It's not what goes into your mouth that defiles you; you are defiled by the words that come out of your mouth. -- Matthew 15:11
It's not easy being green. -- Kermit the Frog
This morning for breakfast I had toast
and some stuff that looked pretty much like ham salad – but it
didn't have any ham in it. Instead the “ham” was made up of the
pulp from carrots, beets, apples, and sauerkraut. It didn't taste
bad; in fact, after pretty much sticking to the vegan diet for the
past year, I thought the concoction tasted pretty good. Notice the
contingency of the phrase “after pretty much sticking to the vegan
diet for the past year,” because I'm confident there was a time not
too long ago when I would have turned my nose up at the fake ham
salad. I must admit the dab of peanut butter I put with it certainly
added something to the flavor. The amazing thing is, however, it did
taste pretty good, even without the peanut butter, and that's because
if you stick with eating a certain way for an extended period of
time, your preference for particular tastes begin to adapt to
whatever you are eating.
When my wife, Ruth, started this diet
(I supposed I should use the word “lifestyle” because a “diet”
is something you choose for the short term, but a “lifestyle” is
something you're supposedly in for the long haul), I was not going to
do it. At the time she told me she was changing to a “plant-based”
diet, I was on a “gas station-based” diet – practically
everything I ate was brown, round, and rolling on the grill at the
Speedway. Gosh, I loved that food, and I still get my cravings for
it, but I'm doing better about living day-to-day without it. It took
an extra six months and a movie called Forks Over Knives to
convince me to try to change over to a vegan diet, and just basically
eat what Ruth did. I still cheat on the “lifestyle.” I don't
have the willpower to overcome 50 years of programming in just a year
or so to entirely forgo meat and cheese, but I often surprise myself
on how well I do it. Ruth is a devotee, however, and can navigate a
buffet like zealot. I'm not that strong; if we're at a party or some
other social gathering, somehow, a tiny particle of beef or cheese
finds its way onto my plate to hide beneath the broccoli.
So, the Big Question is, of course,
“Why veganism?” Why bother? I often tell people I do it because
Ruth does it (and there's a certain amount of truth to that since I
wouldn't have started if she hadn't gone first). I like the answer
“I do it because my wife wants me to” because it lets me off the
hook from doing the explaining why a plant-based diet is a good idea
and really worth the effort. You see, here's the rub: as a
rhetorician, I understand when people ask questions because they are
really more interested in making an argument rather than getting an
answer. So, not always, of course, but often enough, I get people
who ask me “Why do you bother with this diet when it's so much
easier to eat like everybody else?” when they don't really want to
know why I do it but are really just wanting to justify why they eat
like everybody else. Honestly, I don't care why other people eat
what they do. So, it's in those situations when I'd rather not
bother with the argument at all that I just put it back on Ruth. So,
I circumvent the argument; I say, “I do the vegan thing because meat
and cheese makes my ears bleed.” And then they go, “What?” and
then I say, “You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah” and they
give up wanting to argue with me because they figure I'm just another
henpecked husband who does whatever his wife wants him to. (Again,
there may be a certain amount of truth to that, but I'm not nearly as
henpecked as I am unwilling to argue with people who have already
made up their minds about something.)
Ruth, by the way, goes way beyond the
vegan thing and actually tries to follow a sparse “plant-based”
diet that also puts strict limits on sugar, salt, oil, and other
evils of processed food. I'm not so much committed to that lifestyle
because living without meat and dairy is hard enough, and it's taking
me more than a year to wrap my brain around how to do the vegan thing
while working in town without remembering to pack a lunch. Ruth
would be happy to have you know that while a vegan diet is a
healthier diet, it still doesn't mean it's a healthy
diet if you are living off of french fries, doughnuts, and soda
(which technically can be all vegan because you can get all of those
things without meat, dairy, or eggs). Ruth's diet is about heart
health, and eating that way really is a good way to help avoid heart
attacks, strokes, diabetes, and even cancer.
It's not that I have a death-wish, but
the reason I'm not as good at avoiding “the other bad food” is
because when I get too hungry my belly can get louder than my brain.
If I'm hungry, my brain can yell its fool head off about cancer and
diabetes, but it can't get louder than my belly singing “The Supper
Song of Freedom.” (It's lyrics goes a little like this: Eat what
you want, Eat what you want, you may die tomorrow of a heart attack,
but you're suffering right now from hankering for something greasy.
Don't fear the cancer; fear the hanker).
Some people choose to do the vegan
thing for ethical reasons. They see the needless butchering of
animals as an evil humans can live without. I have no argument with
these people any more than I have arguments with the people who
believe humans have a right to shoot anything that moves. I am not
interested in arguing either way. It's not that I don't have an
opinion on the morality of killing animals for particular reasons;
it's that I don't think my opinion is necessarily better than anyone
else's on this so I'm not interested in participating in an argument
in which I can see validity on both sides of the aisle. If there's
one seriously good idea I picked up from studying rhetoric, it's that
it's really okay to stay uncommitted and agnostic when you're not
persuaded by the evidence “for” or “against” something.
So why do I follow the vegan diet?
Sometimes it's because I love my wife enough to want to support her
in something that she believes so deeply in (Heaven knows there's
enough ideas she believes in that I can't find myself supporting);
sometimes it's because there's nothing else in the house to eat; and
sometimes it's because I just want to see if I can please both my
brain and my belly with stuff that isn't going to kill me somewhere do
the road. Perhaps when I have expired, I can come back as a vegan
zombie and while other zombies are craving brains, I can be moaning
for “Grrrrains!”
Keep thinking rhetorically, and I'll
be back next week.