The “Bamboozled” Vegetarian

For the past one week HT had published a series of article named “Meat of the Story”…reading it gave me a lot of insight as to what is going on with food products which are even marked vegetarian. It has surely terrified the daylights out of me…I realize that I have consumed a lot of rennet, animal fat, or eggs without my knowledge! Horrendous right? Now what can be done? I can’t throw out anything from my system; whatever I have eaten in the past…they are all long digested, disintegrated and absorbed in the body…The mere thought that I have eaten all these is churning my stomach giving an unending nausea.

It is all the more amazing when one realizes that a vegetarian in India, is not able to maintain his or her chastity…Isn’t it a despicable thing that demands attention and action?…atleast from what I have taught and known, India was a predominantly vegetarian country, of course lacto-vegetarians forming a whole chunk of it.

If one vegetarian cannot lead a happy life in this country then where is it going? Where would all this end? The western lot who were mainly meat eaters, are now taking religiously to vegetarianism and veganism, thanks to the reach and glamour of Yoga and meditation which prefers practicing such diet as a way of life. On the contrary, I could observe that many born-vegetarians are going for non-veg food; blame the advent of exotic restaurants that cater specialized cuisines and influence of media.

I guess it is time the Government empathizes with the vegetarians and does something constructive to eliminate the fear from their minds while consuming their food. When a country like Canada or USA can come up with pure vegan products, why can’t India where things must be simpler?

In spite of the initial success that I had in becoming a pure vegan, I had to give up on it because of the permeation of the lacto-products in most of the food stuffs that invariably contained at least some traces of any of the dairy products especially ghee, butter or cheese and left me with no choice but to cook all meals at home which was simply not an ordinary task given my hectic office timings. That made me to revert back shamelessly to becoming a lacto-vegetarian once again.

But now after hearing all these terrible things, I have completely dropped eating out, given up on chewing gums, imported chocolates, my once-favorite jellies to name a few…my eyes are getting tired due to looking at things skeptically but do you think I am left with any choice? In case I do eat readymade food, I take the arduous task of doing a google search for the description of ingredients. My previous article should give a clue as to how staunch I want to adhere to the ethics of becoming a pure vegan!