![]() Could lentils save your life? Meet the man who became vegan for a month. Fake bacon that tastes like shoes insoles. Meat- free hagggis and turkey made from tofu. When a devoted carnivore agreed to live as a vegan for a month, he was deeply apprehensive. But the effect on his health was simply astonishing One day I was bemoaning to a female friend that I felt a bit run down and in need of a change of eating habits, while unhelpfully refusing to be drawn into any discussions on faddy diets that she proposed. AXS.com brings you inside access to tickets, artist news, and exclusive stories on concerts, tours, sports teams, family events, arts, theater, and festivals. Maybe out of desperation, maybe revenge, she suggested I become vegan. I laughed, thought about it, and laughed again. Maybe I could think of it as an ethical stand rather than a diet, I thought. Scroll down for more. My decision to go vegan elicited a variety of responses, but not one was enthusiastic. Meat eaters thought it ludicrous, even vegetarians weren't convinced it was possible, and one person told me he'd rather eat his arm. With ill- disguised glee they ran through lists of things I wouldn't be able to eat. ![]() It was a depressing list - basically vegetarianism without the eggs, milk, cheese, butter or cream. And for a man whose culinary art could be summed up by 'pierce film and microwave for three minutes, stirring once', how would I deal with ingredients that actually required cooking? BibMe Free Bibliography & Citation Maker - MLA, APA, Chicago, Harvard.But first, to find out what all this was going to do to my body, I went for a health check at the BUPA Wellness centre in London's King's Cross. After a thorough, hitherto assiduously avoided blood analysis, body mass indexing, cholesterol and weigh- in, I was informed by the doctor that I was overweight and had a cholesterol level of 6. The doctor was deeply sceptical that four weeks as a vegan would be enough to see a difference and said he wouldn't recommend veganism as the body needed meat to function. However, he wished me well and I left, vegan for a month. I started looking for something to eat. None of the fast food eateries cater for vegans, nor the chain shops unless you count a pot of hummus with a couple of sticks of broccoli as food, which I do not. Sandwiches which could have been vegan had been sabotaged with butter or lashings of mayonnaise. Finally I saw a hand- painted store in a sidestreet with a board announcing 'organic cafe' and so it was that my first vegan meal came from Pete's Hemp Store. The shelves heaved with all the things I would normally eschew - lentils, grains and beans - and had that dreary pall which is endemic to health shops. Opposite was a bookshop which had a vegan section but, incredibly, had 'just had a rush on vegan cookbooks'. I bought a couple of the remaining books and noted that they shared shelf space with literature on nudist beaches. So far, most prejudices seemed to be running unchallenged. One surprising thing I discovered on this first day was that Starbucks would make any coffee with a soymilk alternative, so the arms of the corporate chains had not completely cast me adrift. My soy latte was not so bad, a little dryer than usual but with enough of a hint of fatty creaminess for it to become a welcome staple in the month to come. ![]() Confidence returning, I bought a packet of mixed, dried pulses from another health shop and, that evening, soaked them and made myself some bean burgers with a side salad. The taste was very pleasant - admittedly by now I could have eaten a horse - but it gradually became apparent that I hadn't quite followed the instructions carefully enough, as the beans were undersoaked; by bedtime I was bloating badly and spent a very sleepless night swearing that if God had meant for burgers to be made of bean he would not have invented the cow. My first week of being vegan was depressing. I would open the fridge to find nothing worth picking at, nothing to give you that little lift. There is little of sweetness open to the strict vegan; while maple syrup seems to pass the grade, some vegans believe refined sugar is still filtered through the bone- ash of dead cattle to make it white, and even honey (a by- product of 'farmed' bees) is out. So, too, are wine and beer. Their production involves finishing and clarifying; to do this they use 'fining' agents, commonly made of fish bladder or egg albumen. I never realised how much I liked fish in my lager until I was told I couldn't have it. I tried the various oat, rice and soya milks and they were all disgusting in tea, which was now also depleted of its accompanying butter- crime biscuit and hardly seemed worth it. The tumbling disappointment of denial lasted a week, accompanied by a searing detox headache as regular levels of meat, chicken, dairy, saturated fats and excess salt stopped being topped up and my stomach got used to feeling hungrier. Eating out was an unrelentingly disappointing experience as yet another dreary collection of leaves was placed before me. ![]() Drinking out became a different experience, too. While still researching the limitations of wine and beer I drank spirits; as I was used to volume drinking, I ended up drinking three gin and tonics instead of one pint. There are vegan wines but I didn't manage to track any down; at the end