Fit in my 40s: ‘My week as a vegan wasn’t all smoothie’ | Zoe Williams
If you want the short version of my week as a vegan: it was not good for my health. I used to think that I was already, basically, a vegan. I share their outlook on animal rights and the environment; I just happen to eat a lot of meat and cheese. I figured the meat and cheese wasn’t core to my identity, and I could easily fix it. That must be annoying for vegans: I’m sure they know we all think that. Having tried it, I realise now how hard it would be.
I had a huge hand, too, with a week of supplies from Nosh Detox – soups, smoothies, bean salads laced with the tastiest non-animal protein they could find, including a truly spooky dish of cabbage and tofu whose colouring was like the moon. I also had a gigantic, five-kilo tub of pickled vegetables, because I always do, though it turns out I only like them on top of cheese. But the real problem came with all the food I had to source and prepare myself.
It’s much harder than simply going into Pret and rejecting everything with duck in it. In a processed environment, whenever you get halfway near something that looks OK, it turns out someone has put feta in it. I spent hours in Holland & Barrett, choosing between roasted peanuts and chana mix (hard chickpeas). I was constantly at checkouts, Googling stupid things (“Is yoghurt vegan?”; “What’s in bombay mix?”). Many restaurants have one vegan thing on the menu, but almost none have two, so anywhere you go regularly, you’ll have had their butternut squash and quinoa salad many times, and soon you’ll be ploughing into it gracelessly and without relish, because you know all its secrets – and also the relish contains fish sauce.
It would have been OK if I’d been prepared to be hungry, or at least not full, but I wasn’t: so I was constantly having to order chips as a chaser, and buy veggie Percy Pigs as a stopgap (until I realised they contain beeswax). Even though it had more pulses in it, this was probably my least healthy week since a period of mad appetite in adolescence when I used to stop and get a Marathon bar at every shop between school and my house.
God, the vigilance! I’d get through 48 hours of smoothies, mung beans and chips, only to absent-mindedly add milk to my tea. So in short: no weight loss, no glowing skin, no improved digestion, no surge of energy, only improved ethical status.
I now realise I should have planned the transition better; restocked my entire cupboard, lined up vegan snacks for between meals, postponed all the plans that revolved around food (which is most of them) and maybe been a bit more attentive to the habits of the vegans I know, beyond making them a beetroot in puff pastry every six months since for ever.
Done sloppily, veganism is Gillian McKeith’s worst nightmare – beige crunchy food that’s all the same and made of potato. Yet I cannot write off the possibility that it’s good for you if you do it right. I’ll be back, vegans. I’ll bring more respect next time.
What I learned
There are lots of vegan booze options: Yellowtail red wine, Budweiser and almost all vodka, gin and whisky
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