From food to freedom

It was just a couple of days ago when I had to eat outside; the problem with eating outside in a western country is that of the lack of awareness. Let me get a little more specific rather than shooting in all directions and more importantly, provide a background for this post. I have been a lacto-vegetarian (NOT a vegan) all my life. Having a dietetic restriction as this, I find it next to impossible to explain my food requirements to a common person (without putting in a ridiculous number of do’s and don’ts) as people have been ingenious enough to include animal extracts in seemingly vegetarian food. It is simply ludicrous that one would find it difficult to understand the basic concept of not eating animals. It really bothers me when people can not understand my basic meal preferences; it raises the basic question: “where did you complete your schooling from???”. I find it disturbing that people do not know the sources of their food. I am very finicky about anything that will have any contact with my digestive tract and most probably my circulatory system.

There are people who serve seafood as vegetarian and are astonished at even the possibility of it being considered “non-vegetarian”. Sweety, let’s get back to the basic definition of “vegetarian” – it is derived from the word “vegetable”; shrimp is not even remotely considered to be a vegetable. Finally, I find some veggies to make myself a veg. sandwich – oops!! there’s salami right next to the vegetables and it’s pieces are conspicuously present on the tomatoes that I was planning to use. My mind goes- aah.. exactly what I needed. I know that I can’t be this picky in this place and I’m really not making this up. However, I can’t have salami proteins, carbs and fats making their way into my system!!! So, finally, it ends up being a salad/ fruit treat (or just chips). Salads are not filling for me. The pile of cellulose (in the form of lettuce and spinach) is meant for cattle because they’re adept at using this as a nutrition source (unless of course I act like a rabbit**) and it’s devoid of any flavor or spice, which makes me wonder if I was attending the event to starve myself or was it my way of getting myself to eat bread and butter!! (How many servings of fruit can a person really get oneself to eat???).

This is just in case a person HAS to attend an impromptu formal event (otherwise, one can just call up the people and get some veg. food arranged or give them home made food prior to the event to be served as the main course – a list of “what to do if you’re a vegetarian” is available at Govinda’s Cafe’s website). If you’re a vegetarian and wish to enjoy a nice veg spicy meal, it’s almost impossible to live on outside food and yet follow your religion to the best of your conscience (that is of course if you’re lacto veg because of your religion) . At some level or another, you just end up trusting the chef that he/she is not going to use the same gravy for the veg and non-veg without mixing them up or that the person won’t just use the same utensils without cleaning them. Some of the seemingly veg items might be prepared using beef/chicken stock. If not that, the most common (and disgusting) problem is that of chefs tasting something with a spoon and re-dipping the spoon in the same. Yes! it’s unhygienic and I don’t appreciate getting your germs in my system – really!

The problem really is that of ignorance- at least on part of the people who are waiting to take your order. A plausible solution that I am offering is that every food item really needs to have a very elaborate description and the employees should be aware of the possible misinterpretations. The safest bet would be to go to a vegan restaurant- I did something similar to that when I went outside for breakfast (during my interview) and I promise, I hadn’t had so much of tofu in my entire life! I tried a nice vegan restaurant the other day; the food was much better than what I had anticipated but I can not survive on it.

Every time I watch TV, every eatable is advertised by the amount of meat that’s present. Every new variety is targeted towards the non-vegetarian population. Hello? Can you please target our herbivorous population as well?? There’s a whole population of veg. Indians and vegans you can loot! After all, targeting this population would definitely be profitable given that not many companies are doing so and veggies cost a lot less than meat!! Moreover, the companies can advertise this as their step towards inculcating nutritious food in the daily lives. Spice it up and see for yourself the crowd that you gather. I do have some objections with fastfood restaurants coming up with food items like “baconator”. With the increasing population of obese individuals with very high frequency of metabolic syndrome, it should be the responsibility of these restaurants to provide money for diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular problems etc research. A more responsible step would be to establish hospitals next to each of those restaurants.

Expanding the subject further, I feel that this country does not yet have the laws to let people to follow their religion freely. The restaurants and diners are in direct violation of the first amendment of US constitution since they do not completely disclose the sources of their ingredients and the waiters simply are unaware. A step to eradicate this problem and make the system translucent to the public would be to educate servers better.

** Rabbit basically recycles its food. Since it does not have multiple chambers for its stomach, as in many of the ruminating animals, the cellulose breaks down in its intestines and is excreted. This primary excretion is then again consumed for the extraction of nutrition from cellulose.

The post is not intended to hurt people; it sometimes becomes too frustrating that voicing out one’s opinion doesn’t culminate into an action. I used to find it amusing and yet very inconvenient when I initially came across this problem. Now that I know that the system will have to change – for me to co-exist and socialize without worrying about “what am I going to eat today”, it has become all the more traumatizing because something needs to be done about it. Who has the time or the patience – well, I need to take the initiative and only then I can ask people.