MOKGADI ITSWENG
Chef, writer, former food editor of True Love magazine and owner of Lotsha Home Foods
My carefree foodie life meant I got to taste and experience all kinds of food, and pretty much ate everything under the sun. That is, until my body started fighting me from the inside, and started having allergic reactions to fish, shellfish, pork, cow’s milk, maize, preservatives and wheat. A bite of these allergens would turn me into a swollen mess covered in itchy hives. The doctors couldn’t find any plausible explanation and could only prescribe antihistamines to manage my condition. Being a pill-phobe, I looked for a more sustainable solution and turned to diet. I went on a strict cleanse and diet following Queen Afua’s Heal Thyself book. This helped to heal my body and I soon stopped taking the antihistamines and the breakouts stopped. I followed this vegan diet for about nine months. I found easy products to replace meat because I craved it, and the smell of a braai would send me on a tailspin, turning me into a “dirty vegan”. This term refers to anyone who eats unhealthy vegan food — wors rolls made with vegan sausage, vegan kotas with slap chips and lashings of atchar. Although this kind of eating was vegan, it was not sustainable as it was unhealthy and soon my health began to suffer again.
I then was diagnosed with prehypertension, which meant that I had to cut out processed food, sugar, salt etcetera and struggled with this type of vegetarian lifestyle and soon found myself going back to eating steak and chops, because I felt deprived and punished. This was not sustainable as every so often, my body would reject the meat and the allergies would return. I had to find a sustainable diet — a lifestyle instead of a diet.
In 2018, I joined The Chef Manifesto, a group of global chefs working to highlight the UN Sustainable Development Goals and through this I was exposed to how our meatbased food system has contributed to climate change, and how a diet rich in plant-forward foods with fewer animal sources of protein, confers both improved health and environmental benefits.
After learning more about a sustainable plate of the future, I made a conscious decision to EAT MORE PLANTS, and less