This is Day 2 of my Vegan Challenge. I was prompted to temporarily eat a vegan diet based on a UN study released last week. The report found evidence that a global diet shift away from animal products is needed to help prevent resource depletion and alleviate world hunger.
I want to close the mental gap between the food on my plate and the animals I see being hauled down the interstate in semis. Yesterday I “tweeted” my interest in following one cow from birth to slaughter to the plate, just so I better understand where my food is coming from. My friend replied that he had no interest in knowing where his food comes from because he knew it probably wouldn’t sit well with him, anyway. Why do we turn a blind eye?
Most of us know the animal products we eat come from beings that were treated inhumanely, and yet, we choose to look the other way. Is this because we feel we can’t make much of a difference in the situation? Is it because we don’t care? Or can we just not bear to look?
I’ve been pondering questions like these. Today went much better than yesterday. I believe I made it through most of the day without consciously eating animal products, and I’m proud about it. I say “consciously” because I’ve realized that animal products hide under really complicated names on food labels, and it’s really hard to avoid them if you can’t identify them.
I found what I think is a really comprehensive list of non-vegan ingredients commonly found in food. Most of these have names I’ve never heard of before, which is why they are easily disguised. You need a watchful and careful eye for this game, but I’m learning SO much about these products.
White sugar is often filtered with charred cow bones to remove color and impurities. While the finished product does not contain animal products, using animal bones in production is a violation for many vegans. VegFamily.com claims Domino is one company to use this process.
For example, I learned that white sugar is often filtered with the charred bones of cows. This is done to remove color and impurities from the sugar. According to vegfamily.com, Domino, Savannah Foods, and the California and Hawaiian Sugar Company admitted to using bone char in their whitening process. I’ve heard that eating cane and raw sugar is safe, but confectioner’s sugar and brown sugar are both likely to have been filtered this way. Brown sugar is just white sugar mixed with molasses, and powdered sugar is just ground up white sugar.
This makes me wonder why we eat white sugar in the first place. I love cane sugar, and I prefer it. Maybe people just like their products to look as sanitary and clean as possible, but how silly.
I’m also learning that most restaurant employees have no idea what’s actually in the food they sell. I asked a woman at Panera Bread today about the ingredients in their garden vegetable with pesto soup. She said it didn’t contain any milk or cheese. She even asked a manager. I looked online at the website’s menu ingredients list (I wish more restaurants had these) and the soup contains cheese, and something called thiamine mononitrate, which is a salt of vitamin B1 and can sometimes come from pork, but not always. How frustrating! You’re telling me there might be pork in that vegetarian soup?
The bottom line is this: do your research; this is the only way to confirm ingredients, and you’ll learn so much about what you’ve been eating. Luckily, I work at a health food store where many of my fellow employees are knowledgeable on what products aren’t vegan but are hard to spot, and they’re understanding of my process. I can call on them to read over an ingredients list and point out the off limits stuff.
I’ve been trying not to make those around me feel badly about eating animal products in front of me. I find myself feeling like a burden on the people around me. Luckily the girl at Panera today was so sweet and curious about my diet, despite her wrong answer about the soup. One of my readers sent me to The Vegan Society’s website where they have something called The Vegan Pledge. They set you up with a “vegan mentor” who will help you through your pledge, be it one week or 30 days. How cool. Check it out if you are considering making the switch.
I’d like to change gears for a moment. I am still in the early stage of my challenge, and I want to say a few things before I go much further.
I’ve faced some questions about my reasons for this challenge. One person pointed out that I might not be setting much of an example if I don’t plan on sticking with this diet. I am prepared for the vegan community to ridicule me because approve of eating meat and animal products. I am also prepared to be called a poser and a cheater and a bad representation of the entire movement.
Let me say that I do not agree – at all – with how industrialized agriculture works, nor how the animals in the industry are raised, treated and slaughtered. However, I can choose not to participate in this system by eating meat and dairy products that are not part of that industry, and are instead raised locally, under more humane conditions. I want to encourage everyone who is not a vegan to do the same, but this may not be realistic, because not everyone can afford to pay the higher prices that come with this kind of consumption decision.
As an activist and environmentalist, the issue of whether or not we should eat meat is not my argument. My argument is this: if we were to step away from industrialized agriculture by not eating any animal products for a certain amount of time (or forever, if that suits you) we could reduce our consumption of land and resources, and we could reduce our emissions.
