Plight of the modern vegetarian

My one month (25 days) of experimental vegetarianism* is over, and I couldn’t be happier. For me it comes down to one simple, hard-to-overcome obstacle – lifestyle.

The sad truth is that I eat out way too much. Trying to navigate a vegetarian diet in modern fast food is rather difficult, and seldom satisfying.

Almost every time somebody wanted to go out to eat, the first thing I did was google “<restaurant name> vegetarian”, which usually brought me to a handful of websites that list acceptable vegetarian dishes. Those websites were extremely helpful to me, and are invaluable for modern vegetarians and vegans.

*After a while I stopped calling my experiment vegetarian, and used the more appropriate term “meat-less.” The big difference lies within food preparation. Since I have no ethical or dietary restriction on animal products, I wasn’t concerned with how the food was prepared, only that the final product didn’t include meat. Two examples during the expirment:

1. Sour cream – one of Taco Bell’s acceptable dishes includes the delicious Seven-Layer Burrito sans sour cream (apparently it contains animal-derived rennet), but sour cream is generally too delicious for me to pass up.
2. Chipotle’s pinto beans – as a true fan of Chipotle I had remembered reading their pinto beans were flavored (possibly prepared) with bacon. After trying a vegetarian burrito with black beans, I wanted to try one with the pinto beans despite what I knew—I’m glad I did, I thought it was much better.

A true vegetarian would have passed on both of those options, but I’m not a true vegetarian – I just play one on the Internet.

Seriously though, I honestly feel bad for vegetarians and vegans because they have so few options in fast food. (Apparently, Taco Bell is a relatively safe choice with bean substitutions and even a fresco menu.)

The second iteration of this experiment proved two things to me:

1. I can do it
2. it’s not for me

I do think this experiment opened my eyes (wider) to the difficulty, almost segregation, of vegetarians. Of course it’s probably substantially easier to follow with mostly home-cooked meals, but life happens.

To those with vegetarian, vegan or any combination of strict diets—good luck! I think I’ll stick with my double Bacon Deluxe and deal with those consequences in the gym. Mmmm bacon.