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How do you choose the food you eat? It may sound like a simple question, but how often do you truly evaluate your nutritional choices and diet? We talked to a number of Susquehanna Valley residents, including health and wellness professionals, who made significant changes by switching to vegetarian, vegan, or plant-based diets and lifestyles. Their anecdotes and results may surprise you.
The Health Factors
Colton Baun, 26, of Camp Hill, says he “ate a ton of meat” as a body builder. Despite his young age, he had “super high blood pressure and a lot of health issues including cardiovascular. For me, the biggest turning point was my doctor telling me I’d be dead by the time I was 35,” he says.
In March of 2018, he made his first of two major life-altering decisions: He quit powerlifting and poured his energy into running, completing his first marathon in April and a 50-mile ultramarathon in May.
Struggling to recover, Baun was inspired by his girlfriend—a vegan—to switch to a vegan diet comprised of nearly all fruit, plus some vegetables and tofu. He enjoys smoothies every day—whirling together bananas, mango, pineapple, flaxseed, spinach, and kale.
By four weeks, he noticed “big changes—a ton of energy and clearer thinking.” Even his boss noticed an increase in his productivity. By September, he completed his first 100-mile endurance race, and by the end of 2018, he lost of total of 50 pounds and saw his blood pressure drop from 195/110 to 110/50.
“Even my doctor can’t believe it’s all due to running and diet,” Baun says. His 2019 goal is to qualify for the Boston Marathon.
Photographer Sarah Benner, 28, of Linglestown, says her gradual progression to a vegan diet has been “absolutely incredible, [coming] with so much more clarity and energy.”
About six years ago, she cut all red meat out of her diet. That was the first step. “I wasn’t able to digest red meat anymore—when I ate burgers or steak, I was sick for two days afterwards.”
As a traveling wedding photographer, with her Sarah B Photography studios located in York, “my job involved being creative, speaking with people 24/7, but I wasn’t able to apply myself 100 percent, with my job or with my family,” Benner says. After watching the documentary What the Health, she decided to cut out all dairy and additional meat. By January 1, 2018, she struck eggs from her diet, going completely vegan.
“Being vegan has made me feel so healthy; my body is squeaky clean now,” she says.
Benner says the switch to a vegan diet was fairly easy in her household, which includes her husband and two sons. “My husband cooks, which is awesome and a blessing—and he cooks very fresh anyway. So it was fairly simply for him to do quinoa with vegetables, vegan pasta, and other vegan dishes.”
So what exactly are vegan and vegetarian diets? There are some gray areas. Every vegetarian or vegan can interpret and adjust the diets to fit their needs. Generally, a vegetarian does not eat meat but might consume eggs, dairy or other animal products. Vegans, however, follow a plant-based diet exclusively—free from all meat, dairy, and eggs.
Eric Forberger
“Vegans might still include some processed foods such as meat substitutes in their diet, so the word ‘vegan’ does not necessarily mean a healthy diet,” says, Dr. Christopher Wenger, The Heart Group of Lancaster General Health. “I prefer using ‘whole food, plant-based diet’ as a description because it is a vegan diet, but it’s more specific.”
A cardiologist who specializes in cholesterol management (called a clinical lipid specialist), Wenger not only advocates for his patients to follow a plant-based diet. He too is vegan.
“Through nutritional research, a diet based on whole food, plant based food, lowers cholesterol better than any other diet,” says Wenger.
Wenger, 39, and his wife, 34-year old Cassandra McKie of Manheim Township, Lancaster County, along with their three children, have followed a plant-based diet for four years.
A vegetarian most of her life prior to becoming vegan, McKie is a child, youth, and family counselor who went back to school recently to become a certified plant-based nutritionist as well as a plant-based chef. She rolls all of her talents into her business, Plants for People Nutrition, by helping people transition to a vegan lifestyle with nutritional counseling, plus hands-on education in the grocery store and kitchen.
The couple is combining their talents in what could be a groundbreaking study, “A Whole Food Plant Diet and Its Lipidemic Effects on Primary Prevention in a Free-range Population,” sponsored by Lancaster General Health. (Talk to your primary care doctor, preferably one affiliated with LGH, to find out if participants are still being accepted.)
