 yeah, but are your SHOES vegan?!
posted by Christopher on 6.1.2004 - 12:02 pm
more of a blog entry than a rant, but important to me.
i’ve finally decided to take two next steps on the path of eating absolutely nothing. in public, i like to call myself a vegan. not because i think there’s any status associated with it, but because it’s convenient. if there weren’t some known category my diet could be viewed as, then it’d be even more frustrating than it is now to know what i could or could not eat when restaurant decisions are made and whatnot.
i’m just assuming that you all know what vegan even is :) sorry. the diet portion of being vegan is where you don’t eat anything that an animal was directly involved in making. obviously a vegan would not eat meat, but vegetarians won’t either. vegans also don’t consume dairy (milk, cheese, etc...) because it’s made from a substance that an animal (cow, goat, etc) produces. they don’t eat eggs - a chicken leaves those behind. to go beyond that, though, they won’t eat honey - a bee was directly involved in making it (they regurgitate honey). even further - most refined sugar is made by using cow bones - using something’s bones could certainly count as being directly involved. this starts to tread in the philisophical space of veganism though. why did someone become vegan? if it were for health reasons, they may not care about refined sugar containing some cow bones or eating vegetables that were grown in cow manure. a more hardcore animal-rights activist may see these things as disgusting, and take it even further still by not buying *anything* made from an animal (wool, leather and down come to mind). you can take it as far as you want. it’s easier in a place like northern california where you have access to things like vegan pet food and vegan shoes, but the internet has made the lifestyle more accessible to activists in say, texas.
anyway, hope that gave you a bit of a background. i’m going more vegan, not for animal rights purposes (though i don’t really agree w/ the cruel way humans tend to treat animals), but more for health reasons. i feel better when i don’t eat meat. i feel better when i don’t eat dairy. i never really liked eggs, so i don’t miss them. i’m not giving up honey (not sure that i’ll need to), so thinking along those lines, some more change is on the way. to date, my diet has consisted of everything a vegan (of any level) would eat, plus the not-so-obviously animal-involved things (sugar, honey, manure :) ). hydrogenated oils were also right out (because they suck). i also ate fish once in awhile (once a month, max) on a good harpoon day. well, i just decided to kill two of these foods from my diet.
fish: it’s just been getting less and less appealing for whatever reason. the last few times i ate it, my body wasn’t terribly thrilled w/ me, and it let me know in ways more sensitive readers might find repulsive. more than that though, i haven’t enjoyed it. i know good fish from bad fish, so it wasn’t that.. i just didn’t really.. like it anymore. so i figure there’s no reason to keep eating it, so i’m going to stop. this should be extremely easy, considering i won’t make fish at home, and the only place i’d have access to it are restaurants i won’t be able to eat at anyway.
refined sugar: heh.. this is the part where any semblance of a social life i may have had is going right out the window. it’s both better and worse than it seems. i’m not talking about honey (though, yes, that’s refined sugar), i’m not talking about fruit. i’m talking about sugar. white sugar, sugar, corn syrup (high or low fructose varieties), brown rice syrup, cane juice, and the multitude of other names that the marketers at health food companies have come up w/ to mask the fact that their product is “made with sugar”. i’m also steering away from grains that are not whole, since those pretty much get directly converted to sugar. potatoes w/ skin on them are still okay, even w/ their high glycemic index. i haven’t decided how far i’m going to take this yet. i don’t want to get to the point where i don’t eat anything, or i ditch my life as i know it and take up organic farming, but i’ve been off refined sugar for a week now, and i’m feeling a lot better already. my body now has to work to convert food, and i’m finding that i don’t have to eat nearly as much to be full. the flavor thing is lacking a little, but hopefully i’ll adjust to that, or just learn to use herbs and spices more.
