MJ's vegan friend came to visit us this week, and for 2 straight days I ate vegan meals! Bought vegan bread for breakfast, drank oat milk (Oatly, which is apparently so popular it's placing ads in New York subway stations), ate a restaurants that had vegan substitutes for classic American dishes like hamburgers, Macaroni and cheese, fried chicken (they used cauliflower instead of chicken), and had vegan Ethiopian food! Actually quite tasty, one and all, as plants and soy and other materials can apparently generate some good tastes that are not quite meat but can replicate the texture pretty closely.
It's really hard for me to be a vegan. I've tried many days to have "meatless Mondays," a couple days without having any meat......it doesn't last very long. But on top of that, vegans don't eat eggs or diary, which I find difficult to understand as those have been staples of my diet for a long time, and actually I don't feel that bad about eating.......I may have a limited understanding but my reason for not eating meat would be because I feel bad for ending the life of an animal who had to die for my meal, but eggs and milk don't involve killing anything........right? Well, MJ and MJ's vegan friend have differing opinions on that. I personally think that eggs are one of the foods closest to being "perfect..." it packs a nice protein punch without containing sugars, too many fats, etc......I guess it's not great to have too many in one day but other that next to bananas on my list of things to eat when I just "need a little bit to get over."
To me, being vegan is just like donating to charity: I know my own personal contribution won't make that much of a difference in the world, but it's more on principle, and selfishly it does me feel good about myself, like I get a "credit" for doing something to benefit society, while also slightly detrimenting myself (financially, or in taste, and in being somewhat hungry after the meal). The environment, though, does desperately need more people to become vegan, so the science says, as carbon emissions from meat farms and from cows generate too much pollution and cause climate change which is damaging the world. So much so that our vegan friend thinks the world will end in 50 years and we'd be irresponsible to bring children into this world. I am a bit more optimistic about the world's future, but I do think it's an underrated social problem that needs more resources devoted to it. Also it doesn't necessarily that EVERYONE become vegan, just that EVERYONE consumes less meat, so if I consume like 50% less meat, and a lot of other people do the same, it can probably make a difference. Also MJ interrupts what I'm doing sometimes and shows me pictures of animals being slaughtered and meat farms, and we've watched Okja (the Netflix movie partially in Korean). I get it; animals receive brutal treatment at these farms and undergo unsanitary conditions, as well as watch their friends and family get killed one by one in order to be eaten by humans. It's a pretty graphic image and effective for me to think twice when I order my lunch. But then, is it better to kill hundreds of small-fry fish like sardines to satisfy my hunger? Ten times the fish have to die than a chicken or pig to fill me up in a meal, is eating small fish worse because I've killed 10 times the amount of living things? Or are sentient beings like pigs (who apparently have a great memory) more precious in the life cycle?
Having eaten vegan foods, I can say confidently that it hasn't improved the smell of my farts.......in fact, they may have gotten worse, maybe because of the substance of the veggies and soy that I've been eating instead of meats......there's definitely some science to it there too that needs thorough investigation.
All I know is the Impossible Burger is pretty damn tasty, and I'm looking into buying some Impossible Foods stock when its IPO hits the stock market, seeing how well Beyond Burger did. These meat substitute companies may be the future of meat, much more than Uber is the future of transportation or Tilray (marijuana) is the future of drug consumption.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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