Day 11 -- An Actual Subject
The more long-suffering among readers of this blog may remember that at one point in the not-so-distant past I was eating vegan. (Or, if I ate that way but never actually wrote about it, you may not remember it. No biggie.) Two years ago, that is, on April 1, 2010, I began my year of eating vegan. Since 1988, although I've had fish and dairy, I haven't eaten meat. This meant that going completely animal-free was a change but not a huge leap. I made my decision after reading Eating Animals, which pushed me over that animal-free cliff whose edge I'd been teetering on for years.
I decided to go vegan for a full year because I felt like in a week or a month I wouldn't adequately experience what the vegan life really felt like. In the time that followed, I think I did come to a clearer understanding of what living an animal-product-free existence could be like. I tried to be as true to the principles of veganism as I could. I didn't buy leather goods, although I had to make an exception for running shoes with leather trim. For a while I eschewed honey, but because I couldn't get too indignant about unnaturally overworked bees, I took honey off my verboten items list. Ditto silk. I love bees; I love worms. But really, and condemn me if you must, not in the way I love cows and pigs.
The main challenge of eating vegan turned out to be social. I got really tired of requiring special treatment, like I was the Queen of England or something. Really? You're cooking bacon? No, none for me, thanks. (Ewww.) Pepperoni on the pizza? (Puhleeeeeeze.)
But the nutrition end, which I'd feared I'd have trouble with, was fine. I grew to love soy-protein and rice-protein shakes. Beans, yes. Lentils, yes. Every version of tofu in the known world--yesssss!
There are a few foods I was able to identify as both vegan and yummy. They're on my permanent grocery list.
You get it. Anyway, my year came to an end, and I had to decide what was next. It would have been easy enough to continue eating vegan, since most of my friends and family had become used to accommodating my dietary quirks. But, I admit it, I was tired of treating eating as an assignment with no due date, a pious crusade that countenanced no frivolity of any kind, dietary or otherwise. I felt eating had taken on a gravity that couldn't be gainsayed. Cripes, it was only food!
So what did I do during the year that followed April 1, 2011? I made, and continue to make, plenty of compromises with the vegan ethos (which, truthfully, I would fully subscribe to if it didn't feel so much like a career).
I started eating fish again, trying with just partial success to make sure I was eating only fish that was wild-caught and handled only with sustainable methods. No farmed fish, no artificially colored salmon, no fish that needed to be transported thousands of miles to get to me.
Black coffee. Always acceptable.
I also went back to eggs, thanks to Sarah and Flyaway Farm. No chickens are harmed in the production of these eggs.
The biggest change I didn't reverse over the last year was the elimination of milk products. After reading about how typical agribusiness-owned cows are kept permanently pregnant and lactating and how the calves they bear through the standard mechanically implemented insemination process are treated, I just lost my appetite for milk, ice cream, cheese, and all that. I also read that humans are the only species that drinks the milk of another species, a fact that gave me pause. As one commentator said, milk is nature's most nearly perfect food, but only if you're a calf. Even organic, humane dairies are off my list at this point. For now anyway, it feels like to start consuming milk and cheese would be like traveling to a foreign country, a country I have no interest in visiting.
No milk. Easy enough. The gray area this leaves, however, is vast. Chocolate--are some kinds truly dairy-free? I'll go ahead and confess this: sometimes, especially when I eat out, I knowingly consume foods with dairy ingredients. Usually they're in cookies, which are my dietary nemesis. Salad dressings, soups, and sauces are also often milk bombs. In the name of not taking myself too seriously--okay, and also in the name of pleasure--I do go ahead sometimes and eat the milk bombs.
In the long run, however, I manage to eat in a way I can live with--both in the physical and the emotional sense. Fruit? A lot. Veggies? Ditto. Grains? Probably more than I even need. (I could live on bread alone, unlike the poet.) I measure the success of my diet by two dissimilar but important standards: 1) How do I feel when I run? If the answer is, energetic and strong, I'm halfway home. 2) Do I feel queasy after I've gone grocery shopping? If I do, it means that either I've recently walked down the meat aisle and passed too close to all those miniature Styrofoam coffins filled with dead animal parts, or else I've actually purchased something that will make my heart hurt when I take it out of the grocery bag. On days that I feel high in energy and low on queasy, I'm satisfied that my way of eating is working. It's imperfect, but then, being perfect fell off my to-do list about forty years ago.
