365 days of vegan eating. Actually, it's probably been more like 358 days of eating vegan what with our deliberate consumption of pizza, the few accidental times when we found out we'd eaten animal product, and the time when Jane was purposefully given something to eat that wasn't vegan (by someone who knew better, no less). However many days it's been that we've actually succeeded at being vegan, today marks the one year anniversary of our conversion to a vegan diet.

I have a confession to make. When we decided we were going to eat vegan, I thought to myself that over time we would settle on a mostly-vegan plan -- and that once or twice a month we would go out for some sashimi or lobster, or a turkey burger. I thought to myself that having that "out" would make the "sacrifice" of eating vegan palatable. I didn't share my thinking with Jane, I just figured it would play out that way. When we went vegan, however, we jointly decided that we were going to allow ourselves Thanksgiving. It has always been a special day for us and we had our own traditional menu. We knew that we would feel "deprived" if we were not having our poblano chili-cornbread stuffing, or turkey, or mashed potatoes laden with butter and heavy cream. It just wouldn't be Thanksgiving without all the old standards. But a funny thing happened. By the time Thanksgiving actually rolled around, we were committed to our new way of eating, the switch had been flipped. We felt weird about buying a turkey. We simply couldn't contribute to that cruelty, and so we had a vegan Thanksgiving. Yes, we missed the turkey and the gravy... but the sides were delicious and more than satisfying. It was at that point that I truly understood we were vegans.

People are often scared to go vegan because they believe their diets will be limited, and that it's too hard. I will admit that our first few forays into the supermarket were tough. Shopping wasn't a quick stop anymore. It often took us an hour to get through our list, reading labels, and looking for alternatives as our old staples were often off-limits. And some of the ingredients we were looking for, weren't readily available. (Good luck finding Kombu in your local Ralph's.) But over time that's all changed. We've become habituated to shopping for vegan products. Many of the things we buy are staples, so there's no need to read the label every time we restock. (And we probably could have done our shopping much quicker if we'd simply done some research at home.) As for a limited diet... eating vegan has resulted in a much more varied menu than we used to eat.

How are we faring a year later? Neither of us had any real health issues to speak of, so we can't proclaim that our health has improved dramatically. I had my physical in November, no marked improvements, no deterioration. Neither Jane nor I felt badly before, and we're not feeling badly now. As I mentioned recently, we dropped a few pounds effortlessly at the onset of our change in eating. Things have stabilized and we're maintaining... we both could stand to lose a bit more weight, but Jane's addiction (SnapPea crisps) and her Daring Bakers ventures might be responsible for that not happening easily. (Or could it be middle age or a sedentary lifestyle?)  The only change that we notice is what is and is not on our plates these days.

As for food, we don't find ourselves feeling deprived anymore. We've often said we will reserve the right to eat pizza when we go back to New York, but I wonder if we will when we're actually there. We still have the odd craving for things we'd eaten for decades. More often than not it's driven by marketing campaigns, or strategically placed items in the grocery store. Occasionally, we'll get a whiff of something and say to ourselves, "oh, I'd love some ________," but those instances are usually just a moment or two and they pass without any real sense of deprivation.

It's been an interesting journey so far. We've learned a lot and made some wonderful, supportive friends in the vegan community. These days, when I hear people exclaim that a vegan diet is too hard to follow, I look at Jane and myself -- we're just ordinary people... we have no special strengths or willpower. If we can do it, anyone can.

Several months ago, at the start of the baseball season, I wrote an article indicating that a major league baseball player, Prince Fielder of the Milwaukee Brewers, had gone vegetarian. Yesterday was the mid-way point in the Brewers’ season, so I thought we should check and see how Mr. Fielder has been performing thus far this season. As you may recall, Fielder became a vegetarian after his wife Chanel, had showed him Kim Barnouin’s and Rory Freedman’s book, Skinny Bitch.

