Vegan post.

Vegan post.

My prolific commenter and intimate stranger, "Anonymous" asked me recently to post about why I'm vegan (hah! I just wrote whey I'm vegan. groan). I'm all for the special requests, so here we go.

Long time TITBL devotees will remember me going vegan. It started out as a 30 day experiment, but after noticing how fun eating vegan was, how amazingly healthy and strong my body felt, and most of all, how easy it was, I never really looked back. 30 days turned into 3 and a half years, and veganism has seen me through a marathon and gestation and childbirth quite nicely.

Looking back, "Supersize Me" wasn't all that great of a movie, but seeing the "detox" diet that Morgan Spurlock's vegan girlfriend put together really inspired me. And kind of freaked me out a little. As in, why don't we eat like this all the time?

For me, a big part of the vegan diet is the reduced impact on the earth. Now listen here, dear, Omnivore's Dilemma readers, I won't tell you what I truly think of that book and it's aftermath, but I will point out that hey, if everyone had a plot of land to tend and were responsible for growing their own food, all of it, then every single person in the entire planet being vegan wouldn't be necessary. But do you grow and cultivate everything you eat? Or are part of a small cooperative commune that does? Okay, great. But, I don't (yet!), so let's review. I'm not on the internet right now, because I'm in the car. Note: I am not driving. But here are some rough estimates. Take a square of relatively normal soil. You can either grow produce or grains on it, or you can divide it up and grow some produce and grains to feed the animals you will keep to milk/de-egg/whatever/slaughter on the other portion of your land. You're going to be able to feed a lot more people with a more balanced diet with the pure-plant square. Look at it inside out for a second: this means that you need so much more land (and energy) to feed people animal-based diets. Not only do you have to feed the people, but you also have to feed the food first. And cows eat a lot, large critters that they are. Sometimes cattle grazing is the best use of poor soil, because not much will grow there, but we should face the fact that the majority of the land used for cattle isn't best described by "grazing."

And, since we don't live in an ideal world, the cows aren't going to eat grains and grass. They're going to eat other cows, chickens, and other miscellaneous processed meat product type animal pieces. And I don't want that junk in my milk.

I also realized early on in the veganism thing how skeevy dairy is to me. And I'm honestly saying this to explain myself, not at all to judge others. This is just my little hang up. Unless you're consuming non-organic, hormone-laden dairy and potted meat products, and then please note that I'm sitting here silently judging you. Okay. My point is that human beings are the only species who drinks milk past childhood, and the only species who drinks the milk of another species. That's the odd part, to me. It's some other animal's bodily fluids. Mmm!

My diet is pretty straightforward and it's easy to make sure I (and Ollie) get enough nutrition. We get plenty of protein from an abundance of whole grains and legumes/beans, and a rainbow of vegetables provides ideal nutritional content. While pregnant, we carefully monitored protein intake, following a partial version of the Brewer Medical Diet. Skipping, of course, the twice-weekly dose of liver. I don't think anyone in our Bradley class did the liver, in my defense. Every day, I got 80-100 grams of protein. And something like 8,000 grams of mashed potatoes and sauteed kale.

Each issue of "The Week" magazine has a little editor's note at the start. A few months ago, that note commented on ecological footprints and the widespread trend to use reusable grocery bags. I can't remember the details, but they extrapolated that people are walking to the store to try to reduce their carbon footprint. And then they said that you shouldn't! You shouldn't walk! You should drive! And the reason is that your meat diet that you'd have to eat to get the extra energy to walk to the store takes slightly more out of the earth than using fossil fuels in your car.

Not once did they even suggest skipping the meat; that you could walk to the store on a plant-based diet (carrying, of course, your organic canvas bags in a sweet little eco hat trick). They even spelled out that it was the cows that caused the bump in carbon footprint! But instead of skipping the cheeseburger, you should just shrug and regretfully just guzzle the extra gas. I was moderately outraged If a puny weakling like me can get enough energy to run an entire marathon at a reasonable clip or birth an also-entire baby (at a not-as-reasonable clip), then chances are most anyone can get themselves to the store on their high octane tofu.

There's also another component to my veganism: the Gandhi thing. I'm not naive enough to assume being vegan implies a completely cruelty-free, peace-based lifestyle, but I feel like it's a big, important step.

And finally, there's dark chocolate. Oh thank the baby jesus for dark chocolate.

And that's that. Aren't you glad you asked, oh dear Anonymous?