Vestal Vegan to beat global warming, you have to go veggie, claims paul mccartney. but how easy is it to be meat-free? Kate Smith decided to avoid all animal food products for a month to find out RECENTLY IT DAWNED ON me that for years I have been sleepwalking towards rampant carnivorism. These days I consume meat at every meal. Taking into account my consumption of dairy foods, as well as animal fats hidden in sweets and crisps, it occurs to me that I am now devouring more animal products than Desperate Dan in his cow pies. Shocked, I determine to eat more healthily and sustainably. With a dietary history that includes spells of failed vegetarianism, I decide to cut out meat, and challenge myself to become a vegan for one month.
Week one
During the family shop, I drop a Quorn lasagne-for-one into the trolley. At £3 per meal it's not a
sustainable food strategy, but the upside is that after consuming it, I am surprised to realise that I haven't missed the meat. Then I notice that eggs and milk are listed among the product's ingredients. Rats. Failed already. I need some advice.
"We live in a non-vegan world," says the Vegan
Society's Amanda Baker, who explains that veganism isn't just about diet: it's a philosophy of life, which involves shunning non-food products such as leather, pearls, wool and silk. She sends me a pack and offers me "going vegan" buddies whom I can contact if ever I feel the need to rip open a packet of ham. I also buy vegan supplements to help with the lack of vitamin B in vegan diets: hopefully it will help prevent the dizzy spells I experienced in previous vegetarian episodes.
It occurs to me that you have to be quite organised to be vegan, and it's probably easier if you live on your own rather than with a carnivorous partner and kids. At first, I try to eat what I normally would, but adapted to vegan ideals - so no meat stock in soup. The food tastes pretty bland, but moving to the recipes supplied by the Vegan Society means much tastier dishes.
Week Two
I'm quite enjoying the food and my energy levels have improved. I find it easier to taste individual items, so perhaps my palate is coming out of shock. I do notice, though, that I'm spending a lot more time than usual thinking about food. There's a lot of preparation involved: overnight soaking of mung beans and checking ingredient lists on prepared meals for any sneaky animal ingredients. Eating out is much easier than eating in. Asking for vegan suggestions in restaurants is straightforward. Fast food joints are a different matter.
Thinking about the bigger picture helps me avoid lapses. I remember the lambs I saw gambolling in the field on a recent hill walk, and think about cute baby chicks. Reconnecting the food on your plate with the place where it came from definitely helps.
Week three
I have discovered my Achilles heel. Eggs. The main thrust of my animal-empathy approach doesn't work with eggs. And vegan pasta just doesn't taste the same. Nor do cakes. Guiltily, I gobble an egg mayonnaise sandwich on the train. Soon I am indulging in meals involving real pasta. The signs are clear. I am falling off the lentil wagon. For support I call my friend Trish, who became vegan eight years ago after suffering breast cancer. "By living a vegan life, I actively choose to help my health and bolster my immune system," she says.
Week four
I have lost about 8lbs in weight, my eyes and skin look brighter and I can't stand the smell of animal fat cooking. But I am struggling with variety, and the time between the egg pasta lapses is getting shorter. After a busy week, I am also struggling with the fact that - since I have decided not to include the
children in my experiment - dinnertimes involve cooking one set of meals for the rest of the family and another for me. I have turned into a deranged, frenetic Nigella Lawson, only without the smouldering looks or the repertoire of recipes and
well-stocked pantry. The fact I don't have time for two lots of shopping also means I often find myself eating boring meals consisting of broccoli and rice.
Preparing meat for the family is beginning to seem repellent. I now see it as animal flesh and it makes my stomach turn.
THE RESULT
At the end of my month as a vegan, I'm glad I tried it. I thought it would be all about sacrifice, but actually it was about recalibrating what I was consuming, getting some balance back. I do occasionally eat meat now, but only if it's organic and produced locally. I can't stand the taste of ham, bacon or any reconstituted meat. I continue to read the labels on products. I see myself as the gatekeeper for my children's health and am conscious that before my experiment, we might have been eating any old rubbish. Now, I avoid supermarkets and buy seasonal produce from local shops.
There have been benefits for my children, who were very curious about what I was doing and why. My
13-year-old daughter Daisy and I had some good
discussions about food, and she connected it with
lessons in school about food and water scarcity across the world. She already knew that what we eat and consume is connected with what the rest of the world eats and consumes. Our discussions continue. But perhaps the biggest lesson is about compassion, and the need to get some humanity back into how we treat the animals that provide the food on our plates.
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Posted by: Patricia, North Yorkshire on 11:39pm Mon 28 Apr 08
The only vitamin that *may* be lacking in a vegan diet is B12. Kate Smith's assertion that a vegan diet is lacking in B Vitamins is very misleading. The Vegan Society recommends taking a B12 supplement or eating foods fortified with it.
