The Egotistical Vegan

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a vegan - both in a global sense and to me personally. I've also been mulling over what and how I eat and drink in general; the wherefores of what I put in my mouth.

It started last week when I got the latest issues of "VegNews" and "Vegetarian Times" in the mail. These magazines are great recipe resources and often have interesting articles. "VN" in particular has a wonderful "I Can't Believe It's Vegan!" sidebar every month. Did you know Oreos, Papa John's Pizza (w/o the cheese) and Sour Patch Kids are all vegan? They are. "VegTimes" has a cool, "1 Food, 5 Ways" section which focuses on one food (grapefruit in January) and gives recipes from salad to dessert.


But for every delicious recipe or product review of a new veg ice cream or jar sauce, there's a whole lotta "save the whatsits!" and "go green...or else!" articles; reader-letters asking questions like, "am I truly a vegan if I don't feed my dog that way?" or "how can I follow an Ayurvedic diet to better nourish my dosha?"; columnists dishing out advice on how to "convert" a non-veg date or "wage the war" against pushy non-veg in-laws over the holidays. Convert? War? Since when did eating vegan become a religion? Or a battlefield?

**Flashback** I used to hate going out to eat. When I first started eating vegetarian it wasn't so bad. There was always some sort of pasta alfredo or fried cheese or something to eat. But when I went full vegan, it was close to impossible to find anything filling. And, silly me, I balk at paying $5.95 for a "house salad" which took no more effort than cutting open an industrial-sized bag of iceberg salad mix from GFS. I didn't like going out to eat; I felt insulted when there wasn't something for me to eat on the menu; I sulked through much of the meal; if I did order something and they brought it out wrong...well, that was tantamount to throwing me my food from the kitchen. It was not fun to go out to eat with me. At some point though, I realized that my self-defeatist, surly attitude wasn't really helping the problem. I started eating before I went out to dinner with friends and instead of complaining I just enjoyed the company. Nowadays, I usually pack my own veggies, buy a side salad (if the price is right), and crack a bottle of wine. Come to think of it, going out to eat has gotten far more tolerable now that I can drink. Correlation? Or causation? I guess we'll never know. Moral of the flashback, though, is that I made the decision to be a raw vegan for me and only me. Not to get Applebee's to change their corporate policy and certainly not to make my friends and family feel bad when the majority of diners want burgers and milkshakes. **End Flashback**


Where was I? Oh yes, veganism as religion or battle. I understand the difficulties of getting your family to understand/accept such a drastic lifestyle change. It's hard not to roll your eyes when your hostess says she prepared something just for you and then unveils a pot of steamed vegetables like it's Peking duck; hard to smile when a room full of people thinks it's hilarious to try and mash a hamburger into your mouth; hard to answer the question "where do you get your protein?" (or the flat-out statement: "there's no way you will get all the nutrients you need.") with an understanding answer/explanation. The easier thing to do is not go to the parties, bring your own food and eat it away from everyone else, ignore the questions or respond with something biting and sarcastic so they'll think twice about questioning you again, oh yes they will.


People are drawn together by what they eat (when was the last time you were at a party that didn't have food? Last time you didn't meet up with an old friend for some kind of meal/beverage? Every holiday has a traditional meal; we celebrate with cakes; we use food as a reward etc.), so any decision we make about what we eat has the potential to be alienating. This is why places like Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers exist, right? Dieting is lonely. It helps to have someone in a similar situation to talk to. This is important because dieting can also be annoying. No one wants to hear all about how you're losing weight by cutting carbs and eating an ounce of dark chocolate before bed and do you know how many calories are in that bread you just ate?


Now add to all of this a pompous sense of moral superiority and self-righteous back-slapping. Even less than other people want to hear about your new diet regimen, do they want to hear (in gory detail) how the cow in their hamburger died or the horrible conditions their McNuggets came out of. Nobody wants to hear about how great you are because you eat so low on the food chain, or about how you pocket compost, or how your shoes used to be tires. So much of the rhetoric in the veg literature I read is about making the world a better place, being more compassionate, living more fully in a peaceful way etc. I just can't reconcile that with refusing to eat at the same table as someone with a chicken breast on their plate or calling into question someones fitness as a parent because they use white sugar to bake with (both true stories).


**Flashback #2** Last fall, during one of my weekly massages, my masseuse asked if I had read the Thursday issue of The Athens News. I had not; it was finals week and there was grading to be done. He told me that I had to find a copy and read the "First Person" article about the Vegan Thanksgiving held at UMC. He called it a "hilarious excuse for journalism." And indeed it is. Plenty of people wrote in in the following weeks lambasting the writer for her closed-mindedness among other things. I just kept laughing at the headline calling the writer "intrepid." I don't see anything intrepid about writing an article where you only observe the "facts" that already fit your assumptions. I mean, she didn't even try all the food!


The editor defended printing it, saying something about liking to see young journalists out "sowing their oats." I wonder how accepting he would have been had the writer gone to a Hillel meeting and made comments about accounting majors with big noses or to a sorority party and wrote about the whores in designer clothes. Ok, so lumping all vegans in as a bunch of spacey hippies probably isn't as offensive as my examples but they are all born from the same kind of mind set. I drafted an angry letter that I never ended up sending (probably for the best). My sister found the writer on Facebook, though, so I invited her over to my apartment to eat vegan food cooked by a Republican with a PC whose usual cooking soundtrack consists of monster ballads and Dean Martin. She never responded. **End Flashback**

Almost everyone I meet is surprised to find out I'm a vegan. Since it's not usually what I lead with when introducing myself, it's often weeks or even months before co-workers or classmates know that I eat any differently than they do. "You don't look like a vegan," they tell me. "A vegan? Really?" When I was a freshman at Kenyon, I had a fellow vegan say to me (with genuine surprise), "You're a vegan but you're not Buddhist?" I suppose that any large group of people with a common set of beliefs and practices is technically a religion, but I don't want any part of that kind of veganism. When I offer tastes of what I cook to non-veggies, it's because I think that what I've made tastes good and would like that opinion validated. I'm not interested in proselytizing, or converting, or showing you the error of your wicked, meaty ways. Good food should be shared.

I belong to a vegan personals site (don't judge - I'm there for the penpals...mostly) and under the "My Diet" section of the profiles, more and more people are using the phrase "ethical vegan." This is usually explained to mean someone who chooses to go veg out of respect for animals, out of a realization that the western way of eating (I'm pretty sure that means fast food and supermarkets) isn't good for the planet, out of a desire to help local growers, or some combination thereof. That's all well and good, but it just isn't me. I love shopping at the farmer's market, I really do, but I eat a metric ton of raw vegetables in any given week. This is not an exaggeration people. Money is just too tight for heirloom tomatoes and artisinal bread every week. They might be shipped in from Chile but I like the option of having fresh grapes in December.

Thus, I propose a new category of vegan, which, incidentally, is the title of this ridiculously long post. I am an Egotistical Vegan. I don't particularly want any harm to come to animals, but if I owned a chicken I would probably eat eggs. If I was stranded Paraguayan-Rugby-Team-style in the mountains, I'd certainly help myself to a half-rack of ribs. I think it's kind of creepy that humans are the only mammals to drink so much milk after infancy (and cross species to get it!) but hell, if it makes you feel good, drink up! I eat the way I do because it makes me feel good; because I like the way I feel when I eat this way. Me, me, me. I, I, I.


Coming soon to the self-help section of a book store near you.