Going Vegan For A Day: Two Bloggers Try It

Hi everyone!

When Beth and Aaron proposed the guest post idea of going vegan for a day, I thought it was such a fun idea. Below, you will read about their day as they tried to eat completely vegan. I found it fun to read and can completely relate to their struggles with finding hidden animal ingredients in products.

I hope you enjoy their post as much as I did. Also, check out their awesome website Cross Border Cravings!

While I leave for Leah’s wedding early afternoon today I will still be posting as regular over the next couple days (our hotel has wireless internet). So be sure to check back for all the fun!!

~Angela :)

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Cross-Border Challenge: Vegan for a Day

Hi Oh She Glows readers! I’m really excited to be here today as I am a huge fan of Angela’s site! My name is Beth and I share a healthy living blog with my friend Aaron over at CrossBorderCravings.com. Aaron and I met in Canada while both in University and have been great friends since. Now that I live in Washington DC and Aaron is up in Ontario, one way we stay in touch is through our blog. We both have a great interest in healthy food and activity and enjoy sharing our ideas on both with one another and anyone else who might feel the same.

Aaron and I both eat a diet consisting of all of the major food groups, including meat and dairy. However, we thought it might be fun to challenge ourselves to eat vegan for an entire day. Here’s everything we ate, and our thoughts on the whole experience. Enjoy!

Breakfast:

Aaron:

Before I begin, I want to give you an idea of what products I usually consume. Having dabbled in vegetarianism I have a few habits that I have kept, so I don’t really eat a lot of animal products. The products that I would normally buy are tuna, salmon, margarine, cheese, and yogurt. Chicken and eggs find their way into my fridge maybe once every few months. The products I never buy are cow’s milk and red meats.

I started the day off with toast and jam! Not just any jam, but homemade jam! The left is blackcurrant and the right is rhubarb marmalade… Mmm!! Around lunch time, I realized that bread is not actually vegan! I’m off to a bad start, apparently!

Beth:

This morning I realized what a challenge today was really going to be! After a hard work-out at the gym, I came home in need of something filling – fast! I considered an energy bar and found milk products in the ingredients. Then I considered organic cereal and found milk and egg products! It’s obvious when eating vegan to stay away from eggs, dairy and meat, but not so obvious that many foods contain traces of these things.

Finally I settled on a soy yogurt bowl. It contained:

· 1 peach soy yogurt

· 1 tbsp. ground flax

· 1 chopped apple

· 2 tbsp. nut and raisin mix

· 1 tsp. peanut butter

· cinnamon

Lunch:

Aaron:

I did better when it came to lunch – butternut squash soup! Definitely vegan J And a few cherries on the side.

Beth:

For lunch, I headed to JavaGreen, a mostly organic vegan/vegetarian café in downtown DC. JavaGreen also offers a lot of raw food and I decided if I was going to try it, I may as well go all the way! I ate vegan and raw for lunch with the raw pizza. It was my first time eating raw and I didn’t mind it at all! It was nothing like real pizza but the taste of the veggies was excellent. For dessert I had a vegan peanut butter cookie. I don’t usually eat sweets after lunch but they looked too good to resist!

Dinner:

Aaron:

For dinner I had some stir-fried veggies over rice. I think the sauce was vegan, but some of those ingredients I wasn’t sure about!

Beth:

For dinner I also had stir-fried veggies over rice! I checked on my sauces and found meat or dairy traces in all of them! I ended up seasoning my dish with soy sauce, mustard, salt and pepper. I also added a little hummus and salsa to top it off.

Snacks:

Beth:

This was my pre-workout snack – a rice cake with raspberry preserves.

In Conclusion:

Beth:

I had a lot of fun with today. It was really educational to see how many foods really do contain some form of animal products. I am a huge foodie and like to enjoy as much of a variety of tastes and foods as possible. As a result, I don’t think I will be turning vegan anytime soon! However, I do think that eating responsibly is important and I hope that this experience today has taught me how to implement some positive changes in my own habits.

Aaron:

The results? Vegan Tuesday was harder than I thought! Because I don’t eat a whole lot of animal products, I thought it would be a breeze… I was wrong! A couple meals were a bit of a struggle because I didn’t have a big variety of food to choose from (needed groceries!). I definitely think that if I had shopped with the intention of preparing only vegan meals then I would have had an easier go with it. I found I had to cut out some of the major staples in my meals. Yogurt and cheese I think are the hardest to part with. Luckily, there is a lot of soy yogurt out there. Cheese on the other hand, I just can’t stomach the vegan stuff!

