Adventure #030 - The Vegan Week

As I was procrastinating doing some research on internet a few weeks ago, I ended up on the WWF website to calculate my Carbon Monoxide Footprint, i.e. your impact on the environment. Well, if everybody was living like I do, we would need 2.25 planets. Ouch. After taking the test, you can have access to a few "eco-tips" to help reduce your footprint. The first one was "cut down on meat and dairy products". I am already a vegeterian, but I can't imagine living without dairy products. I am addicted to cheese, cream, yoghurt, butter ... It must be the French genes! But I decided to try a vegan diet for a week and see if it would really be that difficult.




Ant it was! Becoming a vegetarian doesn't require that many changes in your life. At least, it didn't for me as I was already not a big meat eater.

But being vegan is complicated. It requires much more organisation. First problem: eating outside. Restaurants do not often have a vegan selection. Well, not here anyway, and probably not in France either since it's already complicated to eat vegetarian there. My second problem were snacks. One evening, I had to eat something quickly before meeting up with a friend. In this situation, I would usually have some bread and butter or cheese. As a vegan, I could eat bread, but what could I have on the bread? As much as I like jam, i really don't want any for dinner... If I was vegan, I would probably try to always hummus or things like this in fridge. Once again, organisation.

These were the two major problems. For a week it was ok, but if I had to be vegan for a longer time, I think I would really quickly get tired of not being able to go to the restaurant and have to think and organise everything.

Of course, I also really missed the dairy products just because I love them. I was dying for a piece a cheese. I think that when you stop eating or drinking something, you need about two weeks to stop really really wanting it but you need two months to be over it.

Now I'm back on my normal diet, I can eat cheese and I'm happy! Even if what I ate during my vegan week was good, it was a bit boring. I guess I would need some time to get used to cook vegan. But right now, I am going to stick to the vegetarian food for a while!