Signals from Vega

[dreamer_easy]

Veganism

Advantages
- more ethical
- healthier

Disadvantages
- less practical
- YUMMY EGGS AND CHEESE ZOMG

More ethical: egg and milk production are linked to rough treatment for animals, including the disposal of male chicks and male calves. This can be partly ameliorated by buying organic dairy produce and RSPCA-approved eggs, but never totally.

Healthier: Cutting out eggs and dairy would mean lowering the saturated fat in my diet (although again this can be partly ameliorated with low-fat cheese). Plus I'm lactose intolerant and have to take enzymes whenever I eat dairy. Compensating for protein and B12 is no problem.

Less practical: the first stage of changing your diet is just awareness. omg I didn't realise how much I was relying on eggs and dairy. Even Sanitarium's fake bacon contains whey protein. The available soy cheeses do not impress me. Takeaway food is a huge problem.

YUMMY EGGS AND CHEESE ZOMG: zomg!

In conclusion: if I try to be a strict vegan, I will utterly fail. Better to continue slouching in that direction.

Comments

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

What if you had designated cheat days? Like once or twice a month?

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I think I need designated cheat days once or twice a day.

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the ZOMG factor keeps me from going vegan.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

NO MORE HONEY OMG

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Oh, fuck bees.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I can but say:

Ow.

[matthewwolff.livejournal.com]

lol!

Vague-anism

[stevencaldwell.livejournal.com]

I hear you Kate. The whole 'what to eat' schtick is so hard. I used to humour you so much over this whole vegetarian thing. I needed to be less vague about it. These days I am trying to bear in mind the following when I choose my food. If I am eating pain, I carry that pain. Or at least the echo of that pain. Am I capable and prepared to do that? What does it do to me to know I have condoned pain?

I can use convenience and, quite frankly, my mind to twist myself into knots over it. When that happens, I am eating even more pain. My pain.Pain with a soucon of guilt. So, slow the consumption of pain. Reduce it. In this life you will never stop the causes of pain, but you can cultivate and develop the intention to reduce. After all we, as the nebulous They say, are what we eat. Don't be pain. Eat the intention and realisation to reduce pain instead. One chicken burger, one Honey Smoothie at a time. :-)

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[alawston.livejournal.com]

My housemate at university was lactose intolerant, but could handle goats' milk. That was a shock the first time I opened the fridge without paying enough attention. I would naively assume goats' milk to be a wee bit more ethical in production given that it can't be produced on such an industrial scale.

[alawston.livejournal.com]

You win the Internet.

[hexacontium.livejournal.com]

Oh my... I can't imagine being vegetatian here, let alone vegan, as also fruits and vegetables from organic farmers just taste like water. I wonder, veggies here must have their tastebuds surgically removed, or they cover everything in a thick layer of cheese and honey.

[outsdr.livejournal.com]

I spent about 10 years not drinking milk because my parents were raising goats and that's all we had to drink... raw goat's milk. To this day, the memory of the foul stuff literally makes me gag.

[alawston.livejournal.com]

Yeah... not a day went by in our house when we didn't launch into the Red Dwarf routine about dog milk.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

*Googling noises* Heavens! I didn't know eggs contained so much monounsaturated fat. Thanks for the pointer!

I <3 tofu and tempeh, but also use a lot of lentils and chickpeas, which I also <3. :-) I've eaten and enjoyed gluten, but don't use it at home. I don't use much in the way of peanut butter, either.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

My experience of organic fruit and veg has, happily, been the opposite of yours - they tend to be *more* flavoursome than the supermarket stuff, although possibly only because they're days or weeks fresher.

Re: Vague-anism

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I think that's what's happening to me - the pain is starting to leak through. It's the same thing that happened at sixteen, when I first became a vegetarian.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

It doesn't help that many restaurants apparently consider fish sauce and oyster sauce to be "vegetarian". :-P

The most obvious vegan takeaway option would be pasta and a tomato-based sauce - during my months or years of severe lactose intolerance, I ate an awful lot of that!

[hexacontium.livejournal.com]

I think it also depends on where you life and what you like. Yea, I can get rather tasty cabbage, brussel sprouts and the likes, but none of the juicy stuff. A simple tomato grown in the rather cool summers here will always taste rather dull, or originate from a greenhouse and taste even duller. I tried to grow vegetables in my little sunny backgarden, using really good plants from my granny some 600km further inland where summers are quiet a few degrees warmer. Unfortunately, the taste differed little from what I can get in supermarkets. But at least I know the veggies where't touched by chemicals. *sigh* either I should move again or wait for global warming to fully kick in.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

Re: Vague-anism

[jblum.livejournal.com]

Perhaps an easier approach would be to acknowledge and observe the pain rather than trying to avoid it... I've been thinking about that sort of thing a lot lately in various contexts, that I can't tread so lightly as to leave no footprint, that I can neither avoid nor cure all the ills surrounding me. I have to find some way of coexisting with them, and allowing myself some contentment despite them... and in this case, that means accepting that I do want to eat cheese. Or in my case, meat. No guilt! (or, at least, very little...)

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I already buy cruelty-free eggs (ie, RSPCA-approved ones!), but there's still the problem of the male chicks...

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Eatin' crackers and Tartex, here.

Re: Vague-anism

[stevencaldwell.livejournal.com]

It's funny, I first became a vegetarian because a nun told me to. (So much for guiding my own destiny, eh?)

The thought of meat makes me ill, yet I haven't faced the reality of eggs and milk (btw I've just had some yoghurt so how's that for hypocrisy) but, as I said before, reduction is the key.

Oh, and if it wasn't for you being a veggo, I would never have done it. The example of your life has more impact than a tiny Taiwanese nun with a stick, though she did hit quite hard.