I am not a vegetarian. I'm a complete outsider to vegetarianism and in no way am I claiming that spending a week as a vegetarian really made me wise to the ideals and lifestyle of it. Although, spring semester of last year I took an anthropology class that had us study and participate in a microculture. The microculture I chose to study and participate in was vegetarianism, because I have several vegetarian friends and I wanted to gain a better understanding of it. I knew what vegetarianism was, but I had never really put much effort into further understanding it. The project required me to adopt a vegetarian diet for a week.
The first day of my vegetarianism, I cooked for myself. My breakfast was southern style scrambled eggs with a side of refried beans instead of bacon. For lunch, I found a recipe for bacon-potato soup, removed the bacon, and made myself hearty potato soup. I snacked on apples and plums, and for dinner, my mother cooked pasta with white sauce. The next few days, I was not as motivated to cook for myself. I ate leftover potato soup and pasta throughout the day and snacked on crackers instead of fruit. When I ran out of soup and pasta, I’d eat bagels and cereal throughout the day. I was eating mostly carbohydrates and processed foods out of laziness, and it had a great effect on my energy levels.
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Around the third day as a vegetarian, I began to notice that I became hungry very quickly after I ate and that I never felt completely full no matter how much I ate. I also noticed a dramatic decrease in energy. I was very fatigued and felt slowed down. I went to my vegetarian friend for advice, and she said that it was a normal reaction. She said that my body had to adjust to a lack of meat and that a difficult adjustment period was normal for vegetarians. She said that if I stayed a vegetarian I would be fatigued for about a month or two, but then I would feel healthier altogether.
I craved meat very intensely throughout the week. My parents are Mexican, and Mexican cuisine is heavy on meat. When I go home I am used to eating chicken, seafood, and beef regularly, and after the first two days or so my parents were running out of ideas on what to cook the family for dinner.
One of the challenges I noticed as a vegetarian was the lack of fast food options. One night I had gone about an hour away from home with my parents, and it was too late at night to go to a sit-down restaurant. We decided to get some fast-food, but I realized I would be very limited in my options. Most fast food places specialize in beef hamburgers, and even the salads aren’t vegetarian. All of the salads at fast food places have some kind of meat in them, usually chicken.
Burger King was the closest fast food place, and their only option for me was a veggie burger. I was only able to stomach half of the burger, which I believe was due to culture shock. I felt uncomfortable with the fact that I was eating a burger made out of vegetables, and when I looked at the burger I took a bite out of, the veiny appearance disgusted me. My friend told me that the way I felt while eating a veggie burger is the way that vegetarians feel about eating a beef burger.
Through my experience as a vegetarian, I learned that it takes dedication and hard work to keep a healthy diet. Vegetarians must cook for themselves and buy fresh produce constantly. A basket full of fruits is more expensive than a fast-food burger, and for vegetarians who use meat substitutes, tofu is especially expensive. This experience led me to believe that a vegetarian diet is not automatically healthy, as my diet of processed carbohydrates was technically vegetarian, but also not good for my body. The benefits of vegetarianism include a feeling of accomplishment, the satisfaction of being strong morally, and lowered cholesterol.
Apart from the physical difficulties that I experienced as a vegetarian, I was also given insight into the way vegetarians are looked at. When I told my friends that I had to be a vegetarian for a week, their reactions were very dramatic. They all said that they would never be able to be a vegetarian because they liked meat too much, and none of them showed any respect for vegetarians. When I told my friends that I had a vegetarian friend, they asked me if she was the type of vegetarian that judged everyone and was preachy. My friends confirmed that vegetarianism is highly stereotyped, and that the people who practice it regularly face criticism.
I'm meat-eater, but I really appreciated the experience. Vegetarians deserve a lot of respect. From what I've seen, vegetarians have a strong moral code, and are tolerant of other people's beliefs and ideas. Although I didn't continue with vegetarianism, I am very glad I was able to participate in it. Vegetarianism is possibly the most visible microculture out there, and I feel it is valuable to make an attempt to understand it more.
