Vegan Diet

Related Comics: The Vegan Psychosis Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Soylent Green, Risk Of Discovery

Despite being very apprehensive about a vegan diet in the past, due to circumstances out of my control (ie, out of diet ideas) I decided to give it a try.

The Diet:

Avoid all products which come from animals. This includes meat (obviously), fish, eggs, dairy, honey, cow tongue, chicken feet, and liver. Some of these things are harder to give up than others.

Wikipedia says:

Veganism is the personal practice of eliminating the use of non-human animal products.

This can lead to very disturbing alternatives:

A lot of vegans will avoid honey, which seems very strange to me. Are they feeling bad for the poor exploited worker bee? Bee apologists will tell you how we steal the product of the proletariat insects and work them like slaves. These people are conveniently forgetting a time when the honeybees would produce more honey than they needed, and flaunt their great honey wealth.

But wait, if vegans do not want to eat things that are the product of animals they have a real problem with the honeybee. It turns out that little honeybee is responsibile for 1/4 of the fruit produced for human consumption ref in the United States. Although most vegetables are self pollinating, honeybees also contribute there too. How can you be sure the tomato you are eating wasn't the product of a busy honeybee? You can't.

It doesn't stop with the bees, ladybugs (insect murderers with a cute name) will eat aphids off of vegetable plants, protecting them, which means the healthy food produced is in part a product of the ladybug. And these connections just go on and on. One might say there is some kind of giant abstract "wheel of existence" going on here, where everything sort of depends on everything else, and there is a balance. I don't know, I'll have to consult with Mufasa to be sure.

The Experience:

This is more of a philosophical choice than one designed to lose weight, so there isn't a strict regiment of "how often do I eat" and "how little should I eat."

Initially I decided to take advantage of this, and on Monday I purchased some vegan bread, english muffins, and two large bags of Good & Plenty. Monday and Tuesday I had fruit and oatmeal packets for breakfast, pounded bread and candy in the afternoon, and had brown rice and green beans for dinner. I also had at least two peanut butter and jelly (sugar free strawberry) sandwiches each evening. Tuesday evening while practicing Aikido I felt very weak and ill.

Wednesday I decided maybe I should try dieting a little more, so instead of flavor packet oatmeal for breakfast I just cooked normal oatmeal and adding just a little bit of brown sugar. I had quite of bit of fruit throughout the day (and some v8) and for dinner I had a ridiculous dinner at Village Inn. Village Inn is not very vegan friendly, I ended up ordering a "build your own" V.I.B meal, which had hashbrowns, country potatoes, fruit bowl, and cinnamon apples. Both portions of fruit were incredibly small.

Thursday morning when I weighed myself I was 3 pounds heavier than I had been on Sunday. This helped shock me back into a conservative eating pattern. I stopped eating as much bread and decided to go back to being hungry. Friday and Saturday, despite chosing some less than optimal things (like baked potatoe chips), I ate sparringly.

I exercised every day this week (that is to say Monday through Saturday), overall I felt like I was pretty low on energy. This despite endlessly stuffing carbs into my body.

Although it takes a little more work, vegan food is easy enough to find. Lots of products have convenient labels in bold under the ingredients which may read "contains milk." This makes it easy to filter out things you shouldn't have. There are fewer selections to be had, but I found they are usually about the same price as the normal stuff.

The Result:

I ended up gaining back 1.6 pounds this week. Considering how things seemed to be going on Thursday this was actually a relief.

Looking back at other diets where I've consumed a lot of bread, it looks like I gain weight back. I may have to consider giving up the delicious cooked wheat.