I was born a vegetarian to parents, who happened to be vegetarian by birth. However, my mother was an ethical objector and preferred us not to eat meat. I of course did taste it, liked it and so ate it once or twice a year as a teenager without thinking of the implications, when I visited my friends’ homes for lunch. Mum’s rules are meant to be broken, right?

I grew up eating a plant based diet with some dairy but no cheese or eggs really, as these are not considered vegetarian in India. (dairy was very expensive in those days as was oil) in the form of a small cup of milk and yoghurt daily.

I was pregnant when we moved to Scotland. Having never really, cooked meat in my life before I washed some mince as one would wash vegetables. To my great horror, I saw blood running out from the sieve which for the first time focused where this was coming from. I became a vegetarian overnight but did not enforce this on my daughters or husband, as I felt they needed to make their own choice once they were older. I regret it now. My daughter said if we were standing on the road and a car came towards us, would you not have moved us out of the way. Why then when you knew eating meat was wrong at every level, did you to stop us?  I had no answer.

By this time, my brother had turned vegan having watched the horrors of animal (monkey labs) experimentation in the US. My younger daughter turned vegetarian and then vegan and by 2003, my daughters and I had turned vegan. My daughter turned vegetarian and then vegan – I thought I would humour her but realised there was no convincing her otherwise. She loved sausages and I wondered how she would do without. My husband stopped eating red meat by 1996 but continued eating fish and eggs and dairy, as he thought it was healthy. It was a tough and lonely life as we knew no one who was vegan and there was a lot of eye rolling when we requested alternate meals. I became a  good cook, especially good at baking and exploring other cuisines, as I was determined that my daughters would be well nourished. They grew tall and looked healthy and were full of beans, excelling at school and at Oxford University.

About 6 months before in early 2003, I became prematurely menopausal. I was suffering quite significantly from hot flushes, sleepless nights, having initially thought my symptoms were due to stress (there was no family history and if you have a met a doctor, most doctors think they are invincible and are often the worst patients). My older sister and mother were fine but on eliciting further family history, it turned out there was indeed a family history of premature ovarian failure.

I would have gone on to HRT but around this time, I changed my diet to support my daughter, Naina. I soon realised I was feeling rather healthy and my symptoms seemed to have disappeared. Little did I know that my vegan diet would work as medicine for me. In fact, I never needed hormone replacement treatment I still did not think it had anything to do with the food I was eating. Doctors are not really taught about nutrition or that food has anything to do with illness. Quite the opposite to the Eastern cultures.

I realised if I was to keep my daughters healthy, I  would need to adopt a completely different approach to food and cooking to nourish my daughters ( one could be vegan eating crisps, white bread and drinking Pepsi, none of which was healthy – what I was about to discover was a eye opener – as I changed my diet to become completely plant based and vegan. I had been eating a rather poor vegetarian diet – with a lot of focus on milk, yoghurt and cream and cheese), I noted my skin started glowing, my hot flushes and night sweats reduced dramatically, and I was feeling very energetic. I started now keenly observing my patients and becoming very interested in nutrition and its effects on our body.

I was asked to give a lecture to a group of general practitioners several years ago. That evening, a breast surgeon from abroad was asked to talk about breast cancer prevention and I was following on.

I was horrified as I listened intently to this talk that there was no mention of the simple dietary and lifestyle changes one should consider advising all women with regards to prevention of cancer. Either the surgeon felt the doctors already knew about it(?) or did not feel it was an important or relevant issue to address. This was the final straw that made me finally shake off my apprehension as whether I should make some changes in the way I practice. It was not a question of choice anymore. I felt I was just as complicit as this doctor in not educating doctors and women and the public if I did not voice my opinion on the effects of what we are doing to our bodies and as a result to our reproductive organs.

"I did suffer a lot from ridicule as well as a lot of eye rolling. And it was hard - not from my own side of the family but generally from people -- because either they didn't understand; they were curious… or they felt threatened. And so it was really tough and I just didn't have all the answers in those days. So I started judging myself. I started becoming quite resentful and then I started eating a little bit of dairy when I was out[ and I hated the fact that I didn't like how I felt… and I started judging myself[ and I realized very quickly that that was not the road I was going to take and I fell back to my roots."

"Once I became vegan, I stopped wearing leather, silk and all that. But due to social pressures, I was eating a little bit of dairy. And it just felt wrong, you know. And I'm now in a place that I realize that everybody has their own journey and one needs to be kind because it can take people lots of falls and slips, and then they pick themselves up. All one has to do is to be supportive."

"… not a single bit of information that nutrition has so much to do with health. So I made it my mission to educate patients, the public."