{"id":3911,"date":"2016-05-30T20:10:18","date_gmt":"2016-05-31T04:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wou.edu\/westernjournal\/?p=3911"},"modified":"2016-05-30T20:10:18","modified_gmt":"2016-05-31T04:10:18","slug":"vegan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/vegan\/","title":{"rendered":"Vegan"},"content":{"rendered":"
By: Jamal Smith\r\nSports Editor<\/pre>\n
Knowing that I was about to embark on one of the most difficult challenges of my life, one week of eating vegan, I decided to head to Fogo de Chao, an all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouse in Portland to fill my belly up on a week’s worth of meat. <\/p>\n
As I sat at the table devouring mouthfuls of scrumptious prime cuts from beef, chicken, and lamb, I questioned whether I had bit off more than I could chew. Was the next week going to be a complete failure? After a night of drinking, could I avoid Taco Bell, and replace my familiar drunken meal with a vegan burrito or a vegan meatless patty that sat in my freezer?<\/p>\n
Deep in thought, I was interrupted by a waiter who came to my table and asked, \u201cWould you like a brandy marinated chicken thigh wrapped in bacon?\u201d Ashamed at my reliance on animal flesh, I nodded in approval, for my mouth was full of prime rib.<\/p>\n
To say that I love meat is an understatement. For me, a meal is not complete without some sort of meat. Then there is dairy: ice-cream, butter, milk, yogurt; all important foods in my animal-reliant diet.<\/p>\n
By now you may be asking yourself, why then would you put yourself through the torture of eating vegan for a week? The answer is simple: I am appalled at the exploitation of animals for human consumption. <\/p>\n
My conundrum started when one of my vegan friends posted a video to her Facebook feed of animals being mistreated in slaughterhouses and it opened up a Pandora\u2019s Box of savagery. After watching other online videos concerning this subject, I felt sick to my stomach. It was then that I decided I would eat vegan for a week.<\/p>\n
To prepare for my week of veganism, I stopped by Whole Foods to stock up on vegan delicacies. I plundered various fruits and vegetables, almond milk, meat substitutes, and other items lacking animal byproducts. My normal five minute trip to the grocery store took nearly an hour as I carefully examined the ingredients on the food labels.<\/p>\n
The first day of the challenge was by far the most difficult. For breakfast I ate a banana with a bowl of cereal — with of course, almond milk. At lunch I heated up a vegan burrito which was mediocre at best. For dinner, I ate a vegan bagel and a salad medley which I smothered in caesar dressing. It wasn\u2019t until I had half consumed the salad that I realized that the dressing that I liberally poured on the vegetables violated the challenge. I took a mental note of my indiscretion and vowed to be more careful for the remaining six days.<\/p>\n
The next three days came and went without any hiccups; however, on the fifth day, in a drunken stupor after a night out celebrating my friend\u2019s birthday, I stopped by Wendy\u2019s. I\u2019m not sure if it was the lack of meat, or if it was from all of the vodka Red Bulls that I had consumed, but their Baconator was to die for. Strike two.    <\/p>\n
When I awoke the next morning and saw the empty Wendy\u2019s wrappers scattered on my coffee table, I have to admit that I felt a little ashamed. The caesar dressing fiasco was an honest mistake, but indulging in a greasy bacon layered burger was self-sabotage. At that point I could have given up on the challenge, but I already had a few more days left of vegan food, and my momma didn\u2019t raise a quitter, so I decided to continue.<\/p>\n
I finished out the challenge strong, and despite the two mess-ups, I would consider my overall results successful. The challenge wasn\u2019t nearly as hard as I had expected; I felt great at the end, and I consumed more fruits and vegetables in a week than I had over the course of the entire year.  <\/p>\n
My advice for anyone who is thinking about eating vegan is to realize that if you make a mistake, it\u2019s not the end of the world. Just put down the meat and try again.   <\/p>\n
Contact the author at jsmith15@wou.edu or on Twitter @journalsportWOU<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Knowing that I was about to embark on one of the most difficult challenges of my life, one week of eating vegan, I decided to head to Fogo de Chao, an all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouse in Portland to fill my belly up on a week’s worth of meat. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":825,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/825"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}