Eating Like a “Localvore”
By Charlotte Rose Bear, MS, CN
I was a vegetarian for more than six years after taking a food ethics class my first year of college. I’ll never forget leaving class, heading to lunch, ordering a veggie wrap, and vowing to never go back. Fast forward a few years and I found myself in a health spiral, brought on by a microbiome imbalance. That’s when I began to look into the science behind it.
My husband teaches nutrigenomics (nutrition + genetics) at our alma mater, the National University of Natural Medicine (NUNM) in Oregon. Looking over my genetics, it became evident I was inadequately processing certain B vitamins from plant-based foods. Luckily, we can store these vitamins in our bodies for about six years. Unfortunately for me, time had run out, my stores were empty, and my nervous system was struggling.
Knowing this data allowed me to accept that my genetics and microbiological climate made me a poor candidate for a plant-based diet. But it didn’t make me any less passionate about my reasons for pursuing vegetarianism. That’s when I turned to the concept of eating like a “localvore.”