The Environmental Defense Fund found if everyone in the country ate one meat-free meal a week, it would be the same as taking more than 5 million cars off the roads. Further, if everyone designated one day a week as meat-free, it would be the same as taking 8 million cars off the roads.
If you consider the fact that when one car burns just one gallon of gas, it creates almost 20 pounds of CO2, taking 8 million cars off the road is huge.
I am going vegan for two weeks to reduce my footprint, and to set a realistic example for people looking for middle ground between spending more money than they can afford on local animal products and not eating them at all. I want to encourage people to go vegan, but if they can’t do so forever (like me), I want to show people that you can do so at least for a little while, and perhaps you can work it into your weekly and/or daily routines.
We have to change our mentality about our food. We have to willingly let go of our perceived rights to eat whatever we want and acknowledge that our massive animal consumption is not good for the planet (and more often than not, it’s bad for our bodies). To do that, I think we might have to change the stigma that veganism is only for people who think it’s morally wrong to eat animals. Let’s make veganism something everyone can do because it’s globally responsible. I think closing the door to the vegan world on those who enjoy eating meat but are willing to stop is a bad response, and only encourages them to eat more animal products.
Thanks for reading. Tomorrow I will give a rundown of what exactly I’m eating. I’ve found some awesome ice cream!
Follow this series by clicking the links below:
The Vegan Challenge Series
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Jessica is a freelance writer from West Lafayette, IN. She recently graduated from the Indiana University School of Journalism with her B.A. in journalism and a concentration in political science. Her works have been featured in a number of publications including HELEN magazine, The Bloomington Herald-Times, and CafeAbroad.com. Jessica is an environmentalist with a passion for the outdoors. She also has an insatiable appetite for travel, and was fortunate enough to spend a semester abroad in Rome, Italy. She currently lives in Indiana but is planning a move to New York City in the near future. Visit her Web site here.
While I give you props for even trying, the biggest flaw I see in trying to go vegan for a short while is that you don’t really get a glimpse of how you would be eating if you were a vegan.
You get all the pain of the conversion, but don’t get to experience what it’s like once you’ve settled in to the lifestyle.
After a couple months of being vegan you would experience the bliss of rarely ever having to read a single ingredient again because you would have already read the ones for nearly every product you’re interested in.
After a couple months you would experience the bliss of not having to jump from untested recipe to untested recipe – or even follow recipes for that matter. You would have figured out how to duplicate all your old favorite meals vegan style – and i mean “all”.
Things that you would never have thought possible – like eggs benedict (egss on ham with egg yolk sauce on top – took me forever to perfect this technique, but i made it for my mom and she freaked completely out because it’s soooo good)
anyhow, just wanted to point out that you are mainly experience the ‘pain in the ass’ part and not the effortlessness experienced a few months after the switch.
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Robert -
I hadn’t thought about this. Yes, many people probably find the biggest joys of a vegan lifestyle come when they have settled into the lifestyle. And this is certainly worth pointing out. It’s not always this difficult.
However, I think the “pain in the ass” part of the switch is the one most daunting for non vegans. Most of us don’t read ingredient labels, as it is, so the idea of not having to when we’re used to the diet may not be convincing enough to draw us in.
Part of the fun, for me at least, is this initial feeling of confusion and challenge. The ultimate reward is, like you say, the ability to replicate your favorite meals. But getting there takes work and educating yourself, and I hope I can show people how to get through some of the hard work and hopefully even enjoy it.
By the way…how DO I replicate eggs benedict?
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I agree with what Robert said. You’re not going to understand the real joy that a good meal brings you. Ever since I’ve gone vegan, I’ve felt entirely better in my everyday life. I have more energy and I think a little differently now as compared to how I used to view things. It brings an entirely new perspective to your life and that, in my opinion, is the greatest part of being vegan. Wait, no, Foodswings (a vegan fast food restaurant located in Brooklyn, NY) is the best part of being vegan. Whenever I go there, I leave with a stuffed stomach and a happy heart.
And I would try and find a recipe that uses tofu, because, tofu can be made to mimic the texture of egg. A lot of breakfast burritos include tofu as the egg. Good luck!
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Robert – please share your “eggs” benedict recipe!
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Really great stuff, Jessica! You might find these pages useful:
http://www.veganoutreach.org/guide/beingvegan.html
http://www.veganoutreach.org/guide/definingvegan.html
And maybe the Starter Guide section:
http://www.veganoutreach.org/guide/
Good luck!!
