I'm writing up a final take-home exam for my Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine course, and I just stopped downstairs for a snack. I had just finished the question talking about dietary patterns, and I poked around my cupboard and fridge, feeling satisfied about my eating habits.
In our cupboard, we have whole grains like brown rice, quinoa, and oatmeal. We have dried beans, nuts, and seeds galore. We have a lovely stash of nutritional yeast, a delicious Vitamin B12 supplement. We have whole wheat pasta, canned tomatoes, natural nut and seed butters, vinegars of various flavors, and sea vegetables. In the fridge, we have unsweetened almond milk and flax milk, bags of apples, carrots, kale, celery, tomatoes, romaine lettuce, and mushrooms. We have cilantro, basil, and parsley. We have homemade leftovers like split yellow pea soup, tomato and chickpea soup, and vegetable paella. We have some vegan meats, cheeses, and margarine, tofu, tempeh, wholegrain English muffins, jams, soy yogurt, and day old bagels (that I picked up on a 4-mile walk this morning in the sunshine). I have a pound of beans soaking in the crock pot to be cooked tomorrow while I'm at work. In a bowl on the table, we have a huge bowl of oranges, kiwis and an avocado. And I didn't even mention the freezer. Can you tell we went to the grocery store today?
We eat pretty darn healthy. It's sometimes hard for me to remember that not everyone eats like me. I have to remind myself to laugh when people ask if I'm getting the nutrients I need on a vegan diet. Except for a few supplements (B12, D, Calcium), I get everything I need and more from this diet. Without this diet, I'm sure I would be much further off course and struggle much more in getting the things I need.
I also happened across a series of photos of the foods families from across the globe consume in one week. Randomly enough, these exact photos also appeared in a lecture I looked at a little while later, and it listed the dollar amount spent on these foods. In the US, a family of 4 spent nearly $400 on food, and much of it included fast food, chips, soda, pizza, etc. Today, Adam and I spent $187, including about $20 extra for prepared sandwiches, sesame cashew noodles and drinks for dinner. I estimated this week that I have been spending about $50 a week buying breakfast, lunch, and sometimes dinner at work, so we threw in some extra things to try to save me money (yogurt, hummus, English muffins, almond milk in small boxes, salad fixings, etc.). Generally, we spend around $100 per week, and we shop at a natural food store. Most of the food we buy is organic, some of it is local, and almost all of it is healthy.
At any rate, I was just thinking, as I grabbed a spoonful of no-sugar-or-salt-added natural peanut butter and my glass of flax milk, that I could give myself a break for once.
And, then there's all those animals whose body parts and excretions I didn't buy. :) It's so rough, being a vegan.
