What do you eat?

Living in the south and being an herbivore is sometimes looked upon with absolute confusion. Gainesville is veggie friendly, but Nashville (where I’m originally from) has a little further to go.

When someone discovers I am a vegetarian there is usually a level of intrigue and some standard questions follow. Here’s my best attempt to answer those questions.

How do you get enough protein?
To get my protein intake I eat beans, nuts, and believe it or not some veggies have protein such as spinach and broccoli. I also love hummus, which is made from Garbanzo beans (aka chickpeas).

Side note: if you want to know where the best hummus in town is, it’s at Farah’s On The Avenue. The best.

Overall, I don’t think or worry about my protein intake. I still get all that I need. There are athletes that are vegan and vegetarian. If they’re doing okay, I’m definitely fine. I think it’s really more about the habit of always having meat on our plate, and we were taught that it’s part of a well balanced meal. You have to be willing to think outside of the box if you are venturing into the world of vegetarianism. My entire schema of food was changed after doing my own research. Before making the change, I was eating more protein than I needed, purely out of the belief that I needed to have meat at every meal.

Do you eat fish and dairy?
For me, this is a sometimes. I always cook vegan at home. But when I am eating out, I will eat dairy because at times there just aren’t super healthy options on the restaurant menu- so instead of eating a meal of French fries, I’ll go for the cheese and fruit plate. Until last month, I ate fish once or twice a month. Now, because of moral reasons, I have given up fish completely (i.e. fishermen are killing dolphins because dolphins eat their fish supply, thus if the demand for fish goes down they will not feel a need to kill dolphins). Every now and then I will eat eggs. But the longer I am vegetarian, the less appealing they are to me. Again, sometimes it comes down to what is available to me. For example, if a breakfast diner only has hash browns as a vegetarian option, I will order eggs with it.

What made you decide to go vegetarian?
There's not one answer for this. It’s all the answers! It started more as a way to become healthier, and then as I researched the moralistic side I discovered many more reasons, and that became as equally important to me. To keep it simple, I realized that I would not be okay with killing and eating an animal myself, thus it doesn’t make it okay for me to turn my cheek because someone else is doing the dirty work.

But I like to keep in mind, everyone’s body is different. I don’t believe that my way is the best way, simply that it’s the best for me. Experiment and find what works for you (if you haven't already). It can be a lot of fun!