What the Vegan!

I have in my hand a copy of the very first Vegan Times. Dated November 1944 it is the first instance in which Donald Watson and his associates first began to use the term Vegan- as a contraction of the word vegetarian.

Sixty five years later, I would make the switch myself. Having gorged myself to the morbidly obese section of an NHS wallchart, something had to give, although I never intended becoming vegan. I never intended even to stick at vegetarianism but, as with all good journeys, I couldn’t just forget things I had found along the way. My parents assumed it was an eating disorder. I still get quips from members of the family when we gather for occasions but, to steal a phrase from a real disorder: Nothing actually tastes as good as vegan feels.

I had started out simply trying to cook my own meals, but with slightly healthier food. I decided that the processed gunge was doing me no good at all and so for a New Year challenge I opted to cook vegetarian for a month. That month, with all of its bacon cravings and skipped kebab shops was tough, I can’t lie, though I knew I could get through on my own convictions having navigated my way through Lent (in a chocolate shop) the year before.

As the month went on, I started to feel markedly better in myself. It sounds incredibly naïve having scoffed my way through most types of meat I had encountered for 23 years, but I didn’t actually realise just how reliant we were on animals in our diet. Today’s food isn’t the meat and two veg stuff of our ancestors. These days food has a peel top lid, a ring pull or a healthy ding to announce its arrival. There isn’t a quarter pound of cow arse in your burger and yet surprisingly, there is a healthy measure of it in your soft drink. Go figure.

It was only through reading the labels and finding more and more information about the ingredients in my food that I began to see the huge amount of additives involved in the process. I had made the switch subconsciously and not even realised it. By the time I had finished January, I’d survived. I actually felt a satisfaction in the achievement- leading me to ask if I could continue as I was and reduce the need to kill the animals even further. Nobody who knew eighteen stone me would have believed it.  

I had what Paul McCartney described as ‘a kind of epiphany’. The realisation that I could go on to live without the need for any suffering or slaughter was a game changer. I didn’t know where the eggs in my food came from because logically, I hadn’t even realised they were in all those packets. I didn’t know how healthy the cows were because I’d never even considered emailing Walkers to ask about their salt and vinegar crisps (I know, whey?).  What I did know was that the risk wasn’t worth it. I wouldn’t eat a scraggy looking cow or chicken so why should I buy eggs from the same dodgy farmer. I took it as a challenge  to push it that extra bit further and abandon these products completely- starting with just one day a week, my Vegan Thursdays.

I did two, having so much left over on the second week that it continued into Friday and Saturday and here we are four years later. In all of that time I have missed meat, of course I have, but I haven’t necessarily craved it.

I can still taste the kangaroo I had on holiday, the venison I ate in that fancy restaurant, the steak on my birthday but, with the understanding that I am making this conscious choice each time I choose something different on the menu, I can imagine each of the little buggers fleeing over the abattoir fence to live another day.

That is a hell of a liberating experience, let me tell you. It is worth not eating proper melty cheese for. It is worth not eating shop bought cakes for. It is certainly worth not eating meat for.

To conclude then, I’ll ask you all to plan one completely vegetarian day next time you go shopping. Have your coffee black, jam on your toast, your lunchtime jacket potato topped with salad & beans instead of cheese and for dinner, any of a thousand different vegetable curries soups or stews.

Seems so easy, yes? Compared to what you could have killed, guilt free is a bloody good feeling before bedtime, just trust me on this.  

Thanks for reading,
S ;)

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Do me a fava

Broad Beans

If I had patience I'd grow beans
the kind that look like kidneys
only green

I'd find three long sticks in the shed
and bind them at one end
with twine

I'd stand these sticks in fat, black earth
above neat rows of seedlings
curly sprites

I'd wrap the sticks with copper net
to keep out slugs and snails
and birds

I'd train the plants towards the light
with soft brown string found in
a drawer

And check the leaves for signs of harm
like wilting or attacks
by bugs

If I had beans I'd grow patience
the kind that looks like study
only free

I am taking a break from blogging for a while.  Thursday's slot will be filled by a poet whose I respect and admire very much.  I commend you to her incredibly capable hands.  This blog is a wonderful thing and I look forward to returning in the not-too-distant future.  Thank you for reading.

Vicky x

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Anaemia schmemia...VEGANS

I have to say I think vegans are very healthy people. We eat far too much food, particularly meat here in the west and much of it we don't need. My ex was a coiliac, which is a severe gluten allergy which erodes the gut lining causing a multitude of health issues, so I've had to check packaging pretty carefully over the years in supermarkets. Our food has a multitude of hidden additives and bizarre chemicals added to it. Even the meat. Fresh meat in supermarkets is injected with salt, water and sugar to increase its weight and therefore they can charge more per kilogram. I have even found frozen meat in major supermarket to have gluten added. Yes theyve injected wheat in there to stodge it up. Now I know most food is likely to be tampered with, but the meat really does concern me. What on earth do they think they are doing to our food? What right do they have to inject stuff into meat and sell it sneakily like this? It's fraud. Profit over health. But the supermarkets get away with it because they know many people neither understand nor care. Theyve worked a 12 hour shift or are juggling 3 children around or are STANDING DAYDREAMING IN FRONT OF ME WITH THEIR TROLLEY BLOCKING THE AISLE WHEN i JUST WENT IN FOR SOME MILK. Ahem.

I can take meat or leave it. I can't stomach processed meat and if chicken is frozen it has a funny aftertaste to me so I'm happy to avoid it. You know when you're cooking meat and loads of foam comes out of it? That's all the crap they've added to it being released. That's why baon sometimes shrinks by half under the grill. Many ready meals contain chicken reared in thailand where the regulations are far more lax and then processed into meals when the meat is shipped here so they bypass regulations. Check the labels, it states that some of the produce is from Thailand, even the thieving robdog supermarkets like Sainsbuggers do it. Yuck.

Cooking from scratch is the best option but if the meat has been tampered with before it's cooked, what then? The veggies probably have pesticides on them but there is the option of organic veg. But the meat? It may be organic but I'll guess the supermarkets can still claim that it is 'happy' meat if they are just injecting stuff afterwards can't they? Unless you have a local butcher you're stuck with it.

With more intolerances and allergies to foods being discovered nowadays I do think we have to be more aware of what we are eating, surely it does have an impact on our health in more than a physical sense? How about emotional and mental health? If you put crap in...

So, vegans. I'll bet they cook most things from scratch, avoid processed foods like a dose of chlamidia and study packaging carefully for added nasties. So they are on to something I think. I may have no opinion on the animal cruelty aspect but I do think vegans are more careful with what they put into their bodies, which is no bad thing. S'a temple innit?

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