The only vitamin that *may* be lacking in a vegan diet is B12. Kate Smith's assertion that a vegan diet is lacking in B Vitamins is very misleading. The Vegan Society recommends taking a B12 supplement or eating foods fortified with it.
Posted by: Just some vegan guy on 11:57pm Mon 28 Apr 08
Wow, a relatively positive article on veganism. I can’t quite comment on the dizzy spells you experienced as a vegetarian, I literally fell into loose vegetarianism long ago without even noticing. I felt that I was eating too much meat and cut down. After a couple weeks I just cut it out and didn’t really think about it again. Fish was sporadically on the menu for a while, but I didn’t ever cook it, it was an easy social out when eating in restaurants with other people and not wanting to make to make waves.
It was a conscious choice to go vegan, and aside from the social aspects and learning that eggs and milk actually don’t have to be in every single dish or process food, it wasn’t such a big deal over a vegetarian diet, it was just ditching the two ingredients after all, it took more effort to find sources of nice vegan dress shoes. The social eating out aspect can be challenging, but I came to the realization through my age that I’m comfortable with myself and I don’t care whose worldview I upset over what I do or do not eat.
If you do or do not stay vegan of vegetarian is up to you of course, and applaud you for giving it what sounds like an honest try. Your take home lesson was clear. People don’t need to be eating as much meat and animal foodstuffs as they do. Also, taste in these foodstuffs is heavily influenced by our cultural importance given to it, it’s not as inherently biologically driven as people assume. It’s something a person can better realize by not eating animal foodstuffs for a while, you look at it again like, “So what’s the big deal again?” This emphasis on taste, while the big deal is what goes on before the meal to produce such foodstuffs.
The criticism of meal preparation is a bit unfair. Realize that meat and dairy have been gone through a lot of preparation beforehand to get it to the supermarket freezer. If you had to pluck a chicken and butcher it and send the kids out to gather milk from the cow you’d be thinking about food far in advance too. Soaking beans isn’t that big a deal especially when canned and frozen vegetables are a convenience option, just dump dried beans in a bowl of water before leaving for work in the morning and it’s ready for coking when you get home. Or buy a crock pot and put the beans in dry in the morning, they’ll be perfect when you get home from work. I you don’t use them that night, I throw them in the fridge for another night, no big deal, and they’ll be good like that for a week. It’s a habit thing.
Ditto for the label reading. I have my brands that I buy and trust that I originally filtered through label reading, but for the most part, I stick with wholefoods so as not to bother reading anything. I don’t do prepared meals at all really, though I get the occasional take out that I know is vegan: Indian, Mediterranean and Asian work well. But okay, sure, a successful vegan is one who learns to cook more, that’s not a bad thing.
The more traditional pastas don’t have egg. If you think about why, it makes a sense; these foods were staples when animal foodstuffs were expensive and scare. A bag of wheat or rice flour can make pasta or noodles just fine. My wife makes a kick **** vegan Dijon mayo that has relatively simple ingredients, the key is the balance of vinegar, I wasn’t even a big fan or animal ingredient mayonnaise by I like the version she’s made.
The B12 thing isn’t a big deal. Take a decent multivitamin like most people do anyway. Vegan deficiency in B12 is on par with the percentage of omnivore deficiency and the vegan numbers get skewed by over enthusiastic types who go totally raw or fruitarian and forgo any supplementation. It’s like avoiding salt with iodine because it’s a supplement but we know iodine in salt is a beneficial supplement for most people to prevent deficiency. Supplementation isn’t inherently negative, most everyone gets nutritional supplementation somewhere in their diet, in their salt, bread, crackers, cereal, milk or fruit juice and it’s a positive thing.
You mentioned the difficulty of variety in vegan cuisine, but if you take an honest look of what comprises most omnivore diets, it’s not that varied really, different cuts of the same three domestic animals isn’t variety. Every eater hits a monotony rut in their diet, that’s when both vegans and omnivores need to break out some cookbooks and try something new. Most every world cuisine can be veganized, so it helps to think in terms of regional foods, unique vegetables, flavors and spicing, not so much what constitutes the protein part of the food that soaks up the flavors. Like you said, just have to recalibrate every once and a while.
Wow, a relatively positive article on veganism. I can’t quite comment on the dizzy spells you experienced as a vegetarian, I literally fell into loose vegetarianism long ago without even noticing. I felt that I was eating too much meat and cut down. After a couple weeks I just cut it out and didn’t really think about it again. Fish was sporadically on the menu for a while, but I didn’t ever cook it, it was an easy social out when eating in restaurants with other people and not wanting to make to make waves.
