The trouble with being pigeonholed into a particular “ism” is that the minute you stray from the rules of the ism, you become, at the very least, a lapsed ism. But far worse, you have set yourself up for failure, and heaven knows we don’t need any more hurdles in our lives.

            For the past few years, I have been increasingly uncomfortable when my husband would introduce me as his wife, the vegetarian. In even my strictest diet phase, I could have been best described as a lacto-ovo vegetarian, so that I could still eat pizza. Now I would have to call myself a lacto-ovo-pesco-pollo vegetarian. Wouldn’t it just be easier to say (and only on as as-needed basis) that I prefer not to eat red meat?

             The reasons people choose to eat or not to eat meat are many: ecological, health, and religious, dislike of meat, compassion for animals and pure economics (they simply can’t afford to.)

            I would love to be able to say that my choice was made for purely altruistic reasons, as promoted by Frances Moore Lappé, author of Diet for a Small Planet. In this book, she asks the question: “since a meat-centered diet so squanders the earth’s limited resources, is there a viable alternative?”

            The answer was a resounding “yes,” followed later with a second book, Recipes for a Small Planet, written by her close friend Ellen Ewald. Both books became valuable tools for me as I attempted to fill the void that meat had left in my life (and tummy.) Based on the use of complimentary proteins obtained from grains, beans (especially soy) and vegetables, I finally found a good diet that left me feeling full and kept me from falling over from malnutrition. You see, my less than altruistic motive for embracing vegetarianism was more superficial. I had not only obtained a degree in sciences at the end of university; I am afraid that I also appeared to have minored in hamburger and frenchfry-ism. I was fat!

            I should have therefore felt some redemption when a few weeks back I read an article describing a newly defined trend in eating, flexitarianism. In essence, it really doesn’t mean anything. A flexitarian is someone who eats what they feel like as the mood hits them, but is being used in this context to describe people who fall off the vegetarian wagon once in a while, or on the other hand, are recreational vegetarians.

            Although, I am not sure I would want my husband to introduce me as a flexitarian—people might think I’m some sort of contortionist—but at least I wouldn’t have to try and back-track when the host began to worry about what to serve me. It might also get me out of the embarrassing situation of picking through a fatty piece of poached salmon, an equally fatty unidentifiable chicken part with fatty skin, bones and purplish spots, and the equally horrible experience of some wonderfully considerate host presenting me with an individual dish of shrimp in a rich cream sauce swimming in butter; all things that I would rather stomach a piece of beef before eating. Because if you have never eaten vegetarian for any length of time, you can’t possibly understand what the affect of grease and cream sauces can do to your body.

            Out of compassion for busy restaurant staff and uptight hosts, I have reached a point where I can simply push the meat aside, and don’t go into histrionics if the juice or gravy has touched my beans. Ultimately, the reason I still no longer eat red meat, nor although I have considered it, lean pork, is because I have absolutely no self-control when it comes to meat flavour and texture. To illustrate this point: if I buy a package of tofu wieners, I will have eaten two raw, if that is possible, while I am cooking two more for my lunch.

            This brings me to a disturbing trend in many vegetarian magazines: the promotion of mock meats. If you turn to almost any recipe in one of these magazines, you will see that the key ingredient is either “bacon” bits, soy “beef” strips, or “chicken” strips. Surely this is simply promoting faux-vegetarianism? Certainly not in the true spirit of the ism at all. All those artificial meat flavourings couldn’t possibly be healthy. I suppose they have to keep the advertisers happy.

            The only soy products you’ll find in “old” vegetarian cookbooks such as Diet will be soy flour, soy beans, and tofu that in no way resembled the perfectly formed extra-firm blocks we can purchase in any store today.  The rest is just lots of good whole grains, beans, dairy, and fresh produce. Without a good knowledge of cooking from scratch with natural raw ingredients, no one can be successful at eating well.

            To my dismay, I can’t seem to put my finger on my dog-eared copy of Diet. Surely I didn’t put it out in a garage sale; that would be as unimaginable as misplacing my copy of The Prophet, that other guide to spiritual living from the 70’s.