Not Even Bacon: The Incredulity
Incredulity (noun): The quizzical, sometimes horrified, state of being unaware or unwilling to believe someone doesn’t eat animal products.
She had known for awhile—or at least been warned—that I was a vegan, but I think the unexplored thought passed through her mind without a glance. Then I showed up at her house for a long weekend. Now, I have never been pompous or snobby about what I eat, and certainly don’t expect a menu specially outlined just for me. I can pretty much find enough to eat at most dining situations, so when she said tonight was “meat-fest,” I could see the hostess in her wondering what else she had in her pantry. I assured her that the salad and bread would suit me just fine. (Plus, there is always the stash of dried fruit and nuts in my suitcase that I bring along wherever I go.)
The next morning we woke to smells of bacon frying on the griddle. I fixed myself some cereal and as she was cleaning up, she picked up the mound of bacon still on a plate and said earnestly to me, “Not even bacon, Tracy? Not even bacon?”
My sister-in-law lives in the DC area and is a smart woman. I have spoken to her about my choice of plant-based eating as a way to combat disease and feel my best. Maybe I have no clout with her. Maybe she thinks I am just a podunk living in north central Florida. Maybe she has an innate bias toward people who eschew eating animals. I don’t know, but I do have to wonder about the lack of curiosity from her on what I was telling her about diet and health. Nothing seemed to sink in very far. It’s the same way for most people I tell about my dietary preference—a grimace, a confused nod or a utter silence. No questions, unless it is the snarky (and ignorant), “So where do you get your protein?”
My sister-in-law and I both grew up in Iowa, me on a gravel road across from a bean and corn field in a subdivision plopped in the middle of a farmer’s field with cattle breeds for road names: Charlais Drive, Angus Drive, Jersey Lane, Holstein Place. I grew up on what I consider a traditional Midwest diet with a southern twist. We had a good-sized garden in our backyard where we grew potatoes, corn, beets, carrots, cabbage, tomatoes, asparagus, strawberries, cucumbers and beans, and we had three apple trees and one prolific cherry tree. The odor of fermenting cabbage—on its way to becoming sauerkraut—filled the back hallway in the summer and our creepy, spider-filled basement cellar was generally packed with jars of pickles, tomatoes, pickled beets, applesauce, cooked apples and cherries for pie filling, apple butter, and strawberry jam.
My mother grew up in Texas and Oklahoma and, although I never saw her make grits, the gravies, fried food and lard-based pastries were the way she knew how to cook. (I remember having a coffee tin of re-usable lard on the kitchen counter top.) And my farm-raised father wasn’t going to complain. He relished Mom’s cooking and expected such a meal each night when he returned home from his 9 to 5 job.
I remember one of my sisters being more fond of cooking than the rest of us. She would delight us by frying doughnuts in our countertop Fry Baby (I don’t remember changing out that oil much either.) and serving popcorn literally swimming in butter. She would also annoy us by frying herself up an egg or two for her famous egg sandwiches—the odor permeating the kitchen for the rest of the day.
I was blessed with “good genes,” was tall and thin, never really having to think or worry about what I ate. And I really don’t remember why—after graduating college and moving to Florida—I tested out a vegetarian diet. Maybe it was the PETA-supporting friends we made, maybe I thought it was cool, or maybe it was being physically removed from the mid-west’s predominant corn, dairy and hog industry that influenced me, I just can’t recall, but ever since then I had “dabbled” in the meatless diet.
Although I didn’t have to worry about my weight, in my early 40’s I found myself reading about the Atkins diet and trying out the high-protein diet. I loved the way it made me feel—I was never hungry and didn’t crave sweets and snacks like I used to. I tried to make sense of this diet and the vegetarian diet with how our ancient ancestors ate, asking myself, “What would be natural for the caveman to eat?” Yes, images of spear-yielding hairy mean surrounding a mastodon came to mind, but I was also at least well-read enough to know that beef wasn’t always what was for dinner, especially back then.
After Dr. Atkins died from a head injury sustained from a fall, I read he had suffered from congestive heart failure and hypertension during his lifetime. True or not, I ditched the diet, confused more than ever.
Then my Ohio farm-raised preacher—yes, from the pulpit—recommended a book called The Omnivores Dilemma, and Michael Pollan entered my life, quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. Pollan explores the facts and realities of modern day eating, answering the question, “Where does food come from?”and encouraging his readers’ curiosity about the matter. In part I of the book, Industrial: Corn, Pollan dubs my Alma mater, Iowa State University, the “University of Corn” due to its pride in the plant that much of the institution’s research is dedicated to. Prideful was I, too, to have ties to the campus and midwest roots, until Pollan dissects the corn plant and all that we humans have done—and all the subsidies put on it—to force its existence, in some form or fashion, in nearly every processed (and even some “unprocessed”) product in our modern grocery stores. From corn syrup, corn meal and corn starch, to emulsifiers, acids and other thickeners, names too long and unpronounceable to include here. Never before had understanding what “edible, food-like substances” I was ingesting seemed so important AND intriguing.
Since then I’ve grown more serious about the connection between diet and health and read T. Colin Campbell’s The China Study from cover to cover, never more sure that plant-based eating was the best diet for humans. That was several years ago and I am in the middle of completing my Plant Based Nutrition Certificate from the Center for Nutrition Studies. I hope the course gives me the knowledge and confidence to not just confess my dietary preferences to others but also to encourage with conviction what I know to be the best diet for health.
