| ||
The Rotary Club of Marina City attracts members from all around the world. During its more than 30-year history, the club has welcomed Singaporeans, Indians, Chinese, Filipinos, Malays, Italians, Swiss, Germans, and Americans just to name a few of the nationalities. The diverse background of the club has allowed it to grow, exchange ideas, and share cultural traditions from around the world.
During this period, she was frustrated by the growing dependence on medication for her condition Hypothyroidism and autoimmune condition, called Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. She was on a moderate to high dose of Thyroxin and she wanted to reduce the medication. In an effort to reduce her medication, she started to examine her diet. She was already a vegetarian for ethical reasons since 2006. Despite being aware of the unethical practices of the diary and egg industries, Ambaree ate these products because she believed that she needed to eat dairy and eggs to ensure a balance diet that included protein and other nutritional requirements. Therefore, reluctantly, she continued eating a vegetarian diet, including eggs and dairy. But her life and ideas about diet were about to take a dramatic change. In 2016, Ambaree read a story about tennis star Venus Williams. This article depicted how Venus Williams overcame her physical ailments by switching to a plant-based diet, which meant that even an athlete's nutritional requirements were being met with on a vegan diet. This spurred Ambaree to research the subject. Ambaree and her husband watched medical documentaries like Forks over Knives and What the Health on Netflix. After months of research and acquiring a degree on Plant based Nutrition from eCornell, Ambaree switched to a plant-based diet. And after being on a well-planned vegan diet for about five months, to her surprise, her blood test results showed that her thyroid gland had started functioning optimally again and she was taken off medication. She decided to bring Anshu and Ahaana on board. Ahaana was 4 years when she became a vegan. Since 2016, she has been free of medication for Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. In 2017 Ambaree gave birth to her second child, Aarish. She had a perfectly healthy vegan pregnancy and Aarish has been a vegan baby since he was conceived. "Becoming vegan is a commitment. It is a a process...." Ambree shared, “Becoming vegan is a commitment. It is a process that requires the learner to invest some time and effort because it is a relatively new concept, but it is an easy process. My husband and I thought that it was wiser to spend time learning something new that could protect us and our children from many chronic diseases (like diabetes, hypertension and even certain cancers) than to eat indiscriminately now and struggle with diseases later. I realized that eating the right thing, the right way was one of the most important skills in today's day and age, that I should teach my children for their bright future. Our decision to go vegan rooted from the fact that we would positively impact the environment and animals and at the same help our health” Although she was never enthusiastic about cooking before this, Ambaree realised that it was important for her to start exploring the kitchen so that she could make sure that her children got the right nutrition on a vegan diet. This experience impacted her life in many ways, so in response, the humble Rotarian then decided to start blogging and speaking at small and large platforms about her experience to encourage people to consider gradually eliminating animal products from the diets for their health, the environment and our fellow non-human sentient beings. Ambaree found her new passion! The software engineer turned Social Entrepreneur, Speaker and Educator discovered that her relatives and even people she never met began connecting with her online. This experience led her to launch her own a website dedicated to A Plant Based Lifestyle. When asked about the name, Vegan Keno, she explained it means “why vegan” in Bengali, her mother tongue. In this edition of our Rotary Club newsletter, Ambaree picked a tasty recipe for us to try! For those who do, send us a photo of you and your fritters and we will include it in the next newsletter. To view more recipes, visit Ambaree’s website www.vegankeno.com/ And follow her on social media www.facebook.com/vegankeno and www.instagram.com/vegankeno | ||
Enter Ambaree, an IT Business Analyst, a new expat that moved to Singapore in 2011 with her husband, Anshu. She joined the Marina City Rotary Club in 2014 and was active in the weekly meetings and giving talks. Her first child, Ahaana was just 2 years old at that time. Her father has been a veteran member of the Rotary Club of Tawau in Malaysia since she was a child. So, the Rotary culture was not new to her.