Major league baseball maintains very detailed statistics, making it easy to see how a player or team has performed during one season versus previous seasons. They keep stat on as to the number of hits during the day, at night, at home, on the road, in the division, in interleague play, against left hand pitcher, against right hand pitchers, etc. We’ll just look at Fielders basic stats, his batting average, home runs, and runs batted in.

So how well has Fielder performed thus far this season as compared to previous seasons? According to his mid season stats, I guess you would have to say that he is not performing quite as well – especially as compared to last season. This season, Fielder got off to a very slow start. He didn’t his first home run until April 17^th, nearly three weeks into the season. His batting average (the number of base hits that he gets as a percentage of his official at bat appearances) had also suffered. Three weeks into the season, he was hitting only .215.

Something certainly seemed to be impacting his strength and his overall hitting skills. Early in the year, Fielder took a lot of “ribbing” (pun intended) from the media and fans alike, linking his new diet to his poor stats. However, now that we have reached the mid point of the season, he stats have improved. Fielder is a third year player. In his first pro season, he batted .271 with 28 home runs and 81 runs batted in (rbis). Last year, he had a phenomenal season. He batted .288, while hitting a massive 50 home runs, and had 119 rbis.

So far this year, Fielder has batted .271 with 16 homers and 42 rbis. If you extrapolate that out over an entire season, he is a pace to hit 32 home runs, drive in 84 runs, and hit batting average is .271 as it was back in 2006. These stats are right in line with his rookie season’s stats. However, they fall far shy of his monster stats from last year. Can this be attributed to his new vegetarian diet? Perhaps. Were last year’s stats an anomaly? Perhaps. Have pitchers figured out how to pitch to him? Perhaps. Are there other mitigating circumstances? Perhaps. People will continue to speculate and argue about this. In my mind, there is no definitive answer.

Fielder has the capability to go on a tear and dramatically increase his home run production in the second half of this season. If he gets his home run numbers close to that 50 total from last season, it would likely quiet those who argue that there is no place for a meatless diet in baseball.

There continue to be conflicting arguments within the medical profession as to whether a meatless diet is acceptable for athletes. Some doctors feel that a vegetarian diet is not optimal, as people may not accumulate some of the valuable micronutrients such as zinc and iron, and that soy proteins in males may increase their estrogen levels, adversely affecting their testosterone levels. Other doctors argue that a well-planned vegetarian diet will satisfy people’s nutritional needs. They indicate that as long as muscles are receiving protein, it doesn’t matter where it (the protein) comes from – whether is be animal or plant derived, and that a plant based diet can meet the increased nutritional needs of the professional athlete. As I mentioned in a previous article, there are many successful vegetarian and vegan professional athletes.

Regardless, if Fielder, a 270-pound professional athlete, finishes this season with stats that are similar to last year’s, it would be a boon to vegetarianism. There would be another celebrated figure bringing awareness to the public that meat free nutrition is a reasonable, acceptable alternative to a meat laden diet. Will vegetarianism or even veganism become mainstream? That’s unlikely in the near term, but it certainly seems to be gaining momentum.

Go Fielder!

I seem to be writing a lot about fast food lately, which is somewhat ironic since Jane and I really don't eat a lot of fast food. The notable exception here is Taco Bell. They've been our lifesaver on the few road-trips we've taken since we've gone vegan. Their bean burrito (hold the cheese) is vegan, and we find it satisfying. But for the most part, unless we've got young omnivores to accommodate, we tend to shy away from fast food establishments. Our feeling is that they're out to make money, not to worry about providing us with sound nutrition; not to mention the fact that it's usually pretty difficult to find a vegan meal at most of these places.

So after repeatedly picking on Canada, first for the Baby Seal Hunt, and then for the Hog Slaughter Subsidy, we find ourselves congratulating our neighbors to the north. KFC - Canada will be offering a vegan "chicken" product to its customers. But perhaps, more importantly, they've also pledged to buy their chickens from producers who treat their chickens more humanely. This means a better life for the chickens (more light, more room, less growth hormone) and a more humane slaughter -- the chickens will be gassed instead of being scalded to death or having their throats slit while still conscious.

