The travails of being a ‘vegan’

If you want to add four to eight years to your life, shifting to a vegetarian diet could boost your chances.

Dr. Tofi Sison, who is probably the only doctor in the country who has specialized in both fields of psychiatry and dermatology, shares in the July issue of H&L (Health & Lifestyle) magazine that becoming a vegan is one of the best decisions he has made. For him it is simply the right thing to do and it feels right doing it.

“I grew up as a carnivore like everybody else, but I decided to be vegetarian during my college days,” he says. He considers that a pivotal decision and interestingly a rather easy one to do because it was consistent with his spiritual values.

He remembers peers and acquaintances teasing him: “You are missing out on delicious dishes,” “Don’t you miss hamburgers?” “Why are you depriving yourself of great food?” “Don’t you miss meat?”

Sincere concern

Although some of these remarks were due to sincere concern that he might be unduly depriving himself of necessary nutrients, others had a tinge of sarcasm. He just politely answered them that he knew what he was doing and that he is making sure he’s getting all the nutrients he needed from plant-based products.

Tofi explains that being a vegetarian is a conscious choice to limit one’s food choices to selected food groups such as vegetables, fruits and nuts. Pure vegans also avoid egg and milk products, whereas others may include them. If they drink milk, they’re called lacto-vegetarian, and if they eat egg products, they’re called lacto-ovo-vegetarian. In all types, seafood, meat and poultry products are out.

Tofi has added another type he calls the “flexitarians.” These are flexible individuals who mainly eat a plant-based diet but would occasionally eat limited portions of meat.

Vegans cite many reasons in choosing to be so. Some do it for health reasons, others as an advocacy against cruelty to animals, while others become vegetarian as part of a bible-based religious or spiritual doctrine or philosophy, like the Seventh Day Adventists.

He describes his family’s and friends’ choice of food as based on a “see food,” meaning, they see food and they eat it. “They are unapologetically carnivores, but this minor behavioral trait does not deter me from enjoying their love and company,” he says.

Soon enough, Tofi’s friends would always check out vegetarian choices in restaurants to ensure that he would have something to eat when they dined out. There are times, though, that Tofi feels he’s a rara avis (rare bird), or a vegetarian among carnivores in Manila. He probably needs to associate with Seventh Day Adventists, the majority of whom are vegans.

Tofi loves to travel, either for medical conferences or for pleasure. Every time he travels, he makes sure his travel agent forwards his request to the airline to serve him a vegetarian meal. He considers that one of the perks of being a vegan. “The best is that my meal is special and I am served first always!” he says.

During parties though, he finds himself in a bind when there are no vegan dishes. He says: “I have learned not be offended when a well-meaning host or hostess would insist that I simply get the vegetable part of the paella and leave the meat part since it was a special dish. Or that I could partake of the chicken viand since it is not meat. I would smile politely and say ‘thank you’ and get some fruits.”

No special treatment

For big medical events and conventions, Tofi does not expect to be given special treatment by the organizers. He realized soon after deciding to become a vegetarian that he would almost without conscious effort anticipate and plan his meals especially when in a gathering or party.

He anticipates that there would only be vegetable salad or desert choices for him. He even avoids the soup since they are often cooked with meat or chicken broth to add volume and flavor. “If I am lucky I may eat a vegetarian pasta dish. Usually I would eat at home so that I would not be too hungry and focus more on social interactions during the event,” he shares.

Tofi notes that when he attends the meetings of the organizations with expat members, a vegetarian dish is always included in the buffet. “This is because some of the members are vegetarians and flexitarians,” he explains.

Occasionally, he gets into discomforting situations in restaurants. From his experience, tweaking menus a bit so it suits the preference of diners is a concept that chefs and maitre d’s still have to understand. Tofi relates: “I would give specific instructions to make a ‘vegetarian’ version of a menu choice and I discover that they still add the bacon or the chicken in the dish. They would explain that without those ingredients the dish would be ‘tasteless’. I would reassure them that I will eat the tasteless dish; and I would return the dish and ask them to do a ‘vegetarian’ one.”

He laments that there seems to be no true Filipino vegetarian dish. All the vegetable dishes are sprinkled with either meat, chicken, fish or seafood to enhance the taste of vegetables, which are generally regarded as tasteless. “This is so ironic considering that we are an agricultural country with bountiful vegetables to choose from,” says Tofi.

Next week: The health benefits of a vegan diet from the Adventist Health Study