Labels Are Too Mainstream
On Becoming a Pseudo-Vegan.
Maybe someday I’ll have this printed on a t-shirt:
This is what I do not eat: processed white sugar, processed foods in general, white flour, dairy products (except for unadulterated yoghurt), soy products, certain cooking oils, sea creatures and land animals of all kinds.
A shirt like this would be handy at social events. I could skip the necessarily revelations and just get on to explaining why.
Strictly speaking, I’m a vegetarian. Meat disappeared from my diet seven years ago, but I continued to eat fish sporadically (mostly to appease my mother and grandmother) until last year. Shortly thereafter I cut out nearly anything that comes from a cow: milk, ice cream, cheese, butter, etc. Yoghurt is my one exception. Right before Christmas 2012, I stopped eating processed sugar, processed foods, and flour white.
It has become easier to tell inquisitors — host and hostesses, friends and acquaintances — that I am a vegan. Which, technically, I am not.
Vegans — stringent vegans — don’t partake of anything that comes from an animal or is, in a sense, an animal’s livelihood. This includes honey, which is my number one hindrance to becoming truly vegan. (I eat a lot of honey.) I also consume eggs from time to time, and occasionally goat or sheep cheese. So here I am in this netherworld veggie-eaters.
Which is why I call myself a pseudo-vegan.
Someone gave me that title, in jest, and they continue to use it, affectionally. And I like that — I like terms of endearment, even quirky ones that nobody else understands.
I am not quite a vegetarian, I am not quite vegan. I’m neither this nor that.
This is how I got to being a pseudo-vegan; these are the whys:
You can probably guess why I stopped eating meat. If not, let’s have a talk sometime, shall we? I’ll give you a hint though: it wasn’t for the animals. I have several pairs of leather shoes, a leather belt and leather satchel (I really like leather). It was for me. It was because my great-grandmother had heart disease and my grandfather, her son, had a heart attack. It was because when I ate meat my digestive organs took a beating.I don’t eat meat because of the impact it has on my body, never mind the planet we live on.
As for sugar, flour and processed foods, I heard rumors about how they weren’t all they were cracked up to be. Then I stopped eating them. Then I felt amazing. Then I knew I never needed to eat them again.
The same goes for cow juice and its related creations. Milk was, after all, meant to quickly turn a tiny baby cow into a bulky, robust, methane emitting beast. Yoghurt is a special case; it’s fermented. During fermentation, bacteria transforms the milk into something new and easier to digest (but that’s a story for another time). I’d probably be ok with kefir too, but I can’t quite get past the thought that it looks like a giant glob of earwax.
Generally when it comes to cooking fats, I prefer coconut oil, ghee, and extra virgin olive oil. In this department I occasionally allow some leeway.
And then there’s soy. Soy mimics hormones. As in, it mimics the chemical messengers running around our bodies.Specifically, estrogen. That’s caused me some trouble in the past. Been there, done that.
If you are going to eat a living creature, I recommend fish. Personally though, I’m none too crazy about the state of our world’s waters or fishing industries. For now, I’ll pass.
In short, I eat the way I do pretty much for selfish reasons. I just want my body to work as best as it possibly can for as long as it possibly can. That’s my first priority. A very close second is the land underneath my feet, and your feet, and the people whose sweat it took to put food on my plate. The most beautiful meals are when all three of those desires come together.
I’ve been told I eat weirdly, and I do. It isn’t always easy. But if you’re serving up a meal for me, no need to jump through hoops. This was my choice. I’ll deal. (Thanks though.)
There is a spectrum of vegetarianism. At one end you have casual vegetarianism — flexitarians, weekend-vegetarians — and at the opposing end there are hardcore vegans. I fall somewhere in between.
But picking your shade in the vegetarian rainbow is not important.
When I became a vegetarian at fourteen, claiming that label was attractive. I could say, “I am a vegetarian,” and thus define myself in some way (ah, the woes of being fourteen). I don’t mind being called and calling myself a pseudo-vegan. It’s a pun, a joke. The boy who gave me that name laughs about it and I laugh with him. I am now almost twenty-one, and I know labels do not make me the person that I am.
I am an eater.
And I eat what I eat because I believe it is nourishing. I avoid what I avoid not because it falls outside the parameters of a certain definition, but because I don’t believe my body needs it.
I eat foods that are not far removed from their original state. I try to find them way there are fresh, ripe and raw. I cook them with care. I endeavor to eat slower, to chew more. I want to know the people who feed me. I want to feed other people.
That is my gastronomy, the way I live my life, not a title or a tag.
If you liked this, you might really like this too: gastropermaculture.com.
