The idea of being a part time vegan occurred to me after Mark Bittman did it. He’s the guy who wrote the classic cookbook How To Cook Everything. But more recently he wrote VB6 or Vegan Before 6 after having gone semi vegan for health reasons. I guess I always thought to be vegan, it was all or nothing.

I had my prejudices against veganism. Vegans seemed a bit evangelical to me. I also just wasn’t moved by the cause of veganism. Yeah, veal is shitty and foie gras is shitty. But hell, man, bee stings suck, I have no problem eating honey. And God created flightless birds called chickens that don’t seem to do much except taste delicious when deep fried.

The older I get, though, the less enamored I am with self satisfied stubbornness. “I’ll smoke this cigar, eat this steak, and drink this scotch. It’s a free goddamn country.” Battles well picked, sir. (I love Ron Swanson too but he’s fictional.)

So, first of all, I’ve never encountered a smug, preachy vegan. I think I was projecting. And second, there’s more to the not eating meat and dairy than just caring about animals (which, apparently I kind of don’t? Is a non-homo sapien sociopath a thing?).

Last night, my girlfriend showed me Forks Over Knives. It is one of a plethora of food documentaries which I’m sure will send me down a vegan rabbit hole.

It had the flaws inherent in most documentaries. It focused on the people who’s point they wanted to prove and the people who presented the counter point looked like dolts. Among the vegans they presented were an MMA fighter and a triathlete turned fireman. They also showed a seventy year old triathlete who cured her own cancer simply with diet.

The filmmakers had a point to prove and they wanted to show the success stories. I get it. But even though these cases seemed like outliers, the documentary as a whole made me think, yeah, why not give this a shot?

Forks Over Knives was a good documentary to start me on because, frankly, and I should be more ashamed to admit this, I can compartmentalize the slaughterhouse stuff. But when you start showing me arteries and blood work, that kicks my hypochondria into high gear. One of the main subjects of the documentary, Dr. Esselstyn, a physician, responds to the plant based diet being extreme by saying well, a lot of times, we open your chest cavity, then take a vein from your leg, and sew it around a blood vessel to your heart, some people might call that extreme.

Well, played, doctor.

Also, technically, the doctors in this film weren’t advocating veganism. Their diet was actually more strict than that. The phrase that they kept using was “whole foods, plant based diet.” This obviously means avoid meat and dairy but they also say to avoid processed food and oils. I will be eating pita chips and bread that use bleached flour and olive oil is just part of my diet, I don’t know what to tell you. Hell, it’s a start.

I already use almond milk. I eat quinoa and black beans at least a few times a week. I like soy chicken. I’m, like, halfway there already. I’m going to give this a try. It’s only one day. In tomorrow’s post, I’ll let you know how it goes.