For those of you keeping score at home, I haven’t willingly (rennet and gelatin are snuck into everything these days) eaten a mammal since August 2004, when I had the sudden epiphany that not only is red meat bad for the environment, produced in a cruel and barbaric process, and not healthy, it also doesn’t seem particularly appetizing to me. Ironically, I came to this realization shortly after eating a turkey drumstick at a renaissance fair, and being greatly repulsed by it.
Later, in January 2005, I cut first the poultry, and a few days later, the fish, out of my diet.
That continued for a few months, but I really wasn’t eating very healthily (as there are plenty of fried and/or sweet things that are vegetarian) and my poor eating habits eventually caught up with me around May. At that point, I had started getting nightly stomach aches, frequent itchiness, and was suffering a general lethargy; and my friends diagnosed me as having a niacin-protein deficiency, and suggested I start eating more proteinaceous things.
So, in an attempt to fix myself, I tried the most proteinaceous vegetarian thing I could think of: soy, and lot’s of it. But then I found out I’m allergic to soy, as well as practically everything else; and for a few weeks I was on a prescribed diet of (basically) rice and chicken.
Thus, the vegetarianism was no more.
On the plus side, the chicken cleared my nutrient-deficiency symptoms right up!
That was then. This is now.
I’m older, and have a generally better diet these days. I know my limitations, and that I simply cannot happily live on a pure vegetarian diet with my particular mix of allergies and other dietary quirks.
But I’m going to try to do the next best thing, the best I can!
This past weekend, I resolved to try to cut poultry out of my diet, again. I’m going to force myself to eat more fish and tofu (as cooked soy doesn’t seem to give me any adverse allergic affects), and will be on guard for any changes for the worse so that I can try and fix things before they become a problem again.
I’ve been eating this way for a few days now, and I’m feeling healthier already, but be rest assured I’ll complain all about it here the moment something goes terribly wrong.
Unless, of course, it kills me.
