quitter?

I've been a vegan for almost two years. Before that, I was ovo-lacto vegetarian for 4 or 5. I've been flirting with the idea of going back to ovo-lacto for quite a while, but it's a really hard decision.

Being vegan presents a unique challenge for me as a cook - I modify recipes, make up new ones, and stretch my idea of what is good to eat. I eat a lot more vegetables, and I can be much more indulgent in greasy foods because I consume less calorie-dense food in general (not that I think about that all that much). Obviously veganism is the more ethical choice and it's better for the environment. It also has a wonderfully light and clean feeling which is hard to explain.

The principal reason I don't want to be vegan anymore is taste. I've had and made tons of amazing food as a vegan, don't get me wrong. But the taste of dairy products is much broader across the "spectrum" of tastes - butter fills the mouth and nose in a way that even the best vegan margarine just doesn't. Unlike a lot of vegans, I was already a creative and sophisticated cook even back when I was an omnivore, so I don't somehow think that vegan food is the only thing that tastes good.

Besides the taste issue, for the last year, maybe more, I've had chronic excessive heat (in the Chinese medicine sense). I should probably eat more melon and bean sprouts, but dairy sure is an effective way to cool and slow the system.

Since I've been in Vermont, I've been eating dairy. There's a big boom here right now in small-scale butter- and cheesemakers, which is extremely good for the economy as well as a responsible alternative to factory farms that tear through cows' dairy-producing years faster and faster. I had a local maple-smoked gouda for lunch that was just perfect. When I think about all the possibilites of food I could eat as an ovo-lacto - migas, macaroni & cheese, risotto quattro formaggio, it seemed forbiddingly indulgent. I'm not sure I'm ready for omlettes (I don't really like eggs), no fucking way am I going to eat meat again, and I don't think I'm going to eat even as much dairy at home as I do here with my animal-product-voracious family. But I think a few well-placed dishes with dairy, which highlight and honor the taste, smell and texture of the food seems like the right idea for me.

The big issue around the decision is of course that it's hard to allow myself to choose the less-ethical thing. I always hear of these backsliding ex-vegetarians who insist that "my body just wanted meat," and while of course I support the idea of listening to your body, I can't help but think they should've found another way to satisfy that need or desire. I'm trying to have some compassion for myself (this is a resounding theme in my psychotherapy) and forgive my imperfection of not being completely fulfilled and enriched in the spiritual, not nutritional sense, by a vegan diet. It's a big fucking challenge though, and it will be moreso when I have to admit my failure to my vegan friends. It's not a failure but a decision, I should think; I can't take responsibility for the entire weight of the fucked-up way animals are treated by our society. Eehhh. I'll try to think that, try to relax and enjoy, but maybe I'll change my mind and retreat from this emotional challenge by just stringently taking the high road.

Comments

[Fleischman]

"admit my failure to my vegan friends"??? That in itself is a lame reason to not do what you seem to want to. Eat what you want. Don't complicate your diet so much that you can't even eat without having to question it for half an hour. Five minutes is ok, but thirty, no way.

[Jay]

I'm an omnivore, but even I sometimes contemplate how much meat, milk, eggs and cheese get eaten every year or even every day in America -- and the numbers seem completely absurd. The total lack of caring about nutrition on the part of nearly all restaurants also seems completely absurd. So, to me, the modern food industry seems ... well, broken.

And in my experience, broken systems have -- in addition to the costs incurred directly by the brokenness itself -- a hidden cost. A cost in time, and in human stress and worry. In a nutshell: those who can perceive the brokenness are inevitably going to spend time and effort thinking about how it could be fixed.

It doesn't matter if the system is impossibly huge physically (eg, the seemingly unsustainable ubiquity of automobiles) or culturally (eg, sexism) or politico-historically (eg, Isreal/Palestine). There is simply GOING to be brain power spent trying to figure out how the brokenness could be fixed -- and just as importantly (if not more so), how a fix could actually be *implemented*, without having to throw the whole system into chaos.

(Incidentally, if I start to sound like a programmer talking about something "broken" in a system made of code, don't be too surprised. ;) That's the context in which I tend think about this sort of stuff.)

Someone might argure that it's counterproductive to "waste" time thinking about how to fix stuff that's broken on an endemic level. But that someone would not be me. :) I think in some systems, the brokenness is so huge and so beyond the pale that a fix is simply *necessary*, and it doesn't much matter how arduous it will be to actually do it: the potential improvement is so great (or, the impending doom if no fix is found is so disasterous) that it simply HAS to be done.

[Herb]

My wife and I have been ovo-lacto vegetarians for the last 4 years. Both the ovo and the lacto are fairly light in our diet, but we do have them. The effort is made to find free range and organic whenever possible, and some of the local producers are finally catching on.

The rural area, in which we live for the moment is less than vegetarian freindly, so we are more than happy with what we've been able to accomplish. There is also the added benfit of seeing others around us open up to "new ideas" about eating.

[Fleischman]

Herb is a Herb.