Veganism is looming...

With our final week of veganism looming, it’s time for us to look back at what we’ve achieved so far as well as look forward to our unrestricted diets! We’ve enjoyed being vegan more than we thought we would. Our preconception of the vegan lifestyle was that of tasteless and unfulfilling meals that satisfied your body, but not your mind. So it was a surprise when we found that actually some parts of being vegan were pretty good.

We’ve both enjoyed soya milk, albeit different forms. Clare enjoyed having her Alpro Soy sweetened soya milk in everything, from tea to cereal, and is pretty much planning on sticking with it after we finish. In contrast Hannah enjoyed unsweetened soya milk in tea, but couldn’t face it at all on its own or in cereal. So while she conquered her biggest potential challenge when taking on veganism (maintaining her daily tea-fix), she’s excited at the prospect of drinking a nice cold cup of creamy fully dairy milk. After all you can’t beat the real McCoy.

Additionally there’ve been some pretty good meals! A particular favourite was a mixed vegetable and barley soup – really wholesome and warm for the winter months. If you want the recipe, comment on the article online and we’ll send it to you.

Veganism is often portrayed as one of the healthiest lifestyles you can follow, with minimum saturated fat and a lack of processed foods, just plenty of vegetables, pulses and grains. With this in mind we expected to feel healthier and to shed a few pounds. The true reality of the situation is that yes, we have lost a few pounds, which is great! However we don’t feel it’s a surefire thing that you would, because we often found ourselves in the situation of compensating our meat for carbs. Perhaps it’s only because we made a conscious effort to use this month to (dare we say it) diet a little that we managed to avoid this trap; there is such a thing as a fat vegan!

It’s incredibly difficult to maintain a balanced diet, particularly with regards to protein. After all there’s so many beans you can eat before it’s antisocial. We have been feeling tired constantly and concentration during lectures has been more difficult than usual. A good chocolate bar is what we would normally need to keep ourselves going; that endorphin and sugar rush that pushes you through your afternoon schedule. We did find a good alternative in Nakd bars. Clare would really recommend the Chocolate Orange flavour and would continue to eat them occasionally after finishing veganism. Hannah on the other hand preferred the Banana Bread and the Apple Pie flavours. They tasted so much like the real thing, an opinion with which Clare concurs. Having said that, they weren’t the real thing and often made you miss them even more.

So now we’re coming to the end we’re looking ahead to that fateful hour when milk, steak, sushi and a boiled egg will be able to pass our lips again. As you might imagine, a little like a final meal on death row, we’ve been giving quite a lot of thought to what we’re going to eat first. It’s a difficult decision, which could lead to dairy-meat-filled binge, resulting in hospitalization. Hannah is definitely looking forward to her first mug of cow-milk tea – she’ll have the water boiled ready for the stroke of midnight! The following day she’s going to feast on a juicy steak with béarnaise sauce and Heston’s brilliant triple cooked chips (she’s literally salivating as we write). Clare shall be having herself a huge Chinese takeaway, no scrimping on the roast duck pancakes. Perhaps she may even top it off with some sushi at the end… she’s pretty desperate right now.

We’ve realized that veganism isn’t the end of the world for food lovers. It makes everyday life that little more difficult when you walk down the aisles of delicious Easter Eggs or pass a good ol’ burger bar with that smell of meaty goodness. It’s virtually impossible to eat out at most restaurants; a handy tuppa wear box of humus and crudités must accompany you at all times.

For us this is definitely a one off. Our love of food conquers our love of animals and the environment – sorry tree huggers. However as mentioned previously there are lots of things we’ve enjoyed about being vegan, and will carry on in the future. In particular what we will try to continue with is the principle of having a vegetable based diet with a steak on top of course. Previously to undertaking this challenge, the balance of our plate was definitely in favour of a nice piece of meat or fish. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why obesity rates world wide are so high as people have lost sight of what a truly balanced diet is. After finishing our vegan month we’re definitely going to make more informed food choices.

To conclude, veganism has been an eye opening experience; not a life choice that’s for us, but very informative and something we’ll never forget. Thank you for reading and please remember this was all for charity, so please give generously at uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/goingvegan We’ve earned it!