Vegans and the organic hype

So I honestly thought I wasn't going to finish Footloose, but I did just now so 1 point for me. :)

I tried to sleep today but ended up feeling guilty about it and doing homework.
Then I went to work.  At work, one of the drivers, Sean, mentioned Whole Foods Market to me while we were making pizza.  Then for the next couple hours after he brought that up, all I could think about was the super yummy pasta salad that I sampled at Whole Foods last time I was there.  So after work I meandered my way down to the Whole Foods by my house, hoping for some nommy free samples and double-hoping for a nommy sample of pasta salad or their nommy-but-psycho-expensive cake.

All this got me thinking about organic and vegan stuff.
I was a vegan for like 2 months (minus 2 days that I cheated, but that's a pretty good track record) and a vegetarian for a while after that.  I did it for a school project that was essentially reseaching veggie culture, so it included the whole PETA package that comes with it.  PETA2 (the more fun, teen and young adult-designed side of PETA) still sends me friendly texts on holidays and stickers in the mail sometimes.  Being vegan was just fine, except that I was really busy when I went veg so I didn't really have time to go somewhere like Whole Foods and get anything like THIS.  And regular grocery stores in lil ol' Brigham City don't have that kind of stuff.  So I pretty much spent 2 months eating breakfast cereal (with soy milk, of course.... not too nommy but okay) and PB&J sandwiches.  Then I got my job at Domino's and started eating pizza, so the vegan thing ended.

Here's what I learned from being vegan:

1. You don't need meat to make you happy or to make you healthy.
I ate peanut butter and got a bunch of protein from that, and I never really missed meat all that much.

2. Just because you are vegan does not mean that you are healthy/sick.
Many people who enjoy foods with meat/butter/eggs/etc. tried to convince me that removing these things from my diet would automatically destroy my health and well-being.  On the other hand, the PETA site tells you loads about how healthy vegans are and how they never have high blood pressure or diabetes or heart failure.  Neither of these are the case.  I know a bunch of vegans/vegetarians who are very healthy, but I wasn't being healthy at all when I was vegan because half of what I ate was peanut butter (fat) and jelly (sugar).  And the concept of veganism is fairly new, so saying that non-vegans are unhealthy suggests that nobody in the world has ever been healthy before the invention of veganness.

3. Your excuses to not be vegan are mostly pathetic, so I'd think of some new ones if I were you.
It's cool if you do/don't want to be a vegan, especially with me because I don't even know who you are.  You could eat only rice pudding and it's not my problem and I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.
But here's the most pathetic think I heard from people when I told them about my vegan project: "I could never do that.. I just love meat/(insert any other animal product here) too much."  When you say this, you imply that every person who chooses to be vegan does not enjoy eating meat.  Here's a fun fact for you: **Most vegans were not born vegan.**
Now I know what you're thinking, and that is "Wait a second, Laura.. do you mean to tell me that most of these veggie people were raised eating what I think of as regular food, and they made a lifestyle choice when they decided how they were going to eat?"
Yes, that is what I'm saying.
There are some other excuses that I heard that also sucked, but I don't need to go into that.
Before you make an excuse for why you're not something that is unfamiliar to you, think it over first.  That way you won't embarrass yourself.

4. Vegans are cool.
So are skaters and geeks and emos and nerds and pretty much any other stereotypical group we can dump people in.  Of course some specific people suck; that's life.  But don't judge groups because that's very unfantastic of you.
Here's a secret.  Every time you stereotype or judge someone, The Seuss Project sends a text message to me telling me who you are, where you live, and what I'll most enjoy dumping in your hair while you sleep.  I've been receiving far too many of these texts and I feel like it's time to go dump some stuff in some sleeping people's hair.  (If you don't have hair by choice then I will accomodate.  If you don't have hair because of old age then shame on you; your wisdom should have taught you not to judge people by now.  If you don't have hair but instead have cancer, I will not do anything to you; keep up the good work but don't judge people.)

5. Go veg for a good reason.
Want to lose weight really fast?  Bad reason.
Want to follow a crowd/be a snob?  Bad reason.
Want to take care of your body in a way that you think will be best for you?  Good reason.
Want to help animals/the environment?  Good reason.


Now the organic hype.
Lots of the foods in Whole Foods aren't actually vegan (disregarding the produce section, of course).  I'd think that this is because it would be hard to recreate foods that are traditionally nonvegan in a vegan way.  But many (maybe all) of the foods in Whole Foods are organic.
If you are reading this in a country where the word organic means nothing special to you, then organic = "no crap was used to grow this product; only legit product stuff."

Besides having a reputation in our society as being healthier, organic food is also known for being crazy expensive.  This is why I don't actually buy anything at Whole Foods; buying one meal can easily take up 2 days worth of food budget without blinking an eye.  So the real question is, are the benefits worth the price?

Don't google this.  You'll either find one site and believe it forever, or you'll get ambitious and dig through all the crap until you're just confused.  Pretty much any site you can read on this will be either very liberal or very conservative about this, so none of the facts will match up.

The answer is maybe.

It's recently been published in the Annals of Internal Medicine that "organic food in neither more nutritious or any less prone to bacterial contamination than corresponding, conventionally grown foods."

However, there are flaws in that statement.  Firstly, I don't know who published that and for all I know he could be one of the conservatives so his evidence could be a little bit topsy-turvy.  Secondly, nutrition and bacterial contamination are only a couple of the benefits associated with eating organic.  Others include pesticide contamination and environmental factors, which this statement doesn't mention.

Also, one more thought.  Organic does not automatically mean healthy, same as my vegan point #2.  You can make an organic Big Mac with no problem, as long as you start with only organic ingredients.  That won't stop it from having 700 calories and 50 grams of fat.  This is about making lots of good decisions; you can't just make one decision and then everything's fine.

Through all the blah-blah, here's my conclusion.  I cannot afford to eat organic because I'm a poor college student, so I will continue to eat pesticide-exposed apples from Smith's.  However, if you feel differently, then go for it.  The Whole Foods crew are really nice and I'm sure they'll be thrilled to see you shop there.  But don't go and make a decision about what you're going to put into your body based on an MSN article or something a guy at a farmer's market tells you or what your friends are doing.  Do some research and make an educated decision.

I don't think I'll ever eat 100% organic or anything like that, but someday when I have real spending money I'm definitely coming back to Whole Foods for their yummy organic pasta salad.

This post was not supposed to be so long.  I was actually worried that I wouldn't have enough to say about this and that this would be another useless post.
Maybe it's still useless, but it's not short.
And my opinions are out of my head, so my rant is now complete.  And I can go on to more important things in my life like finally getting to sleep.

There's more to my Whole Foods adventure (which does NOT involve me eating a pasta salad sample... *sadness*) and I was going to add it to this post, but now I'm not cause I'm really tired.  I'll try to post about it tomorrow, but as you may know by now there's like a 70% chance I'll forget.  But it is pretty interesting so maybe I'll try to remind myself.

Have a super wonderful morning.  (I say that because this is the time I'd be getting up on a school day...)
<3/Laura