I Was A Closet Vegan

I Was a Closet Vegan

I’m trying to eat vegan again after practicing sixteen years of vegetarian and very occasional pescatarian habits. I noticed that there are many online resources today from vegan recipe sites, vegan restaurant guides, vegan guidelines and information, vegan meetup groups, vegan animal rights organizations to vegan social media. Where do I begin and what was I really practicing when I was vegan so many years ago?
I first became a Macrobiotic in 1984 in my first year in college. My older sister bought me a book on the subject during one of her thrift store shopping trips and thought I would find interest in it. She knew I wanted a healthier way of life and eating practices and that book started my journey into eating a plant-based lifestyle.
Macrobiotics is a healing approach to sustaining life. It is the balance of the two forces in the universe known as yin and yang. In my opinion and experience, Macrobiotics is more than just satisfying our appetite, it is appreciating, respecting, healing and existing peacefully in our universe. It was also very difficult during the 1980’s to find organic whole foods and fresh organic produce. I lost about forty pounds in three months. I learned to chew my food 100 times before swallowing. When my family came down with the flu, they noticed that I was healthy. I think it was because of Macrobiotics. But, the Macrobiotic experience lasted only six months for me. Not because I didn’t believe in the balancing of life or that I didn’t believe in the practice of their dietary requirements. I didn’t have enough time to locate the food and prepare it. I also became very malnutritioned because I wasn’t eating all of the food groups and amount of food that I should have as a Macrobiotic. So I became a vegan.
I was a vegan for eleven years. I kept many of the Macrobiotic practices that I could; such as, chewing my food carefully, respecting the food, appreciating obtaining food, preparing and consuming it, and being peaceful. As a vegan I did not consume sugar, honey, or maple syrup. The only sweet natural product I would use was barley malt. I became very lean. My body fat content measured in at 16%. I was flexible, energetic and I had high metabolism. My digestive system was balanced. I had no upset stomach or intestinal pains as I did before I became macrobiotic and vegan.
Most people did not support me, but worse, they would disaprove and demean me. When I went out to eat with someone they would start to criticize me about me pressuring them to eat no meat even though I had said nothing to begin with about them eating in the manner that I ate; it was all in their own mind. Going out to dine with certain people was not an enjoyable experience. I was not aware of any vegan support groups to attend so overall I mostly kept my vegan lifestyle to myself. Now, my friends simply accept me and I share meat dishes I can’t eat.
What I know today about being a vegan is that it is the practice of abstaining from consuming animal products and to avoid the use of animals as a commodity.
The word vegan was termed by Donald Watson in 1944 when he and a group of 23 others founded the Vegan Society in England. In the beginning it meant “non-dairy vegetarian and then it included the practice that man should live without exploiting animals. I recently learned this historical fact for this writing.
I was a closet vegan all those years. I secretly thought about not hurting any animals and I definitely didn’t want to kill them so I could relish in flavors of flesh and blood. Every once in a while someone would ask me, “Why don’t you eat meat?” I would say, “For three reasons; meat is expensive, I want to be healthy, and I don’t want to hurt the animals.” When I became a vegetarian/pescatarian people would question me saying, “What about hurting the fish?” I didn’t have an answer. Now my guilt thinks about the movie, “Life of Pi”, when Pi, who was a vegetarian all his life, was stranded on a raft in the middle of the ocean, to survive, he killed a fish for eating. Pi cried in exclamation of sorrow for killing the fish.
I’m trying to be a vegan again. For all the same reasons as before but now I know there are hundreds of thousands of people all over the world who believe in the same core values. Even more so, I’m contributing to a green world and have been and didn’t know it. In the 2015 documentary, “Racing Extinction”, they explain how animal agriculture is responsible for 14.5% of the greenhouse gases which cause global warming. Coral reefs support 25% of our world’s marine life, yet man’s production of a carbon spike has caused ocean acidification killing coral reefs. And in 100 years fifty percent of all species could be gone if we don’t do something about it.
I want to care about our world by recycling, using non-threatening products, throwing away as little as possible and eating vegan wherever I can and not from the closet.

By Perri Mink

July 12, 2016