Four days
This is my fourth day as a vegan and here is a recap on my experience so far:
- TIME: of course as I just change my eating habits I need time, a lot of time. I tried to research about vegan recipes, and although I found a lot of them, I also found out that there are many electrical appliances I don’t have at my kitchen (I just move to Milan a month ago so electrical appliances were not a priority). Because of that, for example, I cannot make a lot of amazing pasta sauces, because I cannot mix all the ingredients correctly. Yesterday, as I was tired of having tomato sauce with my pasta, I decided to bought one at the supermarket. I spent 30 minutes looking for one. They were not well labeled and there was not a “vegan” shelve, so I needed to read the back of a lot of products in order to see if there were suitable for what I needed.
- BUDGET: after four days (and just four days) I noticed that I spent much more money than before. My coconut milk costed me 2.40 €, 250 gr of sweet cookies costed 3.69 € and a little hamburger with a vegan size dish (to take away) costed me 7.90 €. I don’t know if for Milano’s lifestyle is cheap or not, but I know that I can eat for much more less money. I’m confident this is just because I’m not that into veganism, and I hope that if I keep this on time, I will manage to adjust my budget correctly
- OPTIONS: Up to this time, I don’t feel I have no options when eating, sometimes I forget I have a “restricted” diet. I was missing cappuccinos at the university, but I found that our cafeteria has soy milk, so, there was no problem anymore. Yesterday we went for a “gelato” with my group team, and I thought I was not going to be able to take any, but for my surprised, there were 2 vegan options, and they were at the same price as the regular ones.
- GUILT: So, although I started this challenge because of a university task, after reading about veganism, and after the talk we had regarding habits and how they impact on the Earth, I actually feel very relief that for 4 days I haven’t eat an animal. It is weird because maybe before I tried to avoid this information, because I knew I was going to feel guily, but now that I’m at the “good side of the team” I feel very happy. Regarding this article, at the United States of America for every vegetarian there are between 371 and 582 animals who are not killed. So, if I use this equation and divided into days, I’m saving about 1.30 animals per day. That’s measurable, and that’s is amazing.
