Who is STLVegGirl?

Caryn Dugan loves to eat. You name it and she has probably tried it. In fact, in high school, one of her friends called her the human garbage disposal. During college she shared the same diet as many other students: bar food, fast food, packaged food. Eventually she knew it was time to get on track and clean up her act. In an effort to do this, she ate mainly packaged “healthy” diet foods (you know the ones.) This made it easy to keep track of her fats, carbs and calories. After all, that’s what being healthy is…right? Sometimes she’d wonder about those 26-letter words under the INGREDIENTS heading on the box, but shoot, it was only 250 calories and 2 grams of fat, so it must be healthy! You get the picture.

Fast forward to 2008. This proved to be a pretty rotten year. She lost her dad to cancer and exactly ten weeks later, she too was diagnosed. Mourning the loss of her dad soon turned into fear and anger as she dealt with her own condition. She was so healthy…why did this happen? Luckily her treatment was quick and today she remains cancer free. However, the exceptional loss in her family coupled with her own brush with cancer sparked a drive to understand the role food, both processed and whole alike, have on our body.

An insatiable need to learn how the food we put in our body directly affects our health continues to be her quest. During her reading and researching; meeting with authors, instructors and medical experts in the field of nutrition science and health, Caryn adopted a plant-based whole foods diet. It’s no secret that mainly unprocessed, REAL food is what our body responds to and uses to develop a strong immune system to help fight off disease and chronic illnesses.

Today, still delving deep in her nutrition books and journals and along with two years of assisting a plant-based cooking instructor in vegan cooking classes, Caryn now holds her own-plant based classes. She’s not trying to convince anyone else to become plant-based, nor is she looking to completely overhaul your family’s menu. Instead, her mission is really quite simple: A Plant on Every Plate.