Thrift Week 2020, Day 7: The Final Lesson Learned

During this week of vegan eating, one thing that hasn't posed much problem for me is snacking. My usual afternoon snack of a bowl of popcorn (with olive oil and salt) and a cup of cocoa (made with almond milk) required no changes to make it vegan, so I've been able to enjoy it every day with no disruptions.

Last night, however, we went over to a friend's place for some RPGs. Normally, whoever is hosting the game for that evening provides munchies for the group, but I knew that I couldn't count on the snacks being vegan-friendly, so I made a point of bringing along some salted nuts for myself (and others) to nosh on. But all the same, it was a little frustrating not being able to enjoy any of the other treats that were available, like caramel peanut clusters or M&Ms. (I did find the tail end of a bag of veggie chips, which I did not scruple to polish off.)

So I'll call this my Fifth Lesson learned from my week of vegan eating: If you go out anywhere, make sure to bring some snacks you can eat. Don't count on your host to provide them for you. This will probably be my Last Lesson Learned, since we have only one dinner left to go, and it's going to be roasted Brussels sprouts and potatoes with scrambled tofu. We've had this meal before, though I didn't blog about it at the time, and it doesn't pose any real challenges.

Thus, I can now recap all my Lessons Learned from this vegan challenge:

• Lesson 1: Read all labels. Animal products can be hiding where you least expect them, and if you really want to be a full vegan, you need to check everywhere.
• Lesson 2: The food is the easy part. Animal products are also in personal care products, in clothing, maybe in auto parts for all I know. So this is sort of a corollary to Lesson 1: check all labels on everything, not just food.
• Lesson 3: It's easier to be vegan at home than on the go. Being a vegan when dining out requires planning — checking restaurant locations and menus to find a place that will serve something you can eat.
• Lesson 4: The best vegan recipes (most of the time) are the naturally vegan ones. You can make decent vegan-friendly food with meat, dairy, or egg substitutes, but it's even easier and cheaper to make vegan-as-vegan food that doesn't require them.
• Lesson 5: Be prepared to feed yourself. Wherever you go, bring vegan snacks, because you can't count on anyone else to provide them.

All of which, I have to say, leads me to a conclusion that wasn't exactly the one I was expecting. I thought maybe after a week of eating vegan, I would discover that it's actually pretty easy to do, and perhaps I should try sticking with it a little longer. But my conclusion is actually just the opposite: being a true, 100 percent vegan, even in 2020, is kind of a pain in the butt. Checking every label and every restaurant menu in minute detail, scouring your closet and your medicine chest for hidden animal products, having to say no to snacks at a friend's house if you can't see the exact recipe or ingredient list — this isn't a job for wusses! If vegans really do have superpowers, they have to work for them.

So, my real Final Lesson Learned from this week as a (near) vegan: I don't really want to be a vegan 24/7. I don't want to give up my wool socks or my honey-aloe face wash, or to have to decline all food outside of my home unless I can scan the ingredient list in minute detail. I want to be able to eat a piece of milk chocolate if someone offers it to me, or even share a scoop of real ice cream with my husband.

And fortunately, I can do that while still keeping my food-based carbon footprint pretty darn low. Instead of a full-throttle vegan diet, I'm going to stick to my regular low-carbon diet:

• No beef, lamb, or pork, in the home or out of it;
• No dairy products at home, but no obsessing over them when eating out (and no worrying about minute amounts of dairy-derived ingredients in an otherwise vegan product);
• Fish and free-range chicken on rare occasions, maybe once or twice a month at most;
• Free-range eggs at home no more than a few times per week, and no worrying about whether there are non-free-range eggs in something I'm offered to eat away from home; and
• Honey is fair game.

With these rules, I can feel reasonably comfortable with role in global warming (not perfect, but more part of the solution than part of the problem), without having to worry myself to pieces every day about accidentally eating an egg white.