It was a conscious choice to go vegan, and aside from the social aspects and learning that eggs and milk actually don’t have to be in every single dish or process food, it wasn’t such a big deal over a vegetarian diet, it was just ditching the two ingredients after all, it took more effort to find sources of nice vegan dress shoes. The social eating out aspect can be challenging, but I came to the realization through my age that I’m comfortable with myself and I don’t care whose worldview I upset over what I do or do not eat.
If you do or do not stay vegan of vegetarian is up to you of course, and applaud you for giving it what sounds like an honest try. Your take home lesson was clear. People don’t need to be eating as much meat and animal foodstuffs as they do. Also, taste in these foodstuffs is heavily influenced by our cultural importance given to it, it’s not as inherently biologically driven as people assume. It’s something a person can better realize by not eating animal foodstuffs for a while, you look at it again like, “So what’s the big deal again?” This emphasis on taste, while the big deal is what goes on before the meal to produce such foodstuffs.
The criticism of meal preparation is a bit unfair. Realize that meat and dairy have been gone through a lot of preparation beforehand to get it to the supermarket freezer. If you had to pluck a chicken and butcher it and send the kids out to gather milk from the cow you’d be thinking about food far in advance too. Soaking beans isn’t that big a deal especially when canned and frozen vegetables are a convenience option, just dump dried beans in a bowl of water before leaving for work in the morning and it’s ready for coking when you get home. Or buy a crock pot and put the beans in dry in the morning, they’ll be perfect when you get home from work. I you don’t use them that night, I throw them in the fridge for another night, no big deal, and they’ll be good like that for a week. It’s a habit thing.
Ditto for the label reading. I have my brands that I buy and trust that I originally filtered through label reading, but for the most part, I stick with wholefoods so as not to bother reading anything. I don’t do prepared meals at all really, though I get the occasional take out that I know is vegan: Indian, Mediterranean and Asian work well. But okay, sure, a successful vegan is one who learns to cook more, that’s not a bad thing.
The more traditional pastas don’t have egg. If you think about why, it makes a sense; these foods were staples when animal foodstuffs were expensive and scare. A bag of wheat or rice flour can make pasta or noodles just fine. My wife makes a kick **** vegan Dijon mayo that has relatively simple ingredients, the key is the balance of vinegar, I wasn’t even a big fan or animal ingredient mayonnaise by I like the version she’s made.
The B12 thing isn’t a big deal. Take a decent multivitamin like most people do anyway. Vegan deficiency in B12 is on par with the percentage of omnivore deficiency and the vegan numbers get skewed by over enthusiastic types who go totally raw or fruitarian and forgo any supplementation. It’s like avoiding salt with iodine because it’s a supplement but we know iodine in salt is a beneficial supplement for most people to prevent deficiency. Supplementation isn’t inherently negative, most everyone gets nutritional supplementation somewhere in their diet, in their salt, bread, crackers, cereal, milk or fruit juice and it’s a positive thing.
You mentioned the difficulty of variety in vegan cuisine, but if you take an honest look of what comprises most omnivore diets, it’s not that varied really, different cuts of the same three domestic animals isn’t variety. Every eater hits a monotony rut in their diet, that’s when both vegans and omnivores need to break out some cookbooks and try something new. Most every world cuisine can be veganized, so it helps to think in terms of regional foods, unique vegetables, flavors and spicing, not so much what constitutes the protein part of the food that soaks up the flavors. Like you said, just have to recalibrate every once and a while.
Posted by: jc, uk on 3:45pm Tue 29 Apr 08
how do you propose to control crop invasion in this one eyed world of yours plant a field of arable crops for example peas they germinate up pops their little green head down swoop the wood pidgeons their crops can hold approx 30 peas what about the rabbits they encroach fields at an alarming rate if left unchecked destroying vegetation deer will eat anything including saplings planted for crop protection not forgetting hares badgers wild boar hedgehogs grazing duck and geese
how do you propose to control crop invasion in this one eyed world of yours plant a field of arable crops for example peas they germinate up pops their little green head down swoop the wood pidgeons their crops can hold approx 30 peas what about the rabbits they encroach fields at an alarming rate if left unchecked destroying vegetation deer will eat anything including saplings planted for crop protection not forgetting hares badgers wild boar hedgehogs grazing duck and geese
Posted by: Home Le'amohala, Maui on 8:33pm Thu 1 May 08
Hi Kate,
Thank you for posting this very sincere and courageous article. I am very happy for you, your children, and the many people being positively influenced by this article. As you are fairly new to this lifestyle I can empathize with the inaccuracies that you express. I'm sure that they will be remedied soon enough. I also look forward to the day that you, your children and the readers of articles like this can understand that neither our health nor our happiness are dependant upon the suffering or death of others. This clarity will bring each of you a truer sense of the word 'compassion'.
