Don't be fooled by da vegan scammerz!

Every so often, I happen upon videos of vegan recipes, where it is claimed that the thing in question "tastes just like the real thing".

Examples are down below.

As an omnivore with some recurring vegan leanings -- an on-and-off vegan, so to speak --, I can tell you one thing with almost 100% certainty: While those foods often do taste real great, they usually taste nothing at all "like the real thing".

The worst offender in this category was a "mousse au chocolat" that we did on a vegan cooking course. It was made with avocados and dates (and chocolate of course). Yeah it was sweet and chocolatey, but it completely missed the mark with regard to consistence and overall fluffiness (and alcohol, which was sorely missing, because, duh, vegans apparently can't drink a little of the goodey stuff, either).

While I realize and -- to a degree -- respect what those people are trying to achieve, I believe they're doing their own cause a disservice.

Look, I had a wonderful, wonderful "egg salad" with toast last night, based on tofu and lima beans. It tasted excellent. But calling that thing "egg salad", and expecting anything like real eggs, was just setting myself up for disappointment. Things don't work that way. Tofu does not an egg replace, pretty much regardless of what means of torture you apply.

Why can't it simply be "delicious creamy tofu salad"? I believe that vegan recipes deserve their own identity, and have a right to their very own, very unique taste.

Examples of "meat-alike" vegan recipes:

An Evolutionary Argument For Veganism

Lately, I have become addicted to the videos of a certain young lady named Kerry McCarpet. She's witty, eloquent, and I just love that British accent of hers - I could watch this video of hers over and over, just to hear her utter the phrase "betwixt the hand and the gob" again and again.

I also agree with a lot of what she says, even though I'd probably be much more cautious in some respects. Her mind is more speculative than mine. I think this is a good thing - it makes for inspiring and lively videos. At the very least, she does what many vegans sadly don't do - she explains her reasons for believing the way she does.

However, let's focus on the one negative thing I found, shall we?

Here, and at a few other places, she presents an argument for high-carbohydrate/low-fat veganism: Evolution shows you what we should eat; our body runs on sugar, our blood cells seem modeled on chlorophyl to some extent. Therefore, we should eat a high-carb vegan diet.

(Personally, I think the chlorophyl argument has a chemist weeping somewhere, but that's just an aside.)

There is a general problem with arguments from evolution. When you try to argue that one specific trait is good, it is of course tempting to say that this trait has survived for so long, so it has to be good - right?

Well - no, sadly. When you do that, you will always end up going in circles.

See, the theory of evolution was invented to explain how we (and all the other species) ended up where we are. But that doesn't tell you anything about whether one specific trait is "good" (i.e., well-adapted) or not. After all, (the theory of) evolution necessarily has to explain the bad along with the good - or to put it differently: In evolution, there is no such thing as good or bad.

The theory of evolution is descriptive, not prescriptive.

We evolved to love sugar and salt, and this is reflected in our taste buds. And we evolved to have a strong sense of empathy, which we may judge as a good thing. But we also evolved to be primates with a rather nasty habit of dropping bombs on each other, and we evolved to have an overweight brain that lets us to fancy stuff like cooking our food, and making hamburgers. We cannot predict, from a merely evolutionary standpoint, which ones of those traits will still be around in a million years.

If you were in possession of a time machine (or a supernatural gift of foresight), and you were to peek into the far future to tell us how this whole game of natural selection actually turned out, that would be something entirely different. Then you could tell us whether red hair will prevail (it doesn't look like it will, to my utter dismay), or whether we will become more peaceful (again, not the obvious winner... *sigh*). But as things are, evolution cannot be used to argue for or against any one lifestyle. It is entirely possible that only the most territorial and aggressive will survive. There may be lots of other arguments against this, but evolution alone just can't tell you.

I suspect that, at its heart, this is really a vitalist argument. It sees evolution not as a blind process guarded by natural laws, but as an intentional agent. It is extremely tempting to fall into this trap - I think even Dawkins once remarked that it is almost impossible to talk about evolution while avoiding it - so this is not a damning accusation at all. It's totally understandable.

After all, the situation is extremely frustrating. We're still left with a guessing game when it comes to something so fundamental as our choice of food. We just don't know enough about nutrition to give definitive answers to the most rudimentary questions.

Personally, I'm going for a "part-time vegan" style, and while I might change this in he future, I'm fairly certain about one basic principle: I will never submit to one philosophy of nutrition to the absolute exclusion of all others. There will always be some meat in my diet - probably very, very little -, some fish, some oil, some cooked and some raw foods - and probably lots and lots of fruits and veggies. But even this diet, which I consider the most rational choice I am currently capable of, is based on guesswork, word of mouth, and personal experience.

I am not a vegan. I sincerely hope I never will be.