so if i don’t really care *that* strongly about animals, and i’m not trying to fit in w/ the cool kids, why am i changing my diet once again? well.. the short answer is “because my girlfriend wants to try it”. inquiring minds may wish to know more. i’m rarely self-motivated. i’m not sure what prompted me to start to drop meat four years ago. i didn’t know any vegetarians at the time, i didn’t read anything disturbing that i didn’t already know... i just tapered off meat. part of the reason could be that i had come to california and finally realized what vegetables are supposed to taste like (and they were GOOD), but then, the fish tacos, cajun chicken burritos and all the other weird (by NYC standards) meat-based california foods i had were good too. going vegetarian was an experiment. i felt sleepy and crappy after eating a lot of meat, and didn’t when i had a more veggie-intensive meal. that was reason enough. dropping eggs and dairy was another story. my girlfriend was in the store one day and decided “i don’t want cheese anymore”. she came home and told me, and i said “ok”, and that was that for cheese. i don’t miss it. the egg thing was prompted by watching koyanisquatsi or baraka or something with her. remember the scene where the baby chicks get their beaks burned off as they’re being sorted? yeah.. so eggs went out that day. didn’t really matter to me, since i wasn’t a big egg fan anyway. hydrogenated oil only took some research to find out that you shouldn’t be eating that crap. no big deal - my preferred form of fat is olive oil and it was surprisingly easy to find foods w/o it (getting easier since trans-fats are getting media attention). this recent sugar-free change isn’t really reactive. jenny wants to try eating healthier, and i’m willing to go along for the ride. the only downside (which is a financial upside) is that each one of these changes knocks out 90% of the restaurants we can eat at. i think we’re down to two now. any new friends i make will probably have to be vegan.
so fish you can understand, i’m sure. anyone who knows a pure vegetarian will get that. the sugar thing sounds extreme? eh.. maybe. i’ll let you know in a few months if i go back to eating it again. i’m sure my body will appreciate the break from it if it turns out to be a passing phase.
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|  Abdicating the top of the food chain
posted by Dante on 6.1.2004 - 1:04 pm
This isn't going to be one of those contrived 'point-counterpoint' things, but here we have an actual instance where it would be difficult for Chris and I to be further apart on the spectrum of opinion. Scratch that. I already thought we were about as far apart as we could get, but he just managed to find a more extreme position to advocate.
It was hard enough to go out to dinner with Chris when meat was the only thing he was trying to avoid. That whole 'good spear day' thing was my way of trying to convince him to eat a cheeseburger or something. (Let's just say that if you are looking for someone to help you cure an addiction or get off a bad habit then I am not your guy.) I've tried to share meals with him since he abandoned dairy and hydrogenated oils ... but this whole refined sugar thing may well indicate and end to me even trying. At this point I think we've still got a few grains and some fruits in common, but that's about it. We can share a common starch when we cook, but I'll be throwing meat or cane sugar onto mine.
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| still here?
posted by Christopher on 6.7.2004 - 10:40 am
i'll make it brief, then. saw shrek 2. it was surprisingly good! the blantant jabs (maybe more like haymakers or uppercuts) at disney really did it for me. i'm sure i could nitpick it apart, but i won't - there wasn't anything that caused the suspension of disbelief to break. it was just enjoyable.
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| 2 more cents --
posted by Dante on 6.7.2004 - 2:41 pm
I'll agree on the Shrek 2 assessment. I laughed out loud. I don't want to ruin any of the jokes, but I think I can safely say that the gingerbread man continues to be one of my favorite sources for comic relief in the Shrek franchise.
Also, just so you people don't think I never enjoy movies, the new Harry Potter film is possibly the best of the 3 in my estimation. At the very least it kicks the crap out of the second one.
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My movie world is not all sunshine and goodness however.
I think Chris already said so, but Legally Blonde 2 is vile. Having never shut off a movie in the middle before, I will say that this was the closest I have ever come. You keep wishing it would get better, but eventually you just gouge out your eyes and weep for the rapture of death.
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