Blessings,
Home Le'amohala
Hi Kate,
Thank you for posting this very sincere and courageous article. I am very happy for you, your children, and the many people being positively influenced by this article. As you are fairly new to this lifestyle I can empathize with the inaccuracies that you express. I'm sure that they will be remedied soon enough. I also look forward to the day that you, your children and the readers of articles like this can understand that neither our health nor our happiness are dependant upon the suffering or death of others. This clarity will bring each of you a truer sense of the word 'compassion'.
Blessings,
Home Le'amohala
Posted by: Bryan, Seattle on 4:14am Tue 6 May 08
Many people seem to overlook the fact that common foods of all types are fortified for commonly deficient nutrients - like iodine and, yes, B12 (which is only produced by microbes to begin with - B12 in animal products is a result of them being supplemented, since they get it from their feed!).
By the way, light-headedness is usually related to mineral deficiencies - for instance copper or (I think) zinc, or iron. Thankfully, there are many plant sources for these minerals!
Thanks for putting this article out there, I'm especially glad to read what you said about 'recalibration' - people don't seem to realize that what you like partly depends on what you're used to! Hopefully peopel don't get the idea that vegan diets are more than just not eating certain things - and they're quite tasty when you have all the proper accoutrements :)
By the way, regarding your empathy reaction: typically egg-laying chickens live in terribly cramped conditions. And in all cases, they essentially throw away the baby roosters once they sex them (often by suffocation). This is because egg-laying breeds aren't desirable for meat (they don't grow as quickly). It's much like milk & veal, except there's profit in the male young, in that case.
I would encourage you to take this further than just 30 days, I doubt you'd see a reason to look back, before much longer.
Many people seem to overlook the fact that common foods of all types are fortified for commonly deficient nutrients - like iodine and, yes, B12 (which is only produced by microbes to begin with - B12 in animal products is a result of them being supplemented, since they get it from their feed!).
By the way, light-headedness is usually related to mineral deficiencies - for instance copper or (I think) zinc, or iron. Thankfully, there are many plant sources for these minerals!
Thanks for putting this article out there, I'm especially glad to read what you said about 'recalibration' - people don't seem to realize that what you like partly depends on what you're used to! Hopefully peopel don't get the idea that vegan diets are more than just not eating certain things - and they're quite tasty when you have all the proper accoutrements :)
By the way, regarding your empathy reaction: typically egg-laying chickens live in terribly cramped conditions. And in all cases, they essentially throw away the baby roosters once they sex them (often by suffocation). This is because egg-laying breeds aren't desirable for meat (they don't grow as quickly). It's much like milk & veal, except there's profit in the male young, in that case.
I would encourage you to take this further than just 30 days, I doubt you'd see a reason to look back, before much longer.
Posted by: Bryan, Seattle on 4:16am Tue 6 May 08
Many people seem to overlook the fact that common foods of all types are fortified for commonly deficient nutrients - like iodine and, yes, B12 (which is only produced by microbes to begin with - B12 in animal products is a result of them being supplemented, since they get it from their feed!).
By the way, light-headedness is usually related to mineral deficiencies - for instance copper or (I think) zinc, or iron. Thankfully, there are many plant sources for these minerals!
Thanks for putting this article out there, I'm especially glad to read what you said about 'recalibration' - people don't seem to realize that what you like partly depends on what you're used to! Hopefully peopel don't get the idea that vegan diets are more than just not eating certain things - and they're quite tasty when you have all the proper accoutrements :)
By the way, regarding your empathy reaction: typically egg-laying chickens live in terribly cramped conditions. And in all cases, they essentially throw away the baby roosters once they sex them (often by suffocation). This is because egg-laying breeds aren't desirable for meat (they don't grow as quickly). It's much like milk & veal, except there's profit in the male young, in that case.
I would encourage you to take this further than just 30 days, I doubt you'd see a reason to look back, before much longer.
Many people seem to overlook the fact that common foods of all types are fortified for commonly deficient nutrients - like iodine and, yes, B12 (which is only produced by microbes to begin with - B12 in animal products is a result of them being supplemented, since they get it from their feed!).
By the way, light-headedness is usually related to mineral deficiencies - for instance copper or (I think) zinc, or iron. Thankfully, there are many plant sources for these minerals!
Thanks for putting this article out there, I'm especially glad to read what you said about 'recalibration' - people don't seem to realize that what you like partly depends on what you're used to! Hopefully peopel don't get the idea that vegan diets are more than just not eating certain things - and they're quite tasty when you have all the proper accoutrements :)
By the way, regarding your empathy reaction: typically egg-laying chickens live in terribly cramped conditions. And in all cases, they essentially throw away the baby roosters once they sex them (often by suffocation). This is because egg-laying breeds aren't desirable for meat (they don't grow as quickly). It's much like milk & veal, except there's profit in the male young, in that case.
I would encourage you to take this further than just 30 days, I doubt you'd see a reason to look back, before much longer.
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