Dig in
Check out these resources to go more in-depth:›Barnivore.com: vegan guide to beer, wine and liquor› Ilovevegan.com: lifestyle blog with recipes, resources and list of vegan-friendly foods› features.peta.org/cruelty-free-company-search/index.aspx: searchable database of companies that do not test on animals
There’s a Gary Larson cartoon that features cows at the moment they realize, presumably to their horror, that all along what they’ve been eating is grass. I had a similar moment in my early adult life, except what I realized was that I’d been eating cows.
I was at a mall in Delaware with my college friend Jack, and I’d just polished off a roast beef sandwich. Of course I’d always known that roast beef was cow, but for whatever reason, on that day, the connection between what my teeth were tearing into and the doe-eyed, sweet-faced, sentient creatures we’d passed on our way to lunch became suddenly, disturbingly real.
“I’m through eating meat,” I told Jack. (Afterward, we took in a mall showing of trite, hyper-realistic oil paintings depicting birds and cabins, and I swore those off too.)
That was in the early 1980s. It was a time when being vegan meant you denied yourself the only two sources of protein you knew about – animals and American cheese – until anemia set in, after which you relented and ate steak at every meal “for health reasons.” For those of us now in our 50s or older, the age of creative, intelligent, delicious, healthy veganism has been a long time coming. But now more than ever there is a number of delectable alternatives to munching on the sweet-faced and the sentient.