تفسیر درس

Camino de Santiago: Food – Commentary Lesson

Hi, this is Kristin. Welcome back to the commentary for the conversation Camino Food. So I thought for this commentary I would talk about my diet, which like Joe’s, like it was mentioned in the conversation, Joe being a vegan, I’m also a vegan. And it’s been mentioned in past conversations as well. It gets…it gets mentioned quite often actually that I have a vegan diet and Joe has a vegan diet.

So I thought I would talk a little bit about that because I’ve never really, y’know, I’ve always explained it in conversations, what a vegan diet is, but I’ve never really talked about it. So I would say from what I remember of growing up, I never really liked eating a lot of meat. Maybe chicken, I liked chicken.

I did like seafood and seafood is fish and shrimp, clams, lobster, anything basically coming from the sea or the ocean, we say seafood. I did like seafood a lot. But as far as turkey or chicken or beef, remember beef comes from a cow, or pork or ham, pork and ham, remember they come from a pig, as far as those meats, I didn’t really enjoy eating them.

Well, as I got older then, I can remember maybe high school and definitely my first two years of college, I was actually still living at home my first two years of college, going to a small college close to where my mother and father lived. Y’know, I started eating less and less of meat. In fact, I can remember my mom saying, “Oh, I think you’re going to become a vegetarian.”

And remember the difference, a vegetarian doesn’t eat meat. It’s not as strict as a vegan diet. A vegan doesn’t eat anything that comes from an animal, so no meat, no cheese, no…they don’t drink milk. No butter, they don’t eat butter. But a vegetarian’s just no meat.

So I remember my mom saying that and she said, “Y’know, I wouldn’t be surprised if you do.” And she said that because she thought that maybe my uncle, her brother, was influencing me because he’d actually been a vegetarian for many, many years. So she said that and I didn’t…I didn’t think too much about it. I thought, “Yeah, if I do, I do. If I don’t, I don’t.” But I wasn’t making any decision to become a vegetarian, and definitely not a vegan at that time.

But then when I did start college. So my first two years of college, like I said, I was still living with my parents. But I was suddenly around a lot of new people that I had not been around growing up. And I was introduced from, y’know, being around new people, I was introduced to a lot of new ideas about things and I also started learning about animal rights, how animals were, could and are abused in many different ways. And I started learning about factory farming.

So factory farming here in America is…it’s just the whole industry of where our meat comes from. So basically animals are not treated well because they’re put in very small areas together and it’s, a lot of times these areas where they’re kept, they’re not very clean. The animals, like I said, they’re not treated well and they’re given food and medicine that’s not necessarily very good for them or for us if we eat them then. So that’s factory farming. It’s…it’s the whole meat industry that’s here in American which is not good, in my opinion.

So anyway, I started learning about this and I still was eating meat though, but I was definitely eating a lot less. And then my last two years of college, I actually moved away to another town to finish college or university. And so it was the first time being on my own and being, y’know, having to learn how to cook for myself, making my own food choices, basically, not just eating what my mother cooked.

And because I never really learned how to cook, I actually ate out at restaurants a lot and in the particular town where I finished my college, there were a lot of restaurants that actually had vegetarian options.

And I’d never seen this before. So it was…it was very, it opened my mind a lot and made me realize, “Wow, I don’t have to have meat in every meal.”

And also, it was much cheaper, being a student, and, y’know, I did have a job but I didn’t make a lot of money because my focus was on finishing my college degree. So I didn’t have a lot of money and eating…eating in restaurants where I wasn’t ordering meat items, it was cheaper. By just eating plantbased items, it was much cheaper.

So again, I still did not make the decision but I definitely by that time was hardly eating any meat.

Basically, I would say at that time I was only eating seafood. And that wasn’t even a lot because seafood is expensive. Lobster is very expensive here. Shrimp can be expensive. Fish can be expensive.

So by the time I turned 22, it was maybe about a year after I graduated from college, that’s when I made the decision to stop eating meat. It was very difficult for me at first to stop eating the seafood, what little I did eat of it. But I felt like I…this is, I want to make this decision. I love animals and I don’t…I don’t want to eat them and I don’t like how they are treated in factory farm situations.

So I stopped, eventually stopped eating meat. Some…sometime, y’know, at 22 I was still eating a little bit of seafood but sometime after 22 years old, me turning 22, I stopped even eating seafood. And I did think about actually eating vegan at times, but growing up cheese was my favorite food. Anything that…or I shouldn’t say anything, but many things coming from cows, like sour cream, which is this cream that I believe it’s got milk in it, that’s…so it comes from a cow. We like to put it on potatoes and you can find it in Mexican food.

