The Vegan Diaries, Day 6: Lost in Translation

Veganism requires a lot of effort. It’s not as bad as training for a marathon, but it still requires you to devote a lot more time and thought to something you so often take for granted.

When I was traveling in Europe this summer, I spent the night in the apartment of a French student who had just become a vegan. He told me veganism was something you couldn’t just do overnight…you had to slowly ease into it, because it was quite involved. Well, I personally thought he was full of crap. If you want to go vegan, just give up all animal products cold turkey (or “cold tofurky” as the vegans would say). How hard could it possibly be?

Well, let me just say that the French kid knew what he was talking about.

When you switch over to veganism, you become a neurotic label-reading maniac. Every piece of food in front of you is now a novel to devour, and you read its packaging intensely, hoping that the villains called meat, milk and eggs don’t rear their ugly heads. It really does turn the food buying experience an emotional drag. No longer do you just blindly throw a package of food into your cart because it has pretty packaging. As a vegan, you now have to know the entire back story behind your food—who grew it, where it was made, and what's inside of it. And it can get pretty complicated.

For example, I gave up bread this past week since I thought it was “forbidden” due to eggs or yeast used to make it. Instead, I limited myself to the non-rising breads, like tortillas and pita bread, because I thought that’s what vegans did. Then I checked out a book yesterday from the library called “Vegan Cooking for Health," and lo and behold, the lady mentions how vegans love eating bagels and toast for breakfast. Bagels and toast??? Wait now! I thought those were off-limits! So I rushed over to the supermarket today, checked out the labels on bagels and sourdough bread, and sure enough, there’s no meat, milk or eggs in them! Oh, it was like the clouds parted and the angels came out and sang.

But then my eyes zoomed in on a word I hadn’t thought about before: honey. Crap! Is that forbidden? Do vegans really carry the whole animal thing this far into the insect realm and worry about the emotional state of bees making honey? Aghhh! Where’s a vegan hotline when you need one?

And then it gets even more complicated when you read below the Nutrition Fact label and it says, “Made on equipment shared with milk, egg and soy.” So… is the food OK for vegans, or is it now off-limits due to the remote chance that tiny subatomic particles of animal byproducts are floating around it? Mercy… why can’t they just make this easy for clueless folks like me and just put a big letter “V” on the package?

I’m under the impression that there’s probably several levels of veganism out there, and depending on how obsessive and nutty you really want to get, it could literally go on forever. Do I become a “chickentarian” and give up all meat except for chicken, or do I only eat plants that are grown locally and ban everything else? Like ice cream at a Baskin Robbins, veganism has its 31 flavors, so you have to pick the flavor you like best and just stick with it.

Brian’s Vegan Scorecard:
Breakfast: Weetabix topped with fruit and soy milk again. I’m starting to love this Weetabix! Sounds like it could be a cool name for a band.
Lunch: Tomato soup w/ soy milk added; peas; pita bread with hummus. Man, this hummus just won’t go away.
Dinner: Toasted sourdough bread, rice and stir fry. I added tofu cubes to the stir fry. It’s my first time ever using tofu, and it tastes like absolutely nothing. I don’t get it.