speaks for itself – check out your plates next time after a big, hearty, meat-based meal.

I hope I didn’t just ruin animal products for you.

Well, actually I sort of do hope that! Become your healthiest self!

Dave