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Here is a great essay about how being vegan is more than just an ingredient list. Spend our time and energy avoiding hundreds of ingredients which may or may not be vegan doesn’t actually do much to help animals or the planet.
http://www.veganoutreach.org/howvegan.html
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As part of your journey, I invite you to learn more about the term “humane”. Most labels are not trustworthy and the conditions are really not better for the animals. It’s a marketing ploy to make consumers feel better about exploiting animals. Even if the animals were treated well, for dairy and eggs, the male offspring are useless, so they are immediately killed. This means male calves are killed within a day of birth or sent to veal production for a miserable few months. For male chicks at hatcheries, this means being ground up alive or suffocated in trash bags on the day of birth (egg laying chickens do not provide sufficient meat). Even “humane” places do this as it’s inherent in the operation. It’s the female reproductive system only that is exploited. Cows, like all mammals (including humans), only produce milk after birth to feed their young, so the cows are kept perpetually pregnant, which in turn wears out their bodies (many become “downer” cows, too sick to even stand up and must be dragged to their slaughter). They are sent to slaughter at 4 to 5 years old (normal life span is over 20 years) to become hamburger. The same happens for “spent” hens after a year or two of constant egg laying (hens are genetically bred to produce more eggs than their bodies can handle) and are killed for chicken nuggets and broth. Bottom line is that it’s not economically feasible to keep males or allow animals to live out their natural lives. Ask any “humane” farm what they do with their male offspring and cows & hens with declining production. They are all killed and sent to the same slaughterhouses as factory farmed animals as they must be killed at an USDA approved facility. Viewing the movie Earthlings can show you what that involves. Here’s a few resources to start with:
http://www.humanemyth.org/
http://www.farmsanctuary.org/issues/factoryfarming/humane_labeling/truth_behind_labeling.html
http://www.farmsanctuary.org/issues/campaigns/truth_behind_labeling.html
http://www.chooseveg.com/free-range.asp
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-solomon/the-feminists-dilemma_b_306880.html
Even if you choose not to continue eating a plant based diet, you should be aware of what is really going on as that appears to be part of your challenge – to find out where your food really comes from. And I’ll just add to the comments above, that yes, it’s the transition stage that’s the hardest and it’s also when your palate begins to change. Once you eliminate animal products from you diet, it takes some time for your taste buds to adjust. Food is so much more varied, complex and tasty once you are vegan for awhile. Good luck with the rest of your days…
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Thank you, Sonja. What horrifying information. The natural market where I work investigates where the local meat they buy comes from, so when I am buying food there, I feel confident in my decisions. But otherwise, I feel so horribly out of control and kept in the dark, that it’s safer to not buy meat.
Again, I am awed by the information I’m receiving from readers. Thank you.
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Unfortunately, Jessica, the fact that your local market “investigates” where the meat they buy comes from, you really should not feel at all confident that there was no cruelty involved. Of the links the previous poster listed, I recommend highly that you spend even just 10 minutes on http://www.humanemyth.org. It is not a gory site designed to shock you into not eating meat, it simply reveals the truths behind labeling schemes. For example, even on “free-range” and “organic” egg farms, male baby chicks are destroyed at birth. Methods of killing involve, suffocating them in trash barrels, gassing them and grinding them alive in industrial chippers.
There is no way to “humanely” use animals for our benefit. When given the choice, shouldn’t we always choose to mercy over violence? Justice over injustice? Compassion over selfish desire?
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Please excuse the many grammatical errors in my previous post. I have not had any coffee this morning and hit “reply” without first re-reading my comment! :-O
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I love what you’re doing! Can’t wait to hear more about your journey.
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Thank you!
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You can’t *really* go vegan for the short term. Veganism is a complete lifestyle change, not just giving up non-vegan foods. Maybe it’s a little better to kill animals who suffer slightly less, i.e. eating “free range” over factory farmed, but not if it’s just an excuse to NOT go vegan.
The only people who have a compelling reason to not go vegan are people with severe food allergies/intolerances. I’m gluten intolerant and still manage to eat a very healthy, delicious, and varied vegan diet.
Reducing your footprint for two weeks pales in comparison to reducing it for your entire life.
I wish people would stop documenting their attempts to go vegan for short periods of time in the hopes of making a story. It makes veganism look like a silly, part time aspiration. Veganism is not something that happens for two weeks or before six. Veganism is something you do every day with every food and purchasing decision.