I eat lots of vegan food. Sometimes I eat meat. But regardless of how this develops in the foreseeable future, I will not be "a vegan". I don't want to identify with my food habits. I have enough labels as it is, thanks a lot.

Michael Pollan's Rules

Michael Pollan, in his book "In Defense Of Food", lays out a few rules of thumb for what to eat. They are not only enormously helpful, but also rather amusing. I don't remember all of them (there are about 20 or so). Here are the ones that I found most helpful:

• Only ever eat food that your great-grandmother would have recognized as edible. I.e., no green-colored sausage from a tube.
• Prefer stuff from the outer rim of the supermarket. That's where they hide the fruits and vegetables. In Austria, this is actually more like "prefer stuff from near the entrance".
• If something proudly proclaims that it's "healthy" on the package, avoid it like hell. Apples and broccoli don't need to tell you how healthy they are - you already know that anyway.
• Prefer non-packaged food. The less plastic-wrap, the less industrial processing it has probably gone through.
• Remember that you are eating food, not nutrients. What makes a carrot so healthy is not the vitamins and beta-carotin, but the combination of it all. That's why naturally vitamin-rich greens are way more healthy than vitamin pills.

Here are a few from my own recent experiences:

• It is amazing what you can do with tofu. You just have to learn how to use the stuff, and many folks do get it wrong. My initiation was a vegan bolognese that tasted way better than the "original".
• Yeast flakes (if that's the correct english translation for "Hefeflocken"?) plus ground almonds and salt make a perfect Parmesan replacement.
• Once you get off the addiction, healthy food actually tastes way better than empty calories. If it doesn't, that means you have not found what works for you yet. Keep looking for good recipes. There are lots and lots of information on vegetarian internet forums or in cook books.
• Buy a smoothie maker and start the day with a smoothie! Green smoothies are even better, but even "normal" smoothies will help you stay away from the packaged chocolate bars and candies.
• Cook your own meals. It's fun, it doesn't actually take much time, and it tastes much better anyway. One of the traps of pre-packaged or delivered meals is that they come in large portions, and people tend to eat what's on the plate, so you will eat more than you actually want. If you cook your own meals, you can make your portion exactly the size you really need.
• Always add good stuff, instead of avoiding bad stuff. After a good and healthy lunch, I find I have absolutely no need for a Big Mac or Döner Kebap.

Oh and one last thing: definitely try to replace milk with soy milk for a week. You might be lactose intolerant without even knowing (a huge percentage of the populace is, for evolutionary reasons). I found that it helped me a lot.

Homemade fries + ketchup

Fries:

• Slice potatoes as small as you want them
• Put baking paper on tray and potatoes on paper
• Add salt, pepper, rosemary or whatever spice floats your boat
• Bake in oven for maybe 10 minutes (check up on them, I totally suck with precise numbers, 10 mins just worked for me that's all)

Ketchup:

• Put peeled and sliced tomatoes in a dish (the pre-packaged kind you can get in boxes that are already cooked, I'm not sure about their proper english name actually)
• Add salt, fresh lemon juice and agave sirup (or sugar) to your taste
• Add whatever spice floats your boat - I often use pepper and chili

And that's it. Total effort: 5 minutes. Total waiting time: 10 minutes. If I'd known this before, I'd never have bought the packaged stuff. Much more room for creativity this way, basically no fat, and it just tastes delicious.

Healthy food

After a month or so of eating almost only vegetarian, and mostly vegan food, here are my first few insights:

1. Yes it does make me feel better indeed.
2. I will never go "100%". My aim is to live better, not to be a fanatic. And besides, I don't want to miss out on my mother's extremely delicious dinners.
3. Weight loss might be a welcome side-effect, but it shouldn't be the primary goal.
4. Learn to cook for yourself. There are utterly delicious recipes out there, and you'll never get anything even close to that in a restaurant. The video that finally convinced me of this and made me start this thing, was one for vegan bolognese. I swear I have never eaten a pasta bolognese this tasty ever before! (If you want to look it up, the guy's name is Attila Hildmann, but it's in german, so I won't link it here.)
5. It doesn't have to be salad.
6. I had always thought that healthy cooking takes a lot of time. Turns out, the opposite is the case. It's a matter of 10-20 minutes for most things I try.
7. Healthy food is largely a matter of organisation. There are companies that deliver weekly boxes with greens and fruits. Just have to place an order.
8. Tofu has no taste. Instead, it takes on any taste you add.
9. The craving for meat, fat and sugar does indeed vanish after a while.
10. There's a vegan burger recipe (involving tofu, onions, mustard, tomatoes, chillies, agave sirup, avocados, cashews, ...) that I desperately need to try next week.
11. Popped Amaranth + Yoghurt + Syrup!
12. Popped Amaranth + Yoghurt + Syrup!
13. Popped Amaranth + Yoghurt + Syrup!!!!!!!