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Meat eater goes vegan for a day
There are around 542,000 people who follow a vegan diet in Great Britan. That is half a million people who don’t consume meat, fish, milk products, eggs or honey.
This trend or lifestyle has gained a lot of popularity within the past 10 years. People are doing it for their own health or environmental reasons, and for animal welfare.
Although being a meat-eater myself, in the past two years I have started thinking more about being a vegetarian. I am already eating a lot less meat anyways, but going vegan has always scared me and been out of the option. I fucking love cheese!
So.. I thought, why not go vegan for a day – give myself a bit of challenge and see how it makes my body and conscious feel. Can I sleep more easily at night knowing my food habits aren't killing or hurting any animals?
I chose a pretty good day to do the challenge, I had a busy day ahead.
I started off my day as I normally do minus the milk in my coffee. A toast, smothered it in avocado slush and a few cherry tomatoes on top. I was staying at my friend’s house (who is vegan) and she offered me some almond milk to put in my coffee. Definitely not a fan of the nutty watery liquid in my coffee, but what can you do, dairy is a no-no.
I had planned to go to the gym that day – a 5k run, some weights exerscises and a stretching class. I suck quite badly at these kind of things so it was an intense one for me. Guess what happened after? I was bloody hungry and all I could think of was some eggs and a cheesy sandwich.
Since I was already getting late for work I had to think on my feet so I only had a spare 5-10 minutes to find a shop and quickly grab something.
I found myself between the isles panickly reading labels of different nut bars and smoothies. To see whether they contain any animal products (milk was my main concern) and as I mentioned I was already running late, so I grabbed a banana, some almonds, another one of those nut-berry shots and a quick smoothie from Pret.
I was fine for about half an hour, until I had a bad headache that day which added to my hungriness making me a bit of a grumpy mess.
This brings me to the first problem that I had. This is probably to do with me being clueless and not actually knowing what good options there are available. I am 100% sure I could’ve gotten a better and more filling after gym snack though if I was a bit more informed of different protein packed snacks I could consume in my 15 spare minutes.
Another problem of mine, which is a biggie. I work in a café that sells amazing fancy Belgian chocolates and as a part of our perks we can basically stuff our faces with chocolate if we want to. It didn’t also help that I was craving a hot foamy cappuccino. As an alternative I made a soya cappuccino (how do people drink that stuff?) and just stared at the chocolate counter and imagined what it would taste like.
I was very excited for my dinner. I had planned to make some cous cous with smoked paprika and chickpeas, with some broccoli and salad on the side. Guess what? I was perfectly full after my dinner and it didn’t even take me very long to swish up the whole dish and it was delicious. If 500,000 people in Great Britain can do it, so can you!
To be honest, my day was actually pretty good and refreshing. I do think going vegan for a day wasn’t bad at all and it also made me cook a different type of dinner I hadn’t done before. I didn’t miss meat at all and I do think if I was to start drinking my coffee with a milk substitute, I would get used to it...eventually.
However I think that going vegan has to stay in the ‘maybe I’ll do it in the future’ section for me. Although I would be very much willing to skip the meat I would definitely miss cheese, eggs and honey. I also find that vegan options aren’t that broadly available in the supermarkets and restaurants, and being 100% honest its not something I think is suitable for me at this point of my life.
Nevertheless I urge all people to at least give it a try. If not vegan – why not vegetarian. Having at least one day without meat in a week is a good place to start and who knows, maybe you’ll discover something new you’ll like!
