Chapter One: Cutting Through the Myths & Prejudices
It’s not for everyone this vegan thing. And it’s not a diet. It is a lifestyle. If you are certain that going ‘green’ will leave a huge hole in the middle of your plate that cannot ever be filled, then the ‘V’ is probably not for you. Please just turn around and leave the book.
For those of you who stayed, let’s say again. This is not for everybody. Judging by its definition, even the dictionary looks down on vegetarians.
Here’s what the popular online portal, “Dictionary.com” lists for the word, vegetarian:
“A person who does not eat or does not believe in eating meat, fish, fowl…..but subsists on vegetables, fruits, nuts, grain, etc.”
In case you missed it, I will point out the word ‘subsists’ in the definition. Subsist means to exist, but the connotation of the word conjures up images of abstinence and malnutrition. So, in essence, Dictionary.com is calling Vegetarianism, a diet and lifestyle of underfed and sickly people.
Dictionary.com uses an example of the word in two sentences that prove my point.
1. Why does the government think it is okay for school children to subsist on French fries and soda?
2. She announced her intention to subsist on a diet of water and fish broth – an estimated 200 to 400 calories a day.
The Oxford Dictionary plainly states that to Subsist, ‘is to maintain oneself, especially at a minimum level.’
This would lead one to believe that Vegetarians are a vast army of ascetics, abstainers, and wearers of hair shirts
Vegetarians are often the brunt of jokes, such as ‘If God did not want us to eat animals, he would not have made them out of food.’
Here’s another, “A guy was at a bar having a beer and a burger when he was yelled at for eating meat, by a woman who loudly announced that she was a vegetarian. After berating the man for a minute she stormed out and the bartender said, ‘who was that?’. The guy replied, I never saw herbivore!”
Why is there even a name for vegetarians? The meat eaters are not called ‘meatetarians’. There actually is no name for meat eaters, prompting one vegan wag to state that, “nobody who eats meat exclusively survives long enough for us to name them!”
Vegetarians fall into several categories. Some follow the lifestyle for religious or moral reasons, others for health concerns, and I am sure there are some who adopt the lifestyle simply because they love fruits, nuts, and vegetables.
I began my study of Vegans because my granddaughter, a senior in high school at this writing, has become one. I myself love vegetables but still eat chicken and fish. I rarely eat red meat. I do not know if in future, I will completely eliminate meat from my diet, but it certainly has become less important to me as the years go by.
Some decades ago, a woman opened a vegetarian restaurant near Boston. She did not call it a vegetarian restaurant. She chose instead a more marketable name - ‘Salad-Mania’. The shop was beautiful and spotless. I was employed within a five minute walk of the eatery, so I had lunch there, two or three times a week and enjoyed it very much. Everything was fresh and her menu featured every vegetable I knew and a lot I had never heard of. I usually bought tomato soup with an Italian salad.
One afternoon when I turned off Main Street to her shop just around the corner, I was saddened to see that the place was closed. I went again a few days later thinking that perhaps the owner of Salad-Mania had some sort of an emergency, and it would now be open as usual.
A note taped on the inside of the glass door explained the situation. The business simply didn’t make enough money to cover expenses. Salad-Mania was gone forever.
In recent years there have been a handful of successful vegetarian restaurants in around Boston. I assume the trend is nationwide.