In July, I may be moving to a place where remaining a vegetarian is impossible. I am okay with this. I am a vegetarian for no good reason, but I’ve been one for my entire adult life. For the most part I don’t enjoy eating meat and I am a little squeamish about it. I’m hoping for some advice on how to reintoduce meat in to my diet.
Right now I’ve experiemented with a bit of fish here and there. It generally leaves me a bit queasy. It’s gonna be a while before I can chomp down on a fat steak. The idea of taking that first bite seems so strange. And the idea of ordering meat seems so…unneccesary. I don’t like it. It costs more. But I want my stomach to be in good shape for a meat-heavy diet by summer.
One thing I’d like to do is eat some of the things I’ve been missing out on. The gems of the meat world. I love food, but most importantly I love well-prepared exquisite delicacies. Sushi (which I never did give up) is right up my ally. The best of the best.
I live in the Bay Area, so just about anything you can think of is available somewhere. It’s probably best for me to start with something where meat is a small component, and work up to eating big chunks of meat.
Unless you plan on giving up veggies, you’re gonna become an omnivore. Technically.
My friend hadn’t eaten meat for about 10 years, and this past summer was at a music festival in Chicago, and smelled cheeseburgers cooking. He said, “Why not?” And ate one. His stomach was a little upset for the rest of the day, but within a month he was a meat-eating fool again.
I wouldn’t worry too much about easing in to the meat consumption. Just jump in and order a big fat juicy cheeseburger with jalepenos and bacon, cooked medium to medium-well.
Where is it impossible to be a vegetarian? They serve and sell vegetables, fruits, and grains everywhere, people can’t live without them. Unless you’re moving to the Arctic among the Inuits, where a lot of people eat mostly meat because there’s no fresh fruits or veggies and they need the protein, it’s possible to be a vegetarian anywhere.
It doesn’t take much adjustment. My ex was a vegetarian for a few months and went back and he never complained about any stomach pains. Maybe you shouldn’t start off with steak, but you should easily be able to handle a hamburger or a piece of fried chicken with minimal discomfort. Red meat might be the hardest to acclimate to due to the blood content. Just start with a little side of meat every day and work your way up. Also eating things with lots of spices or things that are mixed with lots of veggies should mask the taste of the meat if you don’t like it.
OK, you really don’t want to dive into this all at once. Introducing mass quantities of proteinaceous food too fast for your intesinal flora to adjust can kill you.
But if you’re not suddenly eating pounds of flesh in a day, it’s not a huge concern. I vote for easing in with small amounts of stir-fry type dishes. Greek noodles, Chinese food with lots of rice & veggies, etc.
I’m rather fond of Turkish/Lebanese/other Middle Eastern dishes, which feature less meat than the average American diet. That might be a good place to start, as you’ll also have plenty of vegetarian dishes available just in case.
I think as long as you work your way up to that 1/2 lb. cheeseburger, you’ll be find.
It’s actually fairly difficult to get along as a vegetarian in parts (possibly most parts) of Europe unless you have the option of cooking for yourself and are willing to do so for pretty much every meal. Otherwise, your options are extremely limited.
That’s a great idea- I seem to remember enjoying Mediterranean meat- lots of lemon and sunny tastes. I can also start eating a little meat curry when I got to Indian lunch buffet (a weekly occurrence for me). It’s not so much my stomach that I’m worried about as much as my mind. A hamburger just doesn’t seem like “food” to me, and I right now I could no more see biting in to one as I could see biting in my shoe.
Right now I am in the process of joining the Peace Corps and if all goes well I will be going to French-speaking west Africa (don’t know which country yet). While I may be able to remain veg there, it seems like more trouble than it is worth and may serve as an impediment to being accepted in the community. Dropping vegetarianism was a condition of my placement there. I’d imagine meals I cook on my own will still be largely veg, but in people’s homes and other social situations I want to fit in. I think following the local diet will also lead to a more balanced diet than I’d be able to cobble together on my own using familiar ingredients and techniques (I cook most Brazilian, Mexican and Indian dishes on my own).
Choosing small amounts of the meat curry in your Indian buffet sounds like a great idea; not only will it seem to fit in with your regular diet and cause minimal shock to your digestive system, but you can take just as little as you feel comfortable with and go back for more as you desire.
Perhaps you might consider easing into the specific cuisines of your destination countries: something like a chicken mafé, which is found all over West Africa. The Bissap-Baobab restaurant in San Francisco has one from the Senegalese/Malian border. I hope that you’re not allergic to peanuts? [I would imagine that this is one of the first questions asked by a Peace Corps recruiter for West Africa].
As regards introducing meat into your home-cooked recipes: Trader Joe’s carries frozen Buffalo Burger patties ($5.29 for 4 x 5oz burgers in my local TJs). It’s more expensive than regular cow-hamburger meat, but it’s tastier (IMHO), higher in protein, and lower in fat/ calories/ cholesterol. Don’t overcook it! Cut a slice off the patty, and throw it into a stir-fry. Add garlic and ginger – well, just because those are good ingredients for any stir-fry. Buffalo meat is lean, tasty, and you have the additional knowledge that it’s free-range (none of those cow-factories), and free from Mad Cow Disease. If you are going to stray from vegetarianism for geographic reasons, you probably don’t want to get into the whole factory-meat debate while you’re still Stateside (where you’re going, it won’t be part of the equation). There’s no point in acclimatizing yourself to meat-eating issues that are the diametric opposite of what you’ll experience in-country.