of my month I got the good news that Bacardi Breezers were also vegan. It had become apparent that in saying goodbye to old friends I needed to make new ones, so I went to Planet Organic food emporium in London and scoured the labels for acceptable ingredients. I bought things I had never tried before - linseed, pumpkin and furikake seeds, Japanese seaweed, samphire, biorashers (a distant and I suspect disowned relative of bacon), some demonically titled 'Seitan' slices, Cheatin' mince and vegan sausages, yacob root, miso, tempeh, Cheezly (fake cheese) and nuts to boost the protein levels, even a vegan haggis. Vegan food often does itself no favours with naming. I found a Tofurkey in the freezer and a strange yogurt alternative called Soyage, which conjures up several images, none of which verge on palatable. And then there was tofu: this is a form of soya and a critical staple of veganism. It comes in many formats, most of which are disgustingly sloppy, but the smoked and herbed variety is much sturdier and tastes good. Soya has been of some concern recently due to its phytoestrogens (aka feminising plant qualities) but frankly I was too hungry to care. I brought enough bell peppers butternut sqaush, rocket and beetroot, fennel and red peppers and enough sprouting stuff to leave a carnivore begging for mercy. A more exciting fridge full prompted better cooking and I made hot tofu salad, succulent spiced stir fries and antipasti to be eaten with ciabbata. I also got into fake bacon (should that be 'fakon'?) sandes which, once you overcome their arity to insoles, and provided they're eaten piping from the grill, are actually very edible. What they offer and some vegans seem to sniff at is fat, that deeply tasty glutinous substance that is so conspicuously absent from vegetables and grains. Less successful was the ready- made quinoa and pear pudding - like licking a rather slimy carpet - and the Cheezly, a pale, puck- shaped, vacuumpacked 'un'cheese that sat in the fridge uneaten. The alternative, Soya Slices - cheddarstyle square rubbery fellows - met with general disapproval except from my baby, who enjoyed waving them. One sunny day I fell off the wagon: we were in the park and an ice cream hut appeared before me, the Devil disguised in wooden cladding. Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, iOS, macOS, watchOS, and more. Visit the site to learn, buy, and get support. Manage your page to keep your users updated View some of our premium pages: google.com. Upgrade to a Premium Page. Archives and past articles from the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com. Instagram foodies have healthier diets, UW study says. Instagram foodies have healthier diets, UW study says In a new study released by the University of. Before my conscience could say no, I bought one. The confection coursed through my system like an illicit substance, leaving a happy glow in my head. ![]() But by the second week I was feeling more upbeat about the diet and by the third I felt increasingly good. I drank great quantities of super food smoothies and started cooking much more than I used to. I had to become far more imaginative and resourceful to acquire taste, using rosemary, soy sauce, coriander, chillies, garlic, cinnamon, ginger and mustard in an attempt to recreate the elusive feeling of 'bite' you get with meat. ![]() It takes a while to adapt but after a few weeks you get used to the limited parameters, and learn how to find pleasure within them. I felt lighter, too, as one's bowels move into increased regularity. Despite the fact that I hadn't cut down on the amount of food - and alcohol - I consumed, I could feel I was losing weight. Scroll down for more. On the downside I'd started talking about food far more than is healthy for a normal person. ![]() ![]() ![]() It became my 'unique selling point' - people introduced me with . So why do otherwise perfectly sane people become tofu- powered vegans when vegetarianism already covers the killing of animals? The answer is multifold. First, egg and dairy production requires only the female of the species, so the surplus males are killed at birth or when very young. There is also the view that the treatment of farmed animals is cruel (and this includes bees). It is an uncomfortable fact that, as a meat eater, I am very happily complicit in being removed from the knowledge of how my meat gets to be on my plate, but vegans do not believe in burying their heads in the sand. Other arguments are religion or health- driven. Carl Lewis, winner of nine Olympic golds and the International Olympic Committee's 'sportsman of the century', adopted a vegan diet, stating that his best performances were achieved while on this. I imagine Carl had the ear of some very good nutritionists to guide him and I am not convinced my diet was good enough. Before, I used to struggle to eat those elusive five fruit and veg a day, but now as a vegan I was recommended to eat seven - a truly challenging task. In addition, while everything I ate was healthy, it was a learning curve to acquire the necessary protein for energy and growth from the greatly reduced sources now available, and while I got progressively better at eating my beans and lentils, I often felt more tired in the evenings. I also bought a supplement online called Veg.
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