I started my cold-turkey on meat about six months ago. While most people who go on this high road are self-confessed health buffs or animal rights activists, I would not classify myself as either of the two. During college, I ate fast food like most of the others. The quick and oil smothered burger or fries would find itself in my hands during casual lunches or late night layout sessions of the paper. I cannot really tell what made me go for this radical diet change. I just remember that after a week of basically eating Jollibee’s chicken joy, I had that kick never to let meat touch my palate again.

For months I have been trying to find the perfect description for my idiosyncratic food selection. When I started on my so-called vegan diet, I had the goal of eliminating anything that isn’t green from my plate. As months passed however, my defenses wavered until the only things I don’t eat tapered to anything that shouts “I-am-’meat’-by-any-classification”.

As of current, I don’t eat chicken, pork or beef, but I consume fish (which is strictly speaking, meat). I stray from any form of protein laden flesh, but I find myself munching on dairy products (practically also meat products). By pure standards, I would not qualify as a pure vegan. Thank god there are those in-limbo classifications.

Vegan. No nothing else, just veggies.

Lacto-vegetarian. Vegetable with dairy products.

Lacto-ovo-vegetarian. Diet which consists of milk products, eggs and veggies.

Pescatarian. Veggies, milk products, eggs and fish (almost exhaustive, but no meat).According to an article I read in INQUIRER’s Sunday magazine, many are embracing this form of diet which does not literally cast out all things meat from their diet, but merely lean towards more vegetable consumption.

The last three classifications I believe serve as transition to pure veganism. As of now, I would like to say that I am a pure dairy-consuming, fish-eating vegan (full of lenient holes here and there), but I am not. As I have successfully eliminated sinful favorites like sinigang na baboy and sinampalukang manok from the menu, one food remains to stubborn opponent, spaghetti. I guess calling yourself a vegetarian while savoring pasta drenched in tomato sauce with heaps and heaps of ground pork does not make you anything but a hypocritic vegan. It seemed at first that eating something with minute pieces of meat, which I painstakingly removed at first, is a permissible idea for someone proclaiming herself as a vegetarian. But as my dad pointed out, Meat pa rin yan di ba? Who am I kidding? Whether minute or gigantic, it doesn’t change the fact that it was still a four legged living organism. I know I am not compelled to remain on this diet, or what others would call an unnecessary self-torture. But I really intend to keep myself from having surprise heart attack/s in the future. Even if that means straining the spaghetti sauce.

I think the best title for now would be to call myself a ‘pseudo-vegan’.

 

September 21st, 2008 by Aubrey An FEU alumni waiting to be awed by the not-so-usual and even mundane twists of life.