I loved my grandmother very much. I have a photo of her soaking her feet, looking defeated after a long day of work. She looked angry. This was the same woman who served up pig feet, pig ears, pig everything because it was cheap and she did not have the money to buy beef or chicken to feed her children. Most of her life she was thin and she died of cancer (not alcoholism).

My grandfather, her ex-husband, died of a heart attack. My mother, a former college athlete, almost died of colon cancer last year. Most of my younger family members suffer from hypertension, including a cousin who was set to go to Russia to dance with a ballet troupe (she never made it).

I do think that diet is part of a larger picture, not the whole picture. People who exercise and eat right can choose to eat pork but, for me, there are other alternatives.

Sometimes I think about my grandmother and remember that she was the main reason I stopped eating pork. I was angry as a teenager and, as I stated before, it was the start of a big change in my lifestyle.