[I bet that it’ll be tough being thousands of miles from the nearest Trader Joe’s, however. The horror!]
The Trader Joe’s Buffalo Burger link got seriously mangled in my post just above.
I’ll add a recommendation for Moroccan tagines made with mutton (authentic) or lamb (easier to find in the US). I’ve often made a tagine/couscous meal with lamb for a mixed vegetarian/omnivore group, adding the lamb only for those that want it. Invariably, at the end of the evening, much more lamb has been consumed than anticipated, leading me to believe that some of the “vegetarians” may have strayed…
In large parts of Asia it’s almost impossible. Mongolia, for example, where the situation is is often “mutton or nothin’”. I had a veggie friend who spent a month there, and she basically starved. In China, if you can’t cook for yourself, there are meat products - usually pork or pork fat - in almost everything, even in so-called “vegetarian” restaurants.
You might want to acclimate yourself to gamey flavors and try some “strongly flavored” meats. I imagine much of the native diet where you are going will include whatever is available from the wild beyond the domesticated Chicken or Pig.
It might present a problem for your delicate tastes. I love meat but even I can’t quite get past strong, gamey, meats.
Also, plan on steeling yourself for seeing the food that you eat, alive, dead, and anywhere in between…this can present a psychological problem that might add to your meat aversion.
Here’s what I know. There is a common misconception that after being vegetarian one’s body loses the “enzymes” to digest meat. This is not true. Your body retains all its abilities to digest meat properly. A vegetarian may not be accustomed to the fattiness or richness of meat, however, if she’s been eating low-fat vegetarian meals. (Some vegetarians blithely substitute cheese for meat and continue to eat fattily (?) regardless of having given up meat.) It sounds like flavor and texture might be the problems you’re referring to.
I was ovo-lacto vegetarian for twenty years and raised my children that way from birth. I added occasional fish to my diet within this past year, and found that is much easier to find healthy convenience foods and “diet dinners” if I allowed poultry as well. I still don’t care to rip a bird apart in my hands and gnaw on legs and such, but I don’t mind cut-up pieces of chicken within a dish containing other ingredients. Occasionally I have a turkey burger, yummm, which is heaven following 20 years of soy. I still don’t eat red meat or pork, except for occasional bacon as flavoring.
I think that non-western cultures don’t usually present big old slabs of meat the way we do, but instead use it more as a condiment or ingredient. I may be wrong. I think it might help to become accustomed to small amounts of meat within a mixed ingredient dish as people have suggested.
I like the idea of starting with meat in a curry, etc. However, I would suggest going someplace where you know you’ll get a quality cut of meat or cooking it yourself. The Indian restaurant down the street from me has great meat dishes. The one downtown near my office is enough to put even me (a lover of meat) off animal flesh forever (gristly, nasty quality meat–though their veggie dishes are great)!
You may want to start with chicken rather than red meat. Red meat seems (to me at least) to have a stronger taste and a more obvious meat texture.
It’s not the enzymes but bacteria; a vegetarian newly introduced to meat will have to build up a tolerance, particularly if the meat is not thouroughly cooked or if it is handled with utensils that have been exposed to raw meat. (This is a no-no by Western hygenic standards but common in the East.) The solution is easy enough–eat fully cooked or stewed meat and avoid rare or ground meats, and start eating only in small quantities.
This is a fair observation, I think; the meat-heavy Germanic-style dishes or Spanish whole roast pig are less common in other cultures in no small part because meat is such an expensive food to cultivate. In Mediterranean and Lebonese dishes, for instance (not withstanding the gyro, souvlaki, and the like–those crazy Greeks) meat is more of a flavoring than a centerpiece; serving sizes of 2-4oz combined with a lot of veggies and starches are more common, whereas if you walked into a steakhouse and someone served you a 4 oz fillet you’d feel (rightly) cheated. Also, many Asian cultures lean heavily toward fish and seafood, which (when fresh) has significantly less bacterial content and few trans fatty acids and saturated fats.
I don’t have any good advice regarding acclimating to the texture and taste to meat other than, as with anything else, keep trying it until you develop a taste for it (or decide that you just can’t stand it…that’s me and eggs). I’ll note, though, that a few years ago when I went to a much less meat intensive diet and stopped eating junk carbs like crisps and fried foods, meat heavy dishes became much less appealing. I can hardly consider eating more than a 12 oz steak, and indeed I pretty much avoid red meat and pork not only because it’s less healthy but just because it doesn’t sound all that good. With a few notable exceptions every steak and hamburger I’ve gotten in the last few years has been a disappointment; I’d much rather eat some hummus and tabouli, or a broiled salmon fillet than a sirloin. (The Hitching Post is an except to this, but I’m only up there once or twice a year, and even at that, I tend toward the smaller portions.)
Good luck to you in your culinary and Corps adventures.
Meat in general has a higher fat content than most foods you’re use to, sven. Adding it to your diet might cause weight gain. Best way to prevent this is to adopt a strict rule: Eat nothing you have not killed with your own bare hands! (That way, you get exercise and expend calories.)
