Crazy Sexy Diet: Eat Your Veggies, Ignite Your Spark, and Live Like You Mean It! (47 page)

If you’re eating out,
there are countless restaurants that cater to vegetarians and vegans.
Vegcooking.com
features regional vegetarian restaurants, restaurant chains that offer vegetarian options, and links to other Web sites that list vegetarian-friendly eateries. Ethnic restaurants, especially Thai, Indian, Ethiopian, Chinese, and Mexican, are always a good choice, as they offer a variety of vegetarian and vegan options.

If you’re still looking for a burger and fries, many chain restaurants, including Johnny Rockets, Denny’s, and Ruby Tuesday’s serve veggie burgers. Just don’t drive yourself—and your dining companions—crazy worrying that your veggie burger was prepared on the same surface as the hamburgers. It might be a bit aesthetically troublesome, but it won’t harm animals (or the planet) if your food is cooked on the same grill as meat. Unless you absolutely can’t stomach it, let it pass.

Vegans and vegan wannabes, I believe that when you’re eating out, you also shouldn’t be too concerned about ingredients that make up less than 2 percent of your meal. You’ll obviously want to avoid dishes served with meat, cheese, or eggs, but it doesn’t really matter if there’s a modicum of butter or whey or other animal product in the bun that your veggie burger is served on.

You won’t stop animal suffering by avoiding such minuscule amounts of animal ingredients. But you may give your nonvegan friends—not to mention the restaurant wait staff—the idea that vegans are difficult to please. The goal is to show others how easy it is to eat in an animal-friendly manner and that restaurants can satisfy vegan customers without having to do cartwheels. I understand the desire to eliminate every last bit of animal ingredients from your diet, but let’s face it: Even vegan foods cause some small animals to be tilled during farming. (Note: Since more than 70 percent of all grain, soybeans, and other crops are fed to farmed animals, not to humans, there is a lot more tiller death in chicken, turkey, pork, and beef than in plant foods, but the point should still give vegetarians a bit of humility.)

Vegetarianism is not a personal purity test. Our positive and reasonable influence on others is just as important as our own commitment to a conscious and compassionate diet.

Consider your choices: heart disease, colon cancer, plus-size pants, melting ice caps, gale-force storms, and animal suffering versus good health, energy, a trim physique, a livable planet, compassion, and tasty, diverse foods. It’s clear that going vegetarian or vegan is an excellent choice as we move toward living a more conscious life.

Kathy Freston
is a health and wellness expert and best-selling author of
Quantum Wellness
.