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Crystal,
I understand your frustrations. As I said, I’m simply trying to bridge the gap for readers who aren’t sure yet, to show them that it isn’t so hard, to help them through the first few weeks, and to remind them that what we eat has a huge impact on the planet. I do not think everyone will be willing to go completely vegan right away. So, as I’ve also expressed in previous comments, if we can encourage people to put one or two vegan meals in their diet per week, this is a great start. I still am not sure what’s wrong with this. We have to be realistic, and we can’t slam the door on those who aren’t sure about going completely vegan. Some is better than none, I think.
And as I also said, I may decide to keep this diet change for longer. I’m certainly learning enough to convince me of a permanent lifestyle change.
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As a vegan, I had the same initial reaction as Crystal, but then I realized that doing something like this can open up people up to making even just minor changes toward a more plant-based diet, and those small changes, if taken by growing numbers of people, can start to make a real impact.
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There’s no difference between “free range” and factory farming. “Free range” means the animals have access to the outdoors, but does NOT mean they can actually go there. A door has to be open a certain amount of the time. They’re still cramped into a tiny space and so heavy that they can’t walk.
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If Jessica sticks to animal products sold at her local health foods store they might as well be truly free range. I am a member of my co-op and I understand that smaller grocery stores like that are a lot more careful about where they buy certain products.
But if we start talking about bigger stores like Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s then all bets are off. They might actually sell products that are “free range” by the letter and not spirit of the law, if I could say it that way.
I recognize that these are the things that Pollan and Schlosser advocate in their books and the latest movie “Food, Inc”. It is important to alliviate and hopefully iradicate suffering of animals confined in conventional CAFOs. But in my view, continuing eating animals still shows that we are treating animals like commodities. And given that we can get all of our nutrients from plant based foods, it appears to be unnessesary to inflict pain on and eventually kill even the most humanely raised animal (most of them will only be able to reach their teens).
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Hi Jessica,
I’m a Ph.D. zoologist (specializing in evolutionary ecology) who has worked as an environmental specialist for 25 years. I’ve also recently been giving talks on the environmental consequences of our food choices and your comments on meat and the environment are absolutely correct. It makes no sense from an efficiency or environmental standpoint to grow many pounds of grain to produce just one pound of meat. Between 70 and 95% of the calories, protein, and other nutrients are lost by passing these foods through an animal instead of eating the grains and other plant-based foods directly. Most of our prime agricultural land in the upper Mississippi basin is used inefficiently to raise food for animals instead of food for human consumption, and all of the fertilizer and manure washing into the Mississippi river and out into the gulf contributes to a huge hypoxic dead zone each summer.
However, I have to disagree with your statement about “humans eating animals because we are at the top of the food chain and this is what we’re supposed to do.” In nature, there is no “supposed to do.” There is no “Mother Nature” out there directing us to eat animals. Humans in the United States actually get a fair amount of their food energy – averaging about 70%, from plant-based sources, not animals. In other parts of the world, the percentage of our food energy coming from plants is even higher. here are plenty of animal species that eat higher on the food chain than we do.
Humans kill other animals because we have the power to do so. This is a case of “Might Makes Right”. At the same time, MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), sometimes known as flesh-eating bacteria, kills humans. Should we argue that this bacteria is really at the top of the food chain, and defend its killing of humans because it can? I only bring this up to shake up our perspective. MRSA is a horrible disease that is now linked with the use of antibiotics in hog feed. Check out this link for more information: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/opinion/12kristof.html
That being said, I applaud what you are doing and how you are sharing it with others. This is great. My main recommendation now is that you shouldn’t sweat the small stuff right now while you are in transition. Worrying about all the minor ingredients out there that might not be vegan can make it appear much harder to adopt the new diet than it really should be. Over time you will learn about all the great varieties of vegan food that are out there, and eating an environmentally-healthy vegan diet will become a perfectly natural thing to do. Keep up the good work.
Peter
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[...] my Vegan Challenge on the Conducive Chronicle. I’ve spent the last 12 days as a vegan to reduce my environmental footprint. The tw0 week challenge is almost done, but I have learned so much that I will likely try to cut [...]
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Hi Jessica, I think what you’re doing is really cool. I’ve been vegan for about seven years, and I’ve found that it really is much easier if you don’t feel compelled to find the source of every tiny ingredient. It’s impossible to be 100% vegan, anyway.
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Heya, Thanks for this great blog. I think it is really a great topic to write about on my blog. Also here is some great blog: 7 day cabbage soup diet
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the garden vegetables that we put at home are usually cabbages and tomatoes;~;
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Very nice design and style and excellent content , very little else we require : D.Dental Implants Scottsdale
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