I decided to go vegan for a full year because I felt like in a week or a month I wouldn't adequately experience what the vegan life really felt like. In the time that followed, I think I did come to a clearer understanding of what living an animal-product-free existence could be like. I tried to be as true to the principles of veganism as I could. I didn't buy leather goods, although I had to make an exception for running shoes with leather trim. For a while I eschewed honey, but because I couldn't get too indignant about unnaturally overworked bees, I took honey off my verboten items list. Ditto silk. I love bees; I love worms. But really, and condemn me if you must, not in the way I love cows and pigs.
The main challenge of eating vegan turned out to be social. I got really tired of requiring special treatment, like I was the Queen of England or something. Really? You're cooking bacon? No, none for me, thanks. (Ewww.) Pepperoni on the pizza? (Puhleeeeeeze.)
But the nutrition end, which I'd feared I'd have trouble with, was fine. I grew to love soy-protein and rice-protein shakes. Beans, yes. Lentils, yes. Every version of tofu in the known world--yesssss!There are a few foods I was able to identify as both vegan and yummy. They're on my permanent grocery list.
You get it. Anyway, my year came to an end, and I had to decide what was next. It would have been easy enough to continue eating vegan, since most of my friends and family had become used to accommodating my dietary quirks. But, I admit it, I was tired of treating eating as an assignment with no due date, a pious crusade that countenanced no frivolity of any kind, dietary or otherwise. I felt eating had taken on a gravity that couldn't be gainsayed. Cripes, it was only food!
So what did I do during the year that followed April 1, 2011? I made, and continue to make, plenty of compromises with the vegan ethos (which, truthfully, I would fully subscribe to if it didn't feel so much like a career).
I started eating fish again, trying with just partial success to make sure I was eating only fish that was wild-caught and handled only with sustainable methods. No farmed fish, no artificially colored salmon, no fish that needed to be transported thousands of miles to get to me.Black coffee. Always acceptable.
I also went back to eggs, thanks to Sarah and Flyaway Farm. No chickens are harmed in the production of these eggs.
The biggest change I didn't reverse over the last year was the elimination of milk products. After reading about how typical agribusiness-owned cows are kept permanently pregnant and lactating and how the calves they bear through the standard mechanically implemented insemination process are treated, I just lost my appetite for milk, ice cream, cheese, and all that. I also read that humans are the only species that drinks the milk of another species, a fact that gave me pause. As one commentator said, milk is nature's most nearly perfect food, but only if you're a calf. Even organic, humane dairies are off my list at this point. For now anyway, it feels like to start consuming milk and cheese would be like traveling to a foreign country, a country I have no interest in visiting.
No milk. Easy enough. The gray area this leaves, however, is vast. Chocolate--are some kinds truly dairy-free? I'll go ahead and confess this: sometimes, especially when I eat out, I knowingly consume foods with dairy ingredients. Usually they're in cookies, which are my dietary nemesis. Salad dressings, soups, and sauces are also often milk bombs. In the name of not taking myself too seriously--okay, and also in the name of pleasure--I do go ahead sometimes and eat the milk bombs.In the long run, however, I manage to eat in a way I can live with--both in the physical and the emotional sense. Fruit? A lot. Veggies? Ditto. Grains? Probably more than I even need. (I could live on bread alone, unlike the poet.) I measure the success of my diet by two dissimilar but important standards: 1) How do I feel when I run? If the answer is, energetic and strong, I'm halfway home. 2) Do I feel queasy after I've gone grocery shopping? If I do, it means that either I've recently walked down the meat aisle and passed too close to all those miniature Styrofoam coffins filled with dead animal parts, or else I've actually purchased something that will make my heart hurt when I take it out of the grocery bag. On days that I feel high in energy and low on queasy, I'm satisfied that my way of eating is working. It's imperfect, but then, being perfect fell off my to-do list about forty years ago.
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