An Inconvenient Vegan Truth

The hard parts of being a vegan on the go

There is nothing difficult about becoming vegetarian. I can honestly say it was the most surprisingly easy decision of my life. I intended try it out for a month to see how it went and it was so easy that within a week I realised I would never go back. And remember I used to eat 3 meat heavy meals a day! Sure if I saw pulled pork on the menu, my all time favourite meat dish, I'd go a little week at the knees at first but it didn’t take much thought to realise I didn’t really want it. The world, well at least my world, makes it very easy to become a vegetarian. I'm often grabbing food on the go or eating out in restaurants and in Vegetarian land none of that's a problem. So you have to put up with fewer choices on the menu, and that's a bit annoying but more often than not there are a couple of things you can have. And when you're at a supermarket you can be sure that the sandwich aisle will have lots of veggie options waiting. You'll be spoiled for choice. All this is hard one by generations of vegetarians before this. When my Mum became a vegetarian in the early 1990's things were a lot harder, there were lots of restaurants she couldn’t eat anything from the menu and would have to ask them to make something special. On one occasion she was told they would bring her out a vegetarian specialty and they proudly presented her with one piece of steamed cauliflower and one piece of steamed broccoli. But even my mum had it easy compared to the vegetarian generation above her. The fact that vegetarianism is so accessible today is entirely thanks to its growth in popularity and the campaigning work of our ethical-foodie forbearers. Vegetarianism has entered the British consciousness so much that there is a feeling we must be catered for. The same cannot be said of Veganism.
Since becoming a vegan I have been increasingly frustrated by how unnecessarily awkward it can be and how little we are accommodated for.
Restaurants: As yet I’ve never had to leave a restaurant because there was nothing I could eat. I can never order straight off the main menu but by thinking a little outside the box I can always find something. I normally look straight at the sides and "Can I have that without the cheese" has become an oft quoted phrase. This is met with everything from total acceptance, as if its as noteworthy as asking for ketchup, to utter horror as if I’ve just asked to devour their first born! My worst dining out experience so far was at a comedy club in Camden- they had a very limited menu of burger and chips, Thai chicken curry, Thai Vegetable curry (which came with a message saying "suitable for vegetarians but it is authentic so it has a fish sauce", as if adding fish sauce to a vegetarian curry could not be anti-vegetarian as it so virtuous in it's authenticity!) and a chicken/ haloumi salad with asparagus and beetroot. My husband asked for it without the chicken or haloumi. They looked confused, and asked him to repeat the request. They looked further confused, backed slowly away and went to call the manager. The manager came. My husband asked him for the salad without chicken or haloumi. Now the Manager looked confused. He asked my husband to repeat the question. Then he said, in a very slow way, glancing suspiciously from side to side "oooooooooookaaaaaay", as if he must say it at that speed as someone was surely about to burst in and tell him he what he was about to do was illegal and so he must give them as much opportunity to arrive in time and so prevent this terrible crime. Then my husband dared to ask for extra asparagus to which the response was. "We can't do that. The salad comes as it comes". Yes that's right, that particular salad was born in that specific way. It comes to earth fully formed with those exact quantities of asparagus and neither he nor the chefs would be able to make even the slightest alteration to those asparagus levels because "it comes as it comes"! Oh and the way it comes is with thousands of the wettest lettuce leaves, two pieces of hard beetroot and two very thin, inch long pieces of asparagus and one cherry tomato. Luckily I managed to fill up on chips but it seems ironic that a diet which should be intrinsically healthy can sometimes lead you to make very unhealthy choices!
Grabbing food on the go: I’ve realised that supermarket sandwich manufactures assume if you don't want meat, you want cheese and if you don't want cheese, you want egg and if you don't want meat or cheese or egg then you must not exist at all or be some kind of super-being who exists sandwiches made entirely of air and hippy dreams which are, of course, free so they don't to sell them in supermarkets. I’ve always love a good pre-packed sandwich but it seems while ever I am making vegan choices I will never have one again. It is sad but I can cope with it. I’ve made my Vegan bed (out of none animal products) and I must lie in it. But what really gets my (free roaming) goat is the amount of products they needlessly slip milk into. A falafel does not need a tiny bit of whey powder in it. Guacamole does not always require sour cream and for the love of god keep milk away from my hummus! These are all real life examples of dairy invading would be vegan products. This has lead me to be an obsessional ingredients list reader. Anyone who has ever been on a diet can testify there is nothing in the world more boring than spending your life reading the back of packets!

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE:
Cooking at home: Getting home with a big bag of food is such a joy! I love to cook but I have never loved to cook so simply before. I have always been a creamy sauce of perfectly cooked steak kind of a girl but now I just get totally excited about simple flavours. The other day I had Ryvita with hummus, sliced avocado, covered in white cider vinegar and drizzled with rosmary infused olive oil. I could have cried with deliciousness. Yes that's right, tears of deliciousness might be a thing! This is exactly the sort of food I would have taken for granted before. So yes maybe being Vegan isn’t as easy as eating anything and everything but when you do eat, it is so much more satisfying! I feel like I am tasting every flavour, enjoying every texture. For the first time in my life I am eating mindfully and appreciating every subtlty. I can see that as inconvenient as it may sometimes be, Veganism is still definitely worth it, in more ways than I could ever have anticipated and who knows how easy it might be in 20 years!