“It’s the first study looking at a whole food, plant-based diet matched to cholesterol profiles, and we created a scoring and category system which has never been done before,” says Wenger. The study, which launched in August, follows patients for eight weeks at a time.
Wenger “provides the education and science behind a plant-based diet,” says McKie. “I make the diet come alive through cooking demos, grocery food tours—making it doable for them.”
Vegan mac and cheese, tofu scramble (an alternative to scrambled eggs), spinach and mushroom burritos, and enchilada casseroles are all on the menu.
“This is an agriculturally rich area,” McKie says. “And we do the bulk of our shopping in the produce area. Vegetables aren’t the afterthought on our plates—they’re the main idea.”
Participants keep daily food logs; bloodwork at the beginning and end of the eight weeks measures cholesterol using the latest modern technology, blood sugar, and other markers. Wenger says it’s a pilot study which will serve as “a jumping point into more meaningful research.”
Although the study has not yet concluded, Wenger says he’s already seeing “tremendous benefits” to patients.
“A lot of them mention within the first few days that they feel lighter…they tend to lose weight, their cholesterol goes down, their inflammatory markers improve, blood sugar goes down, and because they have more energy, they move from a sedentary lifestyle to exercising,” Wenger notes.
Overall, McKie says a vegan diet can lower blood pressure and cholesterol, reverse and prevent heart disease, prevent and reverse obesity, and improve quality of life through healthier weight and increased energy.
There are three leading causes of high cholesterol—increased consumption of trans fat, saturated fat and dietary cholesterol, according to Wenger.
“Health guidelines, government guidelines, tell you what to eat—but they don’t tell you what not to eat,” Wenger says. “The reality is the big food industry is very powerful, very political, very wealthy. Trans fat consumption—that’s red meat, white meat, dairy, junk food, ready-made processed foods.”
The couple addresses common misconceptions about whole food, plant-based diets.
“People think they have to eat animal meat for protein, but there’s nothing you need from animal meat or dairy that you can’t get from a plant-based diet. You can actually get more calcium from a plant-based diet than dairy,” Wenger says.
“People think it’s time-consuming, expensive or not nutritionally adequate, but during our grocery store tours, I love showing people that it’s healthy and can save money,” McKie says.
Wenger encourages people to open their minds to the facts associated with a whole food, plant-based diet. “I’m a physician, a scientist first, and the data was so convincing I didn’t see how I could eat any other way. We all know, to a point, too much meat is not a good thing. Does anyone say anything about too much vegetables?”
The Moral Factors
While health and nutrition were the motivating factors for Wenger, McKie, Baun and Benner to go vegan, others are motivated by moral, spiritual or environmental factors—or a combination of all of the above.
“In the back of my head, I always felt guilty that I was eating meat, because I wouldn’t have been able to kill an animal myself in order to consume it,” says 41-year old Jason McSherry of York. He and his wife switched to a vegetarian diet about a dozen years ago, then went vegan about five years later.
McSherry, communications and marketing manager for UPMC Pinnacle Memorial, York, says the benefits are many. “From heart health to the fact that a plant-based diet is much more environmentally-friendly—in a lot of ways it reduces carbon emissions and improves air quality—it’s a healthier, holistic lifestyle.”
But he says his faith was the most important driving factor in becoming vegan.
“Commercial farming practices are not fair to living animals. All living things deserve respect. The Bible in Genesis talks about the earth being created, and leaving fruit on the vines for the birds, which sounds like we should be stewards of the planet and animals,” says McSherry. And he interprets the Biblical commandment “Do not kill” as applying to animals.
McSherry says it can be “challenging” to have conversations about veganism.
“Going vegan from a health standpoint—it’s an easier conversation. I don’t try to push my beliefs on anyone else. Having grown up in this area, born and raised in York County, I’m very familiar with the farming industry, and I don’t look to change opinions, just share my own.”
