Since Skinny Bitch is one reason of the myriad that I chose to become a vegetarian, I thought I might try to take it a step further and actually do the vegan thing, as the authors of Skinny Bitch promote. I thought doing the four week meal plan in the back of the book would give me some good first-hand experience for my semester project about the eating practices of vegans. I decided I was only going to eat vegan—going 100% vegan would take a little more preparation than I have time for. Avoiding all and every product that contains a trace of animal product is so much bigger than I can wrap my head around at the moment…(are you aware of all the things that contain something from an animal??)
Anyway, so I spent over $100 at Earth Fare as I prepared to hop on the Skinny Bitch diet for four weeks. I picked up a Vegan pizza, vegan butter, fake turkey, fake bacon, fake hamburgers, sesame oil, whole grain muffins. Needless to say the cashier had to pry my debit card from my hand to swipe it. I was not only unhappy about the amount of money, but I don’t like to eat frozen foods, and a lot of the vegan stuff was from the freezer section. I made a club sandwich with the Tofurkey and fake bacon one day—it wasn’t bad, but the fake bacon was a little off-putting when I opened the package and it smelled like Beggin’ Strips for dogs….
So I Skinny Bitch’d it for 10 days and then I quit. I enjoy cheese way too much. And I kept slipping up on accident because I wasn’t aware something had a cream-based sauce, or I didn’t know there was cheese wrapped up in the sandwich. It was frustrating not only because I wasn’t aware of every single ingredient, but also because where I live there are very few vegetarian options much less vegan options.
So for the rest of my project, I plan to research the implications of veganism on society, individuals, animals, health, and consumerism, looking to see what it takes to live this kind of lifestyle, where it’s most prevalent, and why people decide to do it. Hopefully I can interview someone who is a practicing vegan to get a better first-hand account, because I must say my attempt was inadequate. I’m a fairly healthy eater anyway with lots of whole grains and vegetables, but like I said, cheese is a staple for me, I can’t do without it!
I appreciate your attempts to go vegan for the project, and while your experiment was shorter tan you'd intended, I think it's important to weave your narrative into your paper. Thinking about cost and availability is particularly important as you consider the possibilities and limitations of particular eating habits. Your reference to investigating consumerism and vegan living sounds particularly interesting. You might check out this blog -- this woman wrote a book of the same name, which you can preview on Google Books, which situates vegan living in a feminist context. Certainly, her blog includes more than just information on veganism, but you might right a search.
ReplyDeletehttp://sistahvegan.wordpress.com/