The Experts Say "Go Veg" - But Will We?

by Latoya, February 4, 2009 at 2:06pm

Ok, ok, we get it - going vegetarian (and eating locally grown, in season food) is the best thing for the environment.  It's better for our overall health to throw more veggies into the mix.  It can be better for our wallets.  It's better for everything ever!

So why are so many adults resistant to a vegetarian or vegan (abbreviated from here on out as veg*n or veg*ism) diet?

I have an answer.  It's widely acknowledged in non-veg*n circles, but not often by the experts touting the benefits of such a diet.  Here's the problem: veg*n food is gross.

 I know, I just scandalized all the veg*ns in the house.  "Our food isn't gross, that other crap you eat is gross with your meat and Big Mac Sauce and High Fructose Corn Syrup and artificial coloring!"

And that's true too. (And I know from experience, a lot of veg*n food is delicious and tasty.)  But I think that in order to honestly tackle why people are resistant to a more veg*n diet, we have to acknowledge a few things.

 One, everyone doesn't like the taste of natural vegetables.  I think part of the veggie resistance is that American culture treats meat as the centerpiece of your meal, accompanied by potatoes (or occasionally rice), and some kind of veggie on the side.  It can be hard to break out of this paradigm, especially if vegetables were served as something that *had* to be eaten, instead of a pleasure.

Two, cooking practices and taste vary widely.  I've been exposed to veg*ism at various points in my life, with different results.  With some friends, being veg*n meant eating a bunch of junk food, because while they wanted to uphold the rights of animals, they still didn't like a lot of veggies. With other friends, their bare bones approach to food left me cold.  Blocks of raw tofu, bean sprouts, and lentils looked like a fairly grim existence for me.  Post college, I found a different group of veg*n friends who basically introduced me to the global veg*n kitchen - with seasoning, spice, and a heavy emphasis on bringing out the flavor of vegetables.  It is this last group of friends that changed my mind about the possibility of going meat-free (or at least, reducing meat) and lead me to think that there was hope for the American diet after all.

Three, we aren't just trying to persuade people to change their tastes - we are trying to spark a shift in the idea of what it means to eat.  If sandwich has come to mean "meat + bread" and the idea of "fast food"  generally presents a wide variety of meat options and one (if any) veg*n options, there is going to have to be a large scale thought transformation around the very idea of what it means to eat before a critical mass of people find themselves able to start embracing the idea of veg*ism without immediately thinking "deprivation."

Over the next few weeks, I'll be blogging about my own trials - starting with Eating Clean (a plan emphasizing eating food in its most natural state). After I do the week of Clean Eating, I'll move into a one week vegetarian diet and finally go into a week of eating like a vegan. At the end of this, I hope to have explored what it means to change our food habits, what our culture has to do with our ideas about food and eating, and offer up some recipe ideas for those of us who are looking for a more soulful or global take on vegan eating.

Stay tuned.