How to go vegetarian

Editorial | October 14th, 2016

By Tom Bixby

tom@hpr1.com

There are lots of good reasons to become a vegetarian. Meat contains the harmful kind of fat, can cause food poisoning, and animals suffer and die to produce it. You can help yourself lose weight, do your bit to protect the environment, and ingest more nutrients.

Start with a good cookbook. Our favorite is Martha Rose Shulman, “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.” Or you could go online and visit Post Punk Kitchen, http://www.theppk.com/

First, don’t try to do it cold turkey. If you go along gradually it’s more likely to be permanent, with fewer relapses.

Eating is one of our main sensory pleasures. It follows that food of whatever kind should be tasty and pleasurable. That doesn’t mean go to the nearest convenience store and scarf up whatever’s in front of you. There are plenty of vegetarian choices that taste good and are nutritious as well, and you will discover them as you sample your way through supermarkets and the refrigerators of friends and acquaintances.

Eliminate one item at a time, and make it something you don’t like that much. Red meat is a good starting point for many of us.

Don’t follow someone’s published and recommended diet. Work with what tastes best to you. Don’t worry about what’s good or bad for you. Eat what you like.

If you do have a relapse and wolf down an entire bratwurst, forgive yourself and start over.

There are lots of priggish people around, who severely criticize any deviations from a strict diet. It goes without saying that you should politely refuse lunch invitations from any

such. Or it may be just your luck to be engaged in conversation with one of them. As soon as they make a remark favorable to strict veganism or strict anything, make an excuse, “and now if you’ll excuse me,” and go away.

It does sometimes happen that you’re in a restaurant with a fussy eater, who thinks everyone should eat as they do. There are conversational cues you may not be familiar with. Carnivores sometimes say that they don’t trust anybody who doesn’t eat meat. If vegans see you enjoying something they disapprove of, they will tell you how it was produced in great detail, to try to spoil your appetite.

In that case, remember to order grapefruit for dessert. If you are uncertain what to do next, watch James Cagney in a short clip from “The Public Enemy,” (1931). Here’s a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4R5wZs8cxI

If someone is kind enough to invite you to dinner, don’t tell them you’re a vegetarian. Be served with what everyone is having and eat all the non-meat items. If the host asks if you are a veggie, say no, you just don’t feel well at the moment. Most people think one should inform the host of dietary preferences, but we disagree. Why impose the work and inconvenience of an extra dish? If you are tempted and eat what’s on your plate, forgive yourself as in the above-mentioned bratwurst.

If someone you don’t like is going veggie, do invite them to dinner and add jurubeba to something they’re about to eat. Jurubeba (solanium paniculatum) is abundant throughout the Amazon basin, available in Latin groceries, and is supposed to be an aid to digestion. Saying it is bitter doesn’t go far enough. It tastes like something industrial that got into your lunch by mistake. It looks just like peas and they’ll never know until they bite into it.

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[Editor’s note: the opinions expressed in this guest editorial are the writer’s own, and do not necessarily represent the views of the High Plains Reader.]

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