So sour cream, cheese, there’s something else called cottage cheese. Again, it’s made with milk. What else? There’s…those things, especially cheese, I just, I couldn’t give up. Giving up meat or, y’know, not eating meat, was one thing. But to not…the idea of not eating cheese. I couldn’t do it. I loved cheese way too much.

But that idea stayed in my head. I should do this sometime. And the reason I felt I should do it is because the animals that are…the animals used to get milk from to make butter, cheese, sour cream, those animals are not treated well either and they’re in…they’re also in the same type of situation like I was describing with the factory farming.

So it only seemed to me for many years like I was only half…halfway committing to something I believed in. Y’know, not taking part in a system where animals were treated badly and…but I still just could not let go of the idea of not eating cheese.

So finally, finally, finally, it was about 9-1/2 years ago when I moved to San Francisco actually, or soon after I moved to San Francisco, I made the decision. I had been living in Thailand where I had not been eating really any cheese or any sour cream. Y’know, dairy products, as we call those, they’re not commonly found in Thailand. So it wasn’t in my diet. It wasn’t in the food I was eating day to day.

So I thought, y’know, when I moved to San Francisco I was excited because I was thinking, “Yeah, I can get all this food that I haven’t been able to get in Thailand for 2-1/2 years, like cheese.” But at the same time, I thought, “Y’know, this would be a good time to actually just make the decision to go vegan and stop eating it altogether because I really haven’t been eating it much at all anyway.” Well, when I first moved here, I did eat cheese. I ate a lot of it, as well as a lot of other dairy products.

But, I’d say it was maybe about six months after living here, I thought, “You know what, I can do this now, and I want to do this now.” And so I made the decision to stop eating all dairy and to become a vegan, so not eating anything that comes from an animal.

And it was about six months later, maybe, that I met Joe. And Joe had already been a vegan for many, many years, I can’t even remember…18 maybe or 20, I don’t know…many years. And I was impressed by that. And actually I have to say that by meeting him, and that was one way we connected immediately, it’s really helped me to stay strong in not choosing to eat any dairy products because of Joe.

He’s very strict about it and I don’t know that I would have stayed a vegan because I don’t cook so I do eat out a lot. And although it is easy in San Francisco to eat in restaurants where there are vegan options, vegan and vegetarian options, it still would have been maybe difficult or challenging for me. But Joe likes to cook and he’d been cooking vegan for many years so it really helped me.

And, y’know, that was something else I was going to talk about is vegan food. It’s actually, over the years, and I’ve seen this with vegetarian food since I stopped eating meat many, many years ago, has changed so much. Now there are many fake meats, as I call them, as many people call them. So they…it’s something like was described in the conversation. It may look like a real meat and it may taste pretty similar or pretty much like a real meat, but it’s not meat. It’s made from plants.

So there’s many foods like that now to look and taste like real meat. I don’t so much like those. Joe really does. I, just my personal opinion, I don’t necessarily think they’re so healthy for my body. But something that I do love is in the cheeses are getting so much better, the vegan cheeses. There is now many cheeses being made from nuts, like cashews or macadamia nuts. And some from almonds even.

And they’re really good and they taste very, very similar or very much like real cheeses. So that excites me because, like I said, cheese was always my favorite food so not eating that was very difficult in the beginning but I don’t even think about it now because these nut cheeses are so amazing. They’re so delicious.

Okay, so that is why I have a vegan diet. Just thought I would talk more about that, as I said in the beginning, since I’ve never really explained. So it’s, y’know, it’s mainly because I don’t want to eat animals. I love animals. I don’t want to see them mistreated in the process of becoming our food. And I don’t…I think also another reason in wanting to not eat dairy products, such as cheese or milk, is for my body it wasn’t healthy. My body had a hard time digesting it, digesting meaning breaking it down.

And it’s also better for the environment. So in other words, if less people are eating meat there is less cows, for example, that are being…taking up space where maybe forests have been cleared, y’know, trees cut down and pastures put in, or just grassy areas for these cows to live until they are then, y’know, killed for food. So there’s other reasons that it’s better for the environment to not eat meat.

And if you’re able to, I highly recommend, highly meaning strongly recommend renting the movie Cowspiracy. It’s spelled Cowspiracy. It’s a documentary basically about how the environment is affected from raising cows mainly for our food.

Okay, so it’s…that is why I choose to not eat meat. And I know many people who do eat meat. Everyone in my family still eats meat. And I don’t judge them. That’s their choice. And, y’know, I hope that people don’t judge me for my choice in choosing not to eat meat or any part of an animal.

Alright, so that’s all about me and the vegan diet and that concludes, or that finishes this commentary for this month’s conversation Camino Food. I’ll see you next month. Bye-bye.