Feeling Good in Sheep’s Clothing

Post by guest blogger: Joe

A wolf works with the flock

Full disclosure: I’m not vegan. Hell, I’m not even vegetarian. Up until a few weeks ago I ate anything that tasted good and damned the health consequences. But, my girlfriend and her immediate family are vegan, and they happen to put on a yearly Vegetarian Expo in upstate New York so, being both a good boyfriend and an argumentative bastard looking to throw himself across enemy lines, when they asked me if I wanted to help out I said yes.

The Expo is a good size, taking in around 3000 attendees and over 100 vendors last year, and I was looking forward to all kinds of people showing up; vegans, vegetarians, pesco- and lacto- and ovotarians, raw foodists. I even expected the odd omnivore or two. I figured that after manning a booth and handing out programs I could wander at my leisure and pick fights with anyone who got in my face about what I was eating back at home. My philosophy has always been live and let live, with the caveat that the right to swing one’s fist ends at my nose. My assessment of vegans and vegetarians follows this philosophy pretty strictly, and I don’t care what other people eat so long as they aren’t pushy about it. That said, and as I mentioned before, I’m not shy about arguing back. Sadly, my fightin’ side was disappointed as I was confronted by the nicest group of people this side of Tom Hanks.

After doing my part to point attendees in the right direction (bathrooms are that way, speaker hall is this way), the girlfriend grabbed me and said, “Be sure to check out Dr. Greger’s lecture; he’s hilarious.” Of course he’s hilarious, I thought, he’s trying to convince people to give up their favorite foods; you’re not going to do that without making friends first. Watching him churn through slides, though, I realized that the act (which is funny) is completely unnecessary. The guy doesn’t need to be your friend; he’s got the science to back everything up. But he’s still a nice guy. Greger’s lecture ended up being immensely entertaining and educational, and I even won a CD with 1000 scientific studies on it. I’m already making plans to blog about reading each and every study.

After Greger’s talk the girlfriend and I wandered around the exhibitor’s booths, checking out the various products and organizations and food. Everyone was friendly and, for the most part, assumed you were already with it on the vegetarian/vegan thing. I wasn’t asked a single time what kind of diet I followed, and no one could smell the hotdogs and fried eggs coursing through my veins. I’m guessing it helped that I was wearing a volunteer’s badge. Still, I wondered where the contention was. I’m always reading and hearing about how pushy and obnoxious vegans and vegetarians are. “Why do you eat dead flesh?” “How can you drink baby food for cows?” “Why don’t you just eat your dog, too?” I was fully expecting to be ousted and set upon the minute I wandered into the wrong corner of the city center. But the attack never came, and it was impossible to tell who ate what. With everyone being so unbelievably polite, the attendees could have been fresh from lunch at the local Outback Steakhouse and no one would have known. 

By the end of the day, and after (unsurprisingly) delicious vegan jerk “chicken,” vegan ice cream bars, vegan chips and dip, and vegan “twinkies” (yeah, you read that right), I had met many of the vendors (certainly the food vendors) and Expo staff and volunteers. They didn’t pester me with questions, and those who knew about my eating habits didn’t point them out to others as though apologies were necessary for my being there. The Vegetarian Expo was like every other expo and convention I’ve ever been to: lots of walking, interesting speakers, pricey food, and practically no parking. I felt an ease eventually settle on me, and I was able to walk the Expo floor without thinking about how I was a meat eater in a room full of herbivores, an outsider. The people working for and attending the Expo made me feel like an insider, if only by not actively talking about the one thing that had brought them all together: the way they eat. In a way, that’s the ultimate goal of live and let live, to not have to talk about our differences if we don’t want to. I went to the Expo looking for a fight; the Expo came to upstate New York looking to enjoy good food and friends.

And let’s not forget about the science! I mentioned that I ate anything up until a few weeks ago, and that’s true. A few weeks ago I started doing research on dairy, after hearing in advance one of the Expo speakers. He made good points and I knew that, if the science was solid, his lectures would certainly require one to reevaluate his love of milk and cheese. So, I hit the internet and pulled up every study I could find on cheese, milk, protein, fat, cancer, and osteoporosis. Turns out, I don’t like dairy enough to counteract the things it can do to my body in the long run. Have I gone vegan? No. There are still a few meals I’m not willing to give up, even though they may be bad for me. But do I recommend investigating the other side of the debate on diet? Of course I do. Attending an Expo, reading a study, thinking hard about why people do things differently; these are all things we can and should do if we want to have pleasant interactions with others. No one’s going to brain wash you, and no one’s going to kick you out for being a part of “the opposition.” As the NY’s Capital Region Vegetarian Expo shows, and as it certainly showed me, it’s more likely that you’ll be treated like everyone else, with kindness and respect. They might ask you to buy something, but trust me; there are many—many—worse things in life than a vegan “twinkie.”