Hmm. I can’t say I’m down with the vegan food policy, but I’m not the one who’s eating the food your are eating so you do what you want. What I can say about vegetarianism are two things:
First, “orange soda stains”. Have you ever tried to (or accidentally did) pour orange sode on your skin? How long did it take for the orange stain to come off?
The only thing I can think about this is that if I am drinking orange soda, then my insides must be entirely colored orange. Is that something I really want? And who knows what other food has similar effects. Onions are a prime example. Onions do things to my insides that make other people cry. Need I elaborate?
But if I worry too much about what common foods are doing to my insides, I won’t eat - which is something I enjoy, with the whole, you know, subsisting life thing - or I won’t be able to think about anything else. So I guess that regardless of what weird junk it is doing to my innards, my thought on eating anything, meat included, is “so what, we all die, I’m going to die happily full of meat”. Or something like that.
Second, I tried the no-meat diet once.
Mahesh concluded that the reason I was so angry all the time was because I ate too much meat. I immediately got angry at this insinuation, but the gauntlet was thrown and I was up to the challenge.
Two weeks into the meat-free diet, we were having lunch at Pizza Hut, an unusually common hangout for people who don’t eat pepperoni, sausage, or other meatstuff. We were eating from the lunch buffet, where they bring out pies and people take slices. I had been waiting for about 5 minutes for a new meatless pizza (they call them “cheese pizzas” for some reason, as if cheese is the feature topping on a food that always has cheese) to arrive, and when the waitress brought out the new pizza to put in the meatless pizza space, it was covered in bacon.
Well.
I erupted in anger. “How am I supposed to eat no meat if you’re not going to give me meatless pizza?! Where is the plain pizza, the one you call ‘cheese’?!” And then I immediately turned to Mahesh, “This meat-free diet is doing nothing for my anger! Nothing! I hate you!” And I proceeded to take three slices of Meat-Lover’s pizza back to our table.
In conclusion, I learned two important things that day: 1-Being a veggie-only eater is a tough lifestyle decision - one that you would have to be a fool to choose without a crazy-good reason. 2-At least some of that “meat is bad for you” propaganda is hoo-hah, and so I have doubt about any of it. If you think you’re going to acheive zen by eating only veggies, you’re headed down the wrong path, grasshopper.
And mind you, all of this is said without evaluating your lifestyle decision. If you want to eat no meat, more power to you, I respect your choice, I hope it benefits you in the ways that caused your decision, etc. I just wanted to point out that I’m the kind of guy who might wear real leather, and when you spraypaint it I kick your ass.
