Surviving 14 days of vegan diet — day 1 & 2
Okay, it’s been exactly two days since I started the vegan diet. I started this challenge knowing it was going to be tough but I honestly didn’t imagine that much. At the very beginning of the challenge I didn’t ask myself too many questions about where I would get the food because i thought my trusted supermarket would have guaranteed me an easy and satisfying choice between the products to be consumed.
I realized how wrong I was when I went shopping the first day of my diet. I have seen how scarce the offer of vegan products is and how green packaging does not help in distinguishing between what is organic, 100% vegetable or simply spinach-flavored. My cart was filled with green boxes: flaxseed burgers, soy cutlets, bottles of coconut milk and bundles of bean flakes (which I absolutely don’t recommend if you don’t like eating sawdust). My shopping lasted 1 hour and 20 minutes. I realized that a vegan must have a lot of patience, at least in this supermarket, to buy the products.
I thought about how easy it is for us omnivores to do the shopping because we are aware that by entering a store we can buy any food because we know we can eat it. A different matter is to be attributed to those who instead follow some specific diets, such as the vegan one, since in these cases the selection of foods to buy is more complex, requires more time and a complete analysis of the ingredients shown on the labels. This type of process takes time. It is true that once you know the products the time to do the shopping decreases but if you want to look for new foods to taste, then a detailed analysis of the individual departments is required, in fact you can’t just rely on the packaging to decide what to buy.
The shopping I made was enough to eat for two days even though honestly it wasn’t really formidable. I thought about how to carry out my investigations through this challenge. I therefore decided on four observations to be observed these days: my relationship with food, the time taken to follow this diet, the cost of this type of food and the amount of garbage produced. I consider this last point particularly interesting because I want to analyze if, following this type of diet, the quantity of waste (not biodegradable) decreases or increases.
I reflected during the second day in particular on the fact that probably those who follow diets like the vegan one experience more different dishes, due to the scarcity of usable ingredients.
