DAY THIRTEEN: Since I'm still confined by the rules of the fast, I am still counting. I drank grapefruit juice all day and it was surprisingly good at curbing my raging appetite. However, it did nothing to stop me from wanting to eat anything and everything. From morning to night my eyes have been bigger than my stomach and I just want to take a bite of something, anything. Eric made a delicious meal on the grill and I couldn't have any of it. It smelled good. It looked good. I just wanted to eat the vegetables or a salad, but no...I didn't.
I took the train home today and when I got off I noticed a magazine phamplet with the title, "Vegetarian Starter Kit." Produced by PETA and full of celebrities, harrowing scenes of animal slaughter and vegetarian receipes, it seemed like a good omen for my future plans as a vegetarian. I was planning on eating fish from time to time, or as a source of protein, but the PETA people give a good case against consuming fish, "Fish are our fellow citizens with scales and fins...I would never eat anyone I know personally." This coming from someone with a Phd and someone who worked for the U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. But all teasing aside, I was convinced enough that I will eat fish only on special occasions, say a visit to a sushi place, and keep it to a minimum.
Other than that, my energy was okay today and I felt thinner still, but didn't weigh myself since I can tell by the fit of my clothes. I am really looking forward to the vegetable stew that Marilyn and I will make tomorrow evening. It's going to be hard not to eat too much, I feel. But we'll see.
Oh, and I thought you would find it amusing that Marilyn simply ate tablespoons of maple syrup all day instead of having the lemonade. And she wanted to go through June! I still feel like I should do some more days, but mentally, I feel ready to come off the fast.
I've never been so excited to eat soup. Or anything, for that matter.
posted by stine @ 11:33 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
There's this book I read about recently called "The Way We Eat" that I read about on Salon (salon.com, that is). Anyway, it's basically an ethics book about food and at one point during the interview, the author said that he thought 80% of what vegans accomplished through hardcore diet restrictions could be accomplished just by not eating food produced at factory farm type operations. And I was all, "wow, that would be so easy."
I really want to get myself a copy of this book... if only because he also suggested that you would cause less ethical harm by breeding wingless chickens and keeping them in "factory farm" cages, rather than allowing them to keep their wings in the same caged settings. Apparently, the cages are too small to allow the chickens to stretch their wings. If anything, he sounds provacative.
Hmmm, that does sound rather interesting.
Considering that the PETA people have a much bigger agenda in encouraging veganism, it seems likely that they would skew the statistics to suit their case.
I think that is one of the nice things about places like whole foods and trader joe's, is they do the work of finding good places to buy from. The hard thing is, do you trust them?
I think vegans truly do not believe in eating their fellow animals. I don't think it is because animals are mistreated in their cages. I think they just flat out get grossed out by the flesh of other animals.
But I wouldn't know for sure...
Oh, I'm positive that most or all people who practice veganism do it because of the "not hurting/killing other living things" thing. I think the author was phrasing it to point out that it is a lot easier to not purchase chickens and pigs that were raised in "factory farm" settings, rather than making sure that nothing you eat has any animal bi-products, including honey, butter, milk solids, cane suger, etc. And if you can still accomplish 80% of "animal non-harm" that the average vegan does with a fraction of the effort, it seems like a pretty good deal.
While I would (maybe) trust Whole Foods (the prices are sometimes a bit offensive), Trader Joes is a bit more dicey. Because of the way they import goods from "secret locations" and package them in the US to protect their sources, it's hard to track if it's brought in from a country that practices sound agricultural practices or one that still uses pesticides that are illegal in the US.
And then you have the problem with the whole "organic" label... especially with things like milk, which is this booming market. Labels like Horizon (owned by Deans Foods) have been singled out for barely sticking to "organic" practices, while small operations that are far more "organic" opt to not get the certification, not wanting to put out the money each year or fearing that the certification standards will negatively affect how they farm.
Maybe you should stick to lemons and maple syrup. ;)
As someone who does not eat meat, I can say that my choice is based solely on the fact that meat disgusts me. It's not the mistreatment of animals (I wear leather, I eat cheese), it's the cooked flesh that makes me sick. I just think it's wrong, so I don't do it. If you can accomplish the same thing as vegans by not buying factory farmed foods, great, but I can accomplish the same by not eating animals, which still sounds more ethical.
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