About two dozen farm animals—chickens, ducks, turkeys, goats, sheep and cows—call a six-acre Elizabethtown, Lancaster County, farm home. Rescued from situations of abuse or neglect, these animals have found a safe refuge at the nonprofit Lancaster Farm Sanctuary started by Sarah Salluzzo, 43, and Jonina Turzi, 36 (lancasterfarmsanctuary.org).
“A lot of people think of veganism as a diet, but it’s really a lifestyle, a practice of nonviolence in which we cause the least amount of harm to other living beings,” says Turzi. Strict vegans do not consume or use animals as commodities—for food, clothing, etc.
The partners, who also own Lancaster’s West End Yoga, each have professional jobs outside the farm. Turzi owns a physical therapy practice in Lancaster and teaches yoga weekly; Salluzzo is a drug and alcohol therapist. They are thankful for more than a dozen volunteers and eight board members whose efforts make the sanctuary possible.
Vegans and self-described “life-long animal lovers,” the couple founded the sanctuary in July of 2017.
Their first residents were Cornish Cross chickens, including Pearl, Mabel, Penny, and Poppy. Large white chickens with red combs, they were on their way to slaughter when the truck carrying them crashed, creating a rescue situation. Abby the sheep was visually malnourished, yet somehow pregnant with twins when she arrived at the sanctuary. Her babies, thriving, are just under a year old. One of the farm’s newest residents, Santosha the turkey, missing her beak and several toes, was rescued from a factory farm. Her first tentative steps outside, in the green grass, are captured on the sanctuary’s Facebook and Instagram pages.
The pair, who completed training at farm sanctuaries, house the animals in a big red bank barn and chicken coop. The animals have been rescued thanks to a network of volunteers affiliated mainly with the Pennsylvania SPCA, the Large Animal Protection Society (LAPS) or the Humane Society of the United States.
Turzi says while the farm holds open houses and tours regularly, helping people connect to the animals, the sanctuary’s social media accounts provide daily behind-the-scenes connections.
“They help people think about where their food comes from and make emotional connections—people realize birds are smart and have personalities, for example. We don’t push it [veganism]. We let people evolve into drawing their own conclusions,” Turzi says.
The couple touches on heavier, controversial topics underlying the sanctuary, such as animal and agricultural practices, social justice, and destruction of the environment, including the United Nation’s most recent climate report. In simple terms, the report attributes worldwide climate change to greenhouse gasses—carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Methane, responsible for about 17 percent of global warming according to the report, is attributed to emissions from cattle and rice paddies, plus leaks from oil and gas wells. The report states that 40 percent of nitrous oxide can be traced to human activities including soil degradation and the fertilizer industry.
These serious subjects are balanced with moments of levity provided by the animals—Salluzzo describes Tammy the turkey often peering in the kitchen window, anticipating her morning breakfast and routine. There are moments when Turzi runs across the barnyard, and the goats kick up their heels, running after her.
They both describe Lancaster County and the greater Susquehanna Valley region as the perfect location for conversations to grow—conversations about agriculture, animals and a plant-based lifestyle.
“I feel like because it’s such a heavy agricultural community, there are actually more vegans here,” Salluzzo observes.
“There is something about the Brethren, Quaker, spiritual, peaceable kingdom vibe here that perhaps has stronger roots than the agricultural roots,” says Turzi. “That also is a factor—the non-violence compassion within our community.”
Central PA restaurants recommended by plant-based experts:
Additional Central PA vegan restaurants can be found on animaladvocatesscpa.com.
Central PA festivals recommended by plant-based experts:
3rd Annual Lancaster VegFest: June 1, Buchanan Park, Lancaster
A free event featuring speakers, vendors, entertainment, children’s activities and more—all based upon a plant-based lifestyle. pavegfest.com
Harrisburg Veggie Fest: August 17, Strawberry Square, Harrisburg
Tickets are required; proceeds benefit the nonprofit arts incubator Jump Street. The event includes samples of vegetarian and vegan food, craft beer and local spirits. hbgveggiefest.com
2nd Annual Harvest Vegfest: September 21, Cousler Park, York
A free vegan festival showcasing food, entertainment, family-friendly activities and artisans, organized by the volunteer-run York nonprofit Animal Advocates of South Central PA. yorkvegfest.com
