Just don’t call me a vegan
It is the age where what you eat or rather don’t eat has social ramifications, I was startled to find that the vegans find it cute to introduce themselves as such. I always thought veganism was an eating disorder and while I am gluten intolerant -not by choice but by way of doing too much Molly in 2011- I don’t think it makes me cool, or anything except a person who is always craving pizza.
I firmly stand by the ability to choose what one consumes, and if anyone looked at what I’m eating lately they would out me as vegan but I don’t want to be identified that way. I don’t want to be lumped with people I find to be dogmatic about the life choices. Of course the meat industry is insane, so wasteful, and so cavalier about pumping animals with hormones and treating them like they have no life and no value, it is still my prerogative to eat a hamburger if I want to so I don’t want to come out as plant based just in case I ever decide to do so. My reasons for leaving behind being omnivorous are strictly health based, I have been suffering from an array of illnesses stemming from the acidity of my blood and cutting out meat, diary, alcohol and most sugars is what I need to do to heal myself.
“I am simply learning that what I eat can heal or harm me”
This journey has been harrowing and I have been avoiding being plant based as long as possible but when my own body became a petri dish and was so internally inflamed that an innocent shower caused intense pain in the skin and stomach, I had to do something. Something that got me thinking about what we are all eating, the amount of processed foods we are exposed to and the way we rely on stores to feed us. My lifestyle change has forced me to prepare most of my own meals because, in South Africa, everything has meat, wheat or cheese. And I’m not prepared to eat cold green salads for sustenance or be caught dead in any of these places that make bacon out of tofu. I mean I know bacon. Let us not play this game of acting like this weird soy concoction can ever compare.
I am simply learning that what I eat can heal or harm me, and while I reserve the right to lie in bed with everything fried, and sugary I know I am not in a position to live like that anymore. And I wonder how many other people are aware of how essential diet is to wellbeing. Forgetting the politics of it, I am concerned with how no one is linking their skin problems, stomach problems, reproductive issues to the toxicity they ingest on a daily basis. I spent a year running a fast food joint eating nothing but pap, chips, brisket and Hennessy for a year. I subsequently developed a fibroid and kidney issues the following year. The doctors wanted to do surgery but something in me knew the nyols I had been consuming were behind these sudden dis-eases. And since I have given up the causes, my body is beginning to repair itself. Because that is what bodies do when unhindered by acid and inflammation.
Have you ever noticed how bright sober people look? Like the whites of their eyes are actually white. And while vegans are sooooo annoying, their skin is glowing and I know nothing is as comforting as lasagna, that bloating and flatulation afterwards ain’t cute. At all. Try yourself and eat lasagna on a date. You’ll see. The cracked out, cheesy, meaty, wheaty food is sooo tasty, too tasty in fact. I am not sure I can fully give it up, so I won’t. What I will do is marginalize it to a treat. Like once a month. Okay I lie, like once a week. I cannot give up the lightness and brightness my current diet gives me so I all I can do is restrain my inner fast food junkie and see where this path takes me. Hopefully to immortality or the fountain of youth. It would be annoying to give up so much just to die old and wrinkly like everyone else.
I mean this conversation is not complete without chatting about why we (generally urban people and specifically urban Africans) are so reliant on processed food. ITS BECAUSE WE DON’T HAVE LAND TO GROW OUR OWN SHIT! And the displacement of our people and culture has left us without the ancestral knowledge to do so and feed ourselves even in the urban spaces we occupy. A shift in these is essential to the future health of our people. WE need land and we need to grow our own everything, corporations poison us and our planet with alacrity and it may never come to an end. We cannot wait for vegans to uplift capitalism, we have to take care of ourselves. |Or our life spans will continue to be shortened by poverty, the weird diseases the white Westerners brought to our shores and the effects of the food their corporations have us hooked on. I lived in Johannesburg CBD for some time and it is widely known amongst anthropologists as a food desert. The easiest available food is fast food and the vegetable markets sell genetically modified produce. It is a mission to nourish oneself and it seems a concerted effort by ‘them’ to keep ‘us’ sick and tired. That along with the hundreds of churches and pubs to keep people striving and placated does an excellent job of maintaining the socio-political status quo. Food is not just food, it can be a weapon, it can be a medicine. You choose.