Thanks so much to Angela for having us on Oh She Glows! We’d love to hear your feedback and see you over at www.CrossBorderCravings.com!

– Beth

Today’s question:

Have you ever tried eating vegan/vegetarian for a day? What was it like?

Would you try it?

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Hallie

15 years ago

How interesting! Sometimes I’m accidentally vegetarian, or even sometimes on purpose, if I don’t eat meat with lunch or dinner (and I rarely have any at breakfast) but I’ve never tried to go vegan for a whole day. I can’t do this with my current diet plan, but maybe in a few months I’ll give this a try. I think it would be an eye-opener!

Paige @ Running Around Normal

What a cool post. I bet it was frustrating finding traces of animal products in your food.

It’s also a cool story about how you guys blog together to keep up with each other :)

kristi (sweet cheeks)

that is such a great idea! I would love to try that out sometime…I bet it would be harder than it looks for sure!

Recipes for Creativity

I’ve been a vegetarian for 13 years, but I’m sure in that time I’ve accidentally consumed some meat products, because sometimes there is meat stuff in things in restaurants or meals other people make. I’ve also gone vegan before, which is very hard! Lots of products have dairy, as you found out! Neat project, glad you did it!

janetha

fun to read this post, interesting!! i have eaten vegan meals a bunch because i have several friends who are vegan. i also do a lot of vegan cooking and baking. i think i could go a whole day, week, month being vegan with no sweat, but i don’t prefer to.

Jessica

great post! it is crazy how unvegan certain things are!
-muffy

SarahF

Interesting idea to try and go vegan.

I was a vegetarian for 3 years but when I moved into dorm rooms at university I ended up getting really sick because I wasn’t eating enough protein (pretty much the only thing I was eating was lots of carbs…pasta was pretty much the only thing that didn’t have meat in it). I subbed back in chicken and fish and have continued to eat that way for another 5 years. I no longer enjoy the taste of red meat or pork so I just don’t eat it.

I love milk and ice cream too much to ever be vegan. Also yogurt and eggs. But I think it’s good to try these experiments everyonce and a while so that you expand past the 4 or 5 things that many people just rotate their meals with (I know I’m terribly guilty for being unoriginal with my meals).

Might just have to try this!

Faith

Great post! It’s interesting to see just how many foods that you think are vegetarian/vegan really do contain animal products.

Marilyn

I actually became vegetarian about 5 years ago. I gave it a month long test to see how it’d be, then had my favorite meat product at the end (ribs). It just wasn’t the same, so I decided to give up meat for good.

I eat seafood occasionally but very rarely, and occasionally dairy (but also very rarely). I do miss meat, but there are some good alternatives out there :) [seriously, tofurky peppered soy jerky is delicious].

Sana

I ate tried the Liz Lovely vegan cookies and they ROCKED MY SOCKS OFF!!! Here is the post if anyone wants to read it http://blueberrymuffins.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/to-trying-new-things-2/. I will deff be eating vegan desserts for sure :)

Dana (www.eatsleepgetfit.com)

I include vegetarian products in my diet throughout the week on a regular basis. I was one of those people who was a picky eater (still am) but have tried so many different things and I actually love them! It a nice change of pace, I usually only eat chicken, very rarely red meat.

Susan

Lovely post!! I went vegan for a month a few years ago. It maaaay have been because I found out my favourite beer is vegan so I figured i could do it :P

I went hardcore vegan though, cutting out all regular sugars and salts because some of them go through animal charcoal filters. It was hard!! A LOT of recipe flops on my part (I still cringe at the smell of apple cider vinegar after a failed vegannaise attempt). But I also discovered some awesome foods during that month – nutritional yeast, gomashio, Bragg’s, egg replacement powder, FLAX. The experiment ended when I got sick and lost my appetite. When my appetite came back, the only thing I wanted was a cheesy fried egg sandwich :P

Helena

I’m vegetarian at the moment (because I don’t like handling meat lol!), but have had vegan days when I was out of dairy, sort of by accident.

I’m actually considering substituting meat/non-soy protein for all grains/carbs in my diet after reading up on a ‘primal’ diet. It still sounds kind of odd (being against most conventional advice), but the science behind it makes it seem like a good fit for me.

Minta

Good on them for trying! I naturally find being a vegan a breeze, but then I’ve been a vegan for a long time so I’ve had plenty of practice. How wonderful that they gave it a go though.

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