This is a major victory, and Peta will be ending its campaign against KFC Canada. Peta is still campaigning to end these practices in the US and the UK. They've got a petition you can sign if you're interested, asking KFC to adopt the same animal welfare plan as KFC-Canada and pledging to boycott them until they do so.

Sources:
Globe and Mail
CBC News

On Friday, I wrote about food labels, specifically the definition of vegan. As I was writing responses to the comments we received, one of them, a response to Elaine Vignault, grew so long it became a post of it's own. I had planned on writing about the Veggie Pride Parade, but this took precedence. Coincidentally, Elaine wrote about that tonight so you can read about it over at her blog. Click here if you'd like to see the comment that inspired this post, scroll down a bit, it's #11.

Hi Elaine,
Thank you very much for your thoughtful commentary. You presented the issue of strict labeling very well. However, I think we're going to have to agree to disagree. While I respect your conviction, it feels to me like you're trying to make "vegan" exclusive.

For my purposes, vegan is about food -- whether it's an ethical decision or otherwise, it is about what you don't consume. Therefore, the ethical part of it doesn't have to come in to play in the definition.

If there has to be a strata of definitions, then I would think "vegan" would be the general category (not eating animal products) and there would be modifiers around that: "strict" to mean avoids all products derived from animals/insects; "ethical" to mean animal rights oriented; "dietary" to mean health oriented; etc. But they're all still vegan. The modifiers could clarifiy the degree to which you practice your veganism. Kind of like Reformed, Orthodox, or Conservative Judaism.

I eat honey. I don't eat animal products. I am a vegan. I do my best to avoid by-products, but I drive a car, I feed my cats "regular" cat food, I use crayons with my nieces and nephews, the walls that surround me are made of sheetrock. I am a vegan. (All of these contain animal by-products.)

I do agree that it might be unfair to the "strict" vegans if it becomes commonplace to include honey as a vegan ingredient. However, there are many of us vegans (people who were vegan long before I was) who think honey is an acceptable ingredient. If I understand you correctly, we're "strict vegetarians" and therefore should be looking for "vegetarian" products. But often those contain dairy and eggs. I don't eat those, I'm a vegan. I'm noticing that more often, food manufacturer's are including a list of potentially objectionable items (wheat, soy, nuts) after their main ingredient list, and those key ingredients are often in bold text. Perhaps honey can be included in this list. Since there are vegans who consume honey, this makes more sense to me than saying the foods we're eating are vegetarian when we don't consume non-vegan food items (dairy, eggs).

I hope this didn't come across as being antagonistic. I like to think I'm tolerant and accepting of others' viewpoints. I have a bit of an issue with labels, though. I think they're more divisive than helpful. I understand the need to categorize foods in some way, however, I feel that all of these sub-labels are confusing, and simply set us up to be "wrong" in the way we choose to practice being vegan.

We received an email message from one of our readers in Sparks, Nevada last night. She asked us if we could help her find a farmers market in her neighborhood. It occurred to us, that as spoiled Californians we take the farmers market for granted. Of course there's one close by... more likely, there are several, and they're not all on the same day of the week, so we have access to fresh produce any time, even in the dead of winter (when our day time highs may not even break 60°F).

Obviously, that's not going to be the case elsewhere in the country. So, here's a link to the USDA Farmers Market Database where you can search for a nearby market in your state, county, or city. It might be worth a look, even if you think you know all the markets in your area. You might just find a gem!

And, if you don't already shop at your local farmers market, you may want to give it a try. There's nothing like just-picked produce!

– We’ve had some renewed interest in our petition to Oprah, asking her to do a piece on factory farming. We will be sending this information to Oprah on Monday, 5/19. If you haven’t already signed, please consider doing so. We can all work together to make a difference.