BECOMING A VEGETARIAN - part 1

Becoming a vegetarian is a challenge.  I am not a vegetarian myself because I do eat chicken maybe once per week, but I understand the difficulties of following a "special" diet.  Six months ago, I discovered that I am gluten-intolerant.  This means that I need to avoid foods that contain wheat, barley, spelt, and rye or I will become ill (the effects of which I will not share here).  I also need to avoid foods that have a high chance of being cross-contaminated with gluten such as oats, amaranth, buckwheat, millet, and teff that are not certified gluten-free.  Although I have naturally avoided certain foods like pasta and sandwiches for many years already, it has been the greatest challenge to also stop purchasing certain candy bars, granola bars, prepackaged rice, snack mixes, non-dairy products, condiments, juices, cosmetics, medicines, spice mixes, and animal products that contain gluten.

The key, I have found, is that word "prepackaged."  You never know what you are going to get boxed up and ready-to-eat on the store shelf.  The identity of food gets hidden beneath words like "natural flavors" and "natural enzymes."  In the food industry, derivatives of wheat are often used as a binder.  Having a father that worked in the food industry for over 40 years has allowed me to tour food plants personally and witness that wheat flour is used to keep spices on oats, nuts, and cereal.  Wheat grains are mixed into other grains to provide extra protein, such as coucous and granola.  

This is also the case with animal products; they are mixed into food that shouldn't intuitively contain it such as tortillas, salad dressing, chewing gum and marshmallows.  Words that animal products can hide behind include (but are not limited to): albumin, anchovies, animal shortening, carmine, calcium stearate, capric acid, casein, clarifying agent, gelatin, glucose, glycerides, isinglass, lactic acid, lactose, lactylic stearate, lanolin, lard, lecithin, lutein, myristic acid, natural flavorings, oleic acid, palmatic acid, pancreatin, pepsin, propolis, rennin, royal jelly, sodium stearoyl lactylate, suet, tallow, vitamin A, vitamin B12, vitamin D, and whey.  

If you make meals from scratch, you are more confident that you know what you are getting.  This is the biggest resistance for Americans today in managing their diet: they either do not want to make meals from scratch or they do not know how. 

For me, cooking is a great joy.  I love to combine ingredients to make something healthy that smells and tastes wonderful so that I can serve it to other people.  But, I seem to inspire a lot of strange responses in other people, especially other women, when they find out that I am now eating this way.  Many people congratulate me for taking care of myself.  However, there is a large proportion that just cannot figure out what is possibly left for me to eat.  They warn me about the imaginably heightened possibility of either gaining weight or becoming malnourished (which is actually not any greater than their own).  I also get many shocking judgments about my seemingly now-official migration of beliefs and lifestyle into Hippie Culture - just because I am choosing not to eat food that makes me ill.  It has been an interesting experience to learn just what my fellow Americans believe about being healthy. 

I have many friends who are vegetarians - both the kind that still eat eggs and dairy products, and those who do not.  They have chosen not to eat meat (usually in their teen years), and slowly migrate closer and closer to excluding all animal products from their diet.  For many vegetarians, the motivation to exclude meat is the same as my choice to not eat gluten: it makes us ill.  This is understandable when the treatment of animals and the health effects that consuming large amounts of meat have on air quality, land usage, water pollution, and the health of the human body.

The first step toward changing your dietary choices is to read as much as you can on the topic.  Learn what healthy food choices really are: how much protein, carbohydrates, and fiber do you need?  Which foods are the best sources for these things?  How can you get the vitamins and nutrients your body needs?  Go to the library, your favorite bookstore and the internet.  Learn how to take care of yourself.  Think about your reasons for being interested in this topic.  What is your motivation?  Is it peer pressure from friends and family?  Do you truly care about your own stewardship of your body?

Once you figure these things out, then you can begin to find recipes.  You can go through recipe books at libraries and bookstores and friends' houses (if they let you) or you can search the internet for something that appeals to you.  It is acceptable to take a pen and some paper to the store and copy a recipe by hand for your own personal use at home.  Another possibility is to go through the recipes that you already own and substitute foods that you are willing to eat for those that you are trying to exclude from your diet.

If you are one of the millions of people who have no idea how to cook because you either eat at restaurants every meal, or you make meals from a box or bag, then try something simple that does not require cooking.  One example is to make a meat-free Mediterranean Salad for lunch using wild rice, red onion, olives, artichoke hearts, red bell pepper, cucumber, sunflower seeds, red wine vinegar, extra-virgin olive oil, and black pepper.  Depending on whether you want to be the type of vegetarian that stops consuming all animal products, or the type of vegetarian that just stops eating meat, you could add feta cheese, if you wish.  Once you can do this, you could move on to something a bit more advanced, like making yourself a burrito bowl at home by layering rice, beans, lettuce, corn, salsa, black pepper, and smashed avocado.  If you need to start with instant rice and baked beans, that's fine.  Eventually, you work toward using rice that needs to cook and black beans, allowing the salsa, pepper, and avocado to spice things up.

The secret to maintaining a change in your diet is to start with small changes so that you barely notice a difference, but you still feel good about your choices.  Marian Wright Edelman, the key note speaker at my commencement ceremony for college, once said: "If you don't like the way the world is, you change it.  You have an obligation to change it.  You just do it one step at a time."  We change the world one step at a time; we change our lives one choice at a time. 

By Emily Spesert


References:
[1]  http://www.cyberparent.com/eat/hiddenanimalsinfood.htm
[2]  http://kidshealth.org/teen/food_fitness/nutrition/vegetarian.html
[3]  http://zenhabits.net/how-to-become-a-vegetarian-the-easy-way/
[4]  http://www.soyouwanna.com/site/syws/vegan/vegan5.html
[5]  Morrow, Susan. "Becoming Vegetarian." Alive: Canadian Journal of Health & Nutrition; Mar1996, Issue 161, p29, 2p.