vegetarian carbon-dating
Jul. 21st, 2004 11:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mamajoanWhen people ask how long I've been a vegetarian, I have trouble answering. I know when I decided to be a vegetarian; it was at summer music camp the year I was eleven. (And sometimes when people ask how/when I decided to be veggie, I like to start off my reply with "Well, this one time at band camp..." just to tweak them.)
But I didn't actually eliminate all meat from my diet at that point; it was mostly red meat at first. I continued eating chicken and turkey for another couple of years, and even after I decided to cut those out, there were a few more years during which I ate things like chicken-noodle soup (deluding my naive teenage self that there wasn't any actual chicken in it) and similar. It was probably around the age of 16 or 17 that I started getting serious about reading labels and avoiding anything with any meat products in it, including Oreos (beef fat) and almost all canned soups (chicken broth) and marshmallows (gelatin).
And I had to go to college and break out of my timid shell before I could really become comfortable doing the kind of quizzing of waitpeople that a vegetarian has to do, all kinds of "is there chicken broth in this soup? is there meat in this salad?" and so forth. Even now, sometimes I still get to feeling a little guilty when I ask things like, "do they grill the veggie burgers on the same grill as the meat?"* and, in at least one deli that I know of, "can you ask the kitchen staff not to toast my bagel" because I happen to know that they "toast" bagels by putting them on the meat grill.
* though I don't like veggie burgers anyway so this is usually moot.
So, the answer to how long I've been veggie is really "it depends on your definition." I generally choose to say that it was around the age of 15. Which means I can now say I've been a vegetarian half my life! Wow.
But I didn't actually eliminate all meat from my diet at that point; it was mostly red meat at first. I continued eating chicken and turkey for another couple of years, and even after I decided to cut those out, there were a few more years during which I ate things like chicken-noodle soup (deluding my naive teenage self that there wasn't any actual chicken in it) and similar. It was probably around the age of 16 or 17 that I started getting serious about reading labels and avoiding anything with any meat products in it, including Oreos (beef fat) and almost all canned soups (chicken broth) and marshmallows (gelatin).
And I had to go to college and break out of my timid shell before I could really become comfortable doing the kind of quizzing of waitpeople that a vegetarian has to do, all kinds of "is there chicken broth in this soup? is there meat in this salad?" and so forth. Even now, sometimes I still get to feeling a little guilty when I ask things like, "do they grill the veggie burgers on the same grill as the meat?"* and, in at least one deli that I know of, "can you ask the kitchen staff not to toast my bagel" because I happen to know that they "toast" bagels by putting them on the meat grill.
* though I don't like veggie burgers anyway so this is usually moot.
So, the answer to how long I've been veggie is really "it depends on your definition." I generally choose to say that it was around the age of 15. Which means I can now say I've been a vegetarian half my life! Wow.
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-21 08:40 am (UTC)Mmm, I'm too shy to do the grilling-of-wait-staff thing at the moment. I just tend to avoid places that I think will almost certainly get my food mixed up with the meat.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-22 03:32 am (UTC)Yup, according to the Nabisco website:
Ingredients: SUGAR, ENRICHED FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMINE MONONITRATE [VITAMIN B1], RIBOFLAVIN [VITAMIN B2], FOLIC ACID), PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED SOYBEAN OIL, COCOA (PROCESSED WITH ALKALI), GLYCERIN, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, FRUCTOSE, EMULSIFIERS (SOY LECITHIN, POLYGLYCEROL ESTERS OF FATTY ACIDS), ACETYLATED MONOGLYCERIDES, MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES, DATEM), WHEY (FROM MILK), BAKING SODA, CORNSTARCH, SALT, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, CHOCOLATE.
Yick. But vegetarian. Assuming the natural and artificial flavors aren't from an animal source. Or the glycerin. or the polyglycerol esters of fatty acids.
I.e. you better not be eating any processed foods these days if you want to be sure you are eating vegeterian. :)