About us

Anyac

My vegan life journey

I call myself vegan for health reasons, but the more I learn about vegan lifestyle, the more I feel drawn to it.

I think we need to clarify the difference between vegan, vegan lifestyle and vegan for health reasons. But first I want to tell you my story.

When I was 7 months old, from one day to the other, I stopped consuming breast milk. According to what my mother told me, she fed me in the evening, there was no problem, and in the morning I was no longer willing to accept breast milk. I haven’t liked milk since then. I craved it once during my pregnancy, filled a large glass, tasted it,

and concluded that I still didn’t like it. In fact, until the beginning of my veganism, I consumed only 1 or 2 types of processed milk.

I was only willing to eat a few types of meat, I couldn’t even look at the rest. I didn’t even want to taste them. Meat consumption was so unimportant to me, that there were years when I ate meat about only once a week.

As a result of certain life situations, in the year before my veganism, I got to the point where if there was no meat in the food, I was quite surprised. This was probably the thing that caused my body to say, “Enough! I’ve been able to handle the animal protein intake until now, but realize that you don’t need that!”.

That’s when I got symptoms like I had caught the flu. I had a stuffy and runny nose, and for 2 months I coughed so hard, I thought my lungs were going to burst. Since I don’t like going to the doctor, I went to the hospital only after 2 weeks had passed. The doctor said it was a virus and it would go away. But not only would it have gone away, an eye inflammation-like symptom had developed as well. I got a cream for that.

When the cough went away after 2 months, and the other symptoms remained for months, one of my “doctor liaison” friends asked me if I was allergic to something. I told him, of course not, I was never allergic to anything.

Months passed, the symptoms did not go away. By that time, I was quite bored with the matter and considered allergies, because certain allergy sufferers used to complain about stuffy noses, runny noses, and inflamed eyes.

Since Covid was already rampant at that time, even after several attempts, I was unable to get in for an allergy test. So I started experimenting myself.

For the first time, I left out gluten for one month. There was no change in my condition.

I then cut out all the carbs. But the symptoms remained.

One day I wondered, well, what could it be? That’s when I had a thought, what if the meat is the problem?! After all, I barely ate meat in my childhood and part of my adult life, and now it is included in my diet on a daily basis.

I gave up dry land meat and all meat products. Symptoms subsided within about one week. After that, I started to learn – which I am still learning to this day – what kind of additives are being put in food, in order to filter out the hidden things.

I wrote that I only left out land animals, so you can already guess that I didn’t leave shellfish and fish. It had already occurred to me that eventually I would give them up too, but at that time I didn’t want to. Part of the reason was that we moved near the sea a few years ago, and I have to admit, I love seafood.

If they haven’t already, vegans must be throwing stones at me after this! If not, I’m happy, and I encourage you to continue reading.

Let’s get back to the story.

Sometimes the symptoms eased, sometimes they got a little stronger. In the meantime, I absorbed more and more information about vegan eating. I felt less and less that I wanted to eat what the rest of the family was eating or that I should make it vegan. Instead, I enjoyed and still enjoy the new flavors I’ve learned about. And I got better and better at filtering out unwanted additives from food. I’ve made it to be symptom-free for weeks, maybe even months.

But Christmas has come, which, in addition to love, is also the “holiday of fish” in a Hungarian family. Since I haven’t given up on fish yet, I haven’t made a separate menu for myself.

So our Christmas menu is fish soup, and fried fish with mashed potatoes. The dessert was vegan.

Well, after that nice little Christmas dinner, my symptoms came back.

Another conclusion came: I have to go on a completely vegan diet. While I said goodbye to land-based meats and derivatives without any problems, my heart ached a little when giving up seafood. That’s why I call myself vegan for health reasons.

Maybe I was never able to digest animal protein – my body was only able to handle the problem as long as I consumed minimal amounts and scarcely. But when it became more and more daily, my body could no longer tolerate it. I don’t know which one is true, I don’t care. What’s important to me is to be symptom-free while enjoying my new vegan life!

During this journey, I had to face the fact that wherever we go to eat or have coffee, more and more places have vegan food and plant-based milk, BUT DESSERT is barely on the menu. Even if it happens by chance, it’s most often only one kind.

Do you often experience this?

I run into it on a weekly basis! I find places where I am happy to experience that “Oh good, I can now drink coffee here as well.” I then enthusiastically ask, “Do you have vegan desserts?”, the answer is always “We don’t have any.”

My husband and I often go to a florist cafe which is our favorite. But unfortunately, they also only have one type of vegan dessert, in the size of a biscuit. That always makes me a little sad.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I like to eat and make desserts.

After so many disappointments, I started researching on the Internet and then started experimenting.

I made birthday cakes based on my own recipe for my meat eating friends. They really loved it! If I hadn’t told them afterwards, they wouldn’t have known it was vegan, the design was so similar to my old cakes.

In the meantime, I made vegan cookies from time to time. My family loves my vegan desserts.

Then I brought cakes to an event for about 50 people. When one of our vegan friends heard that there were also vegan cakes, she ran to get herself a slice of each one. But by the time she got there, one of the cakes – the bounty – had already run out.

At this event, I was happy to see that of all the cakes there, my vegan cakes ran out first, although among the participants, the amount of vegans was negligible. 95 percent of the guests were meat eaters.

That’s why I started my site to share my recipes, knowledge, and products with you.

I wish you good baking and tasting!