Adventures in Veganism: Day 7 – The End is Now

June 25, 2008 12:30 pm     Posted in Body, Reality  Abigail - Emerson g+ page

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By Abigail

I, an avid meat and ice cream-eater, have been eating vegan for the past week as a George Plimpton-esque adventure. Now, on my last day, I am literally counting down the hours until I am reunited with meat and dairy products again.

Breakfast: Instant oatmeal.

Lunch: I go with my family to Coast, the beach-side restaurant in the Shutter’s Hotel in Santa Monica. I look the menu over again and again, dreaming about all the food that I can’t eat. I want to order spaghetti until someone points out that a lot of spaghetti is made with eggs, which the waitress confirms. The waitress tells me that the only vegan item on the menu is a Portobello mushroom steak with barley rice. “Steak” is a major exaggeration – it is just a small, thin slice of Portobello – but the dish as a whole is delicious.

11 PM: No dinner yet. I’m holding out for midnight, at which point I am going to get chicken at El Pollo Loco and rainbow sherbert ice cream at a Rite Aid. The time can’t pass quickly enough.

I started this week knowing that it would be difficult to eat vegan, and it has been, but in a very different way than I thought it would be. I thought I’d have to cook at home a lot more, but this hasn’t been the case. I thought I’d be eating really bland food, and this also hasn’t been true.

On the other hand, though, I thought I’d lose weight and feel healthier, and this is absolutely not true. One of the reasons I’m excited to end this week is so I can go back to eating healthy. As a vegan, you’re stuck eating a lot of beans and carbs, and eating tons of vegetables and fruits wrecks havoc on your digestive system.

Yet, even though I can’t wait to eat an entire chicken, I’m going to take a couple things away with me that I learned this week. One is the amazing vegan chili I made; another is vegan restaurants like Real Food Daily, which I’ve now fallen in love with. Eating vegan definitely made me pay attention to what goes into the food I eat. Reading labels , studying menus, and just plain thinking about how food is cooked is incredibly beneficial when you’re trying to eat healthy. But I don’t believe that eating vegan is healthy. The diet is very unbalanced and, as one friend pointed out to me, soy isn’t actually that good for you.

If you’re absolutely obsessed with animals and want to save them all, then sure, eat vegan. Learn how to cook, try to eat a variety of foods from all the food groups, be prepared to have your body adjust for a couple weeks (my body definitely didn’t adjust within a week), and get used to not eating at restaurants when your friends do. If you want to be healthy and eat in a way that’s good for the environment (and, in turn, good for the little piggies and chickens), eat locally grown produce, eat meat sparingly and from free range farms, and eat less. Over-consumption and waste does much more harm to you and the planet than cutting out animal products will benefit it.

Now, the time has come.

Please excuse me while I go eat an entire roast chicken and a tub of ice cream.

[Image from Flickr]

7 Comments on "Adventures in Veganism: Day 7 – The End is Now"

  1. Erin says:
    Wed, 25th Jun 20088:52 am 

    I agree with a lot of what you have said but umm…

    "As a vegan, you’re stuck eating a lot of beans and carbs, and eating tons of vegetables and fruits wrecks havoc on your digestive system."

    I am not a vegetarian, but fruits and veggies are hard on the digestive system and meat isn't? Or dairy (never mind most of the world is lactose intolerant…cow's milk is mostly a European tradition anyway)?

  2. Janers says:
    Wed, 25th Jun 200811:41 am 

    This is bull!

    and totally unfair to veganism, Veganism isn't hard (at first, it is I admit) but once you figure out what taste good and what taste like playdough, then it is EASY, and you feel 100% better

    I'm vegan, I eat "so delicious" non-dairy ice cream,

    I love Haagen daz sorbet

    Soy "ribs" soy chicken, soy hot dogs, soy grilled cheese, soy mayo, tofu "eggs", fake honey, lasagna, bacon, sasuage, burgers, steak (not just mushrooms lol), chicken nuggets, fish,…

    if they have a bad for you version, they have a good for you version that still tastes right

    it's trial and error though, I admit, that Tuno is NASTY (hence the "no" in the name) a gun can not make me eat that crap

    but

    “As a vegan, you’re stuck eating a lot of beans and carbs, and eating tons of vegetables and fruits wrecks havoc on your digestive system.”

    Um No, you are wrong.

    yeh, ACTUALLY, meat rots in your colon (and causes cancer and allergies)

    you have a long digestive system like herbivores! and teeth to chew veggies.

    carnivores have "canine teeth" to shred meat, and a short system for meat to pass through

    Veggies take a while to break down, meat needs to pass through so it doesn't rot inside of your body =p

    At first, since your body isn't use to eating right (for a few weeks)

    you get upset stomachs (like when starting using xylitol instead of sugar)

    but

    Now I eat brocolli, beans, whatever, and it does nothing to my stomach

    but to each his/her own I guess

  3. Janers says:
    Wed, 25th Jun 200811:41 am 

    but yeh, what is that they served you?

    haha I wouldn't even eat that

  4. Natalie says:
    Wed, 25th Jun 200811:35 pm 

    Congratulations on going vegan for a week. That said, saying that you don’t think veganism is healthy is totally unfair. You aren’t a dietitian as far as I know, and probably aren’t even majoring in a health or nutrition field. Veganism, like every other diet can be very unhealthy if you don’t eat right. It’s not inherent to the diet, just the way you might be eating no matter whether you’re vegan or not.

  5. you're gay says:
    Thu, 26th Jun 20083:31 am 

    “wreck havoc”

  6. Lien says:
    Thu, 26th Jun 20083:41 am 

    I don’t think veganism is the most healthy way to live; you can’t live that way and come nothing short (vitamine B12 among them), unless you use artificial supplements or check that it’s added to, for example, the cereal you eat.

    But I do think that skipping dairy products is a treat to your digestive system and your body in its entirety. I actually daresay that there would be way less problems concerning cholesterol (and what comes along with it: heart and blood vessel problems, diabetes, excess weight…) when people would consume them less.

    Ever since I became a vegan (which is now about 5 years ago), I have my blood checked every 6 months, and besides a minimum of B12, the results are absolutely perfect… way better than when I was still a regular milk&cheese stuffing vegetarian.

    So if you want to be healthy, I would say you start eating half the amount of meat you usually eat (and stick to fresh, preferrably organic meat), eat more veggies and veggie protein (beans, lentils, chick peas,..) to compensate and cut back your use of dairy products drastically, more than anything else.

  7. Heather says:
    Fri, 27th Jun 200810:38 am 

    Lien, vitamin b12 is found in grains, and also is in soy milk. this is an example of how some make statements without knowing a lot about nutrition regarding the vegan diet (though i dont expect anyone to really know if they arent one). and as far as veganism not being healthy, i lost 10 pounds, havent gotten sick in a couple of years, and used to faint a lot but that has now stopped. You cannot expect, however, to lose weight in a single week. It is also easy to be vegan and eat crap.

    If anyone wants to become vegan, I recommend the vegan sourcebook. this book has the low-down on everything you need to know about nutrition, and also the issues surronding veganism (there is even a vegan food pyramid).

    While I don't really care what anyone else does, I find it aggravating when people who aren't vegans themselves make false statements about the diet. Done properly, it is very healthy, not only as far as nutrition, but as far as not consuming the high amounts of hormones in meat and dairy products (which are fed to the animals, and thought to have a link to both cancer and earlier periods in girls). Unless you know a man who milks a cow himself and sells it on the side of the road without the use of hormones, these chemicals are hard to avoid.

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