Vegetarians are completely different people, and each has its own motives. For example, vegans do not even eat butter, do not wear leather clothes, and if they find out that there was abomasum in the eaten chocolate, they go on strike to the office of the manufacturing company. And there are “dietary” vegetarians, they love fruit salads and vegetable stews – because there are so few calories – but sometimes they can afford something meaty. Gopi Kallayil is a marketer at Google and loves to travel. Gopi considers himself a “practical” vegetarian, a concept he coined himself, and published an explanatory post on the website Huffingtonpost.com. The Vegetarian.ru team has prepared a Russian version of this article especially for you. I am a practical vegetarian. Adherents of vegetarianism are usually considered marginal, fanatical ascetics and ardent defenders of all living things. Many subgroups have emerged: vegans, raw foodists, lacto-ovo vegetarians (those who do not eat meat, but consume dairy products and eggs), and so on. Keeping up with the trend, I came up with my own direction and called it “practical vegetarianism.” A practical vegetarian is someone who eats a plant-based diet when given the choice. And when the assortment is small, he eats what is available. When I lived in India, where being a vegetarian is the order of the day, I ate meat. But when I moved to the USA, where it is not so easy to follow the principles of a kill-free diet, I chose the path of practical vegetarianism. Partly because it takes time to realize the importance of a vegetarian lifestyle. The turning point came when Alicia Silverstone, in an interview about her book The Kind Diet, quoted Gabriel Garcia Márquez: “Wisdom comes when there is little use for it.” It’s easy to talk about the delights of vegetarian food. Many of you know about yoga, purity of consciousness, and I will not repeat myself. But as a “citizen of the world”, a passionate traveler, a kind of global vagabond, often without a home and a roof over my head, I must adapt … or die. Over the past few years, I have visited 44 countries, including Iceland, Mongolia, Bahrain. For example, in Mongolia, outside of the capital Ulaanbaatar, boiled lamb is the only dish on the menu of almost every restaurant. In Buenos Aires, I stayed with a classmate whom I had not seen for 10 years – he invited me to a gala dinner and cooked his most favorite and delicious dish … pancakes stuffed with minced beef. During a long, long flight, after a day of endless meetings and negotiations, I was hungry and exhausted, and the only thing the flight attendant could offer me was a Turkish sandwich. I only eat plant foods when I have a choice. But with gratitude I accept what is, when there is no choice. Here are five tips for those who want to be practical vegetarians: Eat vegetarian foodwhen there is such an opportunity. Eat the most natural products prepared according to simple recipes. If carrots look like carrots on your plate and you can tell beans from mashed potatoes, that’s great! Has your dinner been cooked or fried in any way, and are the products close to their natural appearance? You are in diet heaven! The brighter your dinner, the better. It’s nice to look at a dish that plays and shimmers with natural colors of greens, bright vegetables and fruits. But it’s also a healthy lunch, rich in essential nutrients. Choose food carefully and thoughtfully. Pay attention to what you put on your plate. Ask what kind of plant, fruit or vegetable it is. Think about how much food you need to fill your body; what it should be to please the palate. Eat with gratitude. About sixty people were involved in the process, which resulted in a bowl of soup in front of me. People I never saw plowed and fertilized, planted and harvested, transported, processed and cooked. And most of them work in much less comfortable conditions than I do; do a job that I am unable to do. I don’t know about you, but without these people and their skills, I would have died long ago, unable to produce my own food. I try not to forget about it and eat with gratitude. Be practical. If I can’t eat vegetarian food, I eat meat. I reason like this: if I am a vegetarian in 96% of cases, then this is good. This position makes my life easier, makes my stay in hotels easier and makes it much easier to travel to places like Arusha, Papet, Liberia, Koh Samui, Banjul, Tiruchirapalli, Gdansk, Karanyukar… Source: Translation: Vsevolod Denisov
2022-11-11