Why Being a Vegetarian Sucks

Four reasons to avoid being a vegetarian…from a vegetarian himself

About seven years ago, I made the decision to become a vegetarian. There were a lot of things that provoked me into giving up meat, ranging from the very commendable (as a preventative health measure - heart disease is more common in my family tree than high school degrees), to the less commendable (I thought it would be easier to keep weight off if I didn’t eat my regular six cheeseburgers a day) to the not at all commendable, in any way (I thought it would impress that one bisexual Portuguese chick I was working with at the time.) No matter the long-irrelevant rationale for my dietary choice, I’ve managed to stick to the whole “not-eating-things-that-used-to-have-faces” thing pretty well over the last half a decade. Sure, I’ve slipped up here and there and snuck a slice of pepperoni, and I think that sometime in 2009, I may have accidentally eaten a chicken Parmesan sub, but for the most part? I’ve been pretty darn dedicated to this whole “vegetarianism” deal.

Over the last couple of months, however, I’ve formerly denounced my prior “vegetarian” status and converted to the much, much more manageable religion of “pescatarianism” (which my spell checker automatically transforms into “sectarianism,” which is really all kinds of awesome.)

A lot of people have asked me why I made the sudden change in what I find philosophically agreeable to eat. There really wasn’t a detectable tipping point that made me throw up my hands and yell “that’s it, NO MORE SOY DOGS!”, as much as it was a cumulative decision over time. What sort of factors influenced my decision to abandon “vegetarianism,” you might ask? Well, here’s four reasons why being a vegetarian, unquestionably, sucks…

Reason Number One:

Being a Vegetarian is Expensive

The next time you’re walking down the aisles of your favorite big-box-store, try taking a look at the “meat alternative” sections. Take a REAL good gander at the prices. Now, waddle over to the frozen food section, and look at how much REAL sausage, chicken nuggets and fish tacos cost. I guarantee you that, no matter where you live, the “synthetic” meat will a.) cost nearly TWICE as much as the “authentic” meat and b.) the quantity of the “authentic” meat will be AT LEAST twice as much as the wannabe-meats.

In an economic crisis, trust me, you take note of this shit. For the cost of a pack of tofu sausage links, I could pick up FOUR PACKS of hot dogs. That means, for the exact same price, I could get 40 wieners as opposed to just six “protein links.” And if you REALLY want to make steam come out of your ears, take a look at how much a microwave tofu casserole will cost you, compared to a Michelina’s Alfredo noodles box. Wolfgang Puck’s frozen veggie pizza is damn near eight dollars, while Tombstone’s pepperoni pie is less than half the amount. Heck, you can even pick up a box with both hot wings AND pizza for less than the veggie pie. If you wonder why so many vegetarians are stick thin, it’s not because of what they eat…it’s because their food costs so damn much, they can only eat it once a week.

Reason Number Two: 

Being a Vegetarian is Inconvenient 

Let’s say you and your buds are hanging out on a Friday night. It’s getting late, and all of you are hungry. They say, “hey, let’s all go to McDonalds!” and you’re all like, “yeah, awesome, too bad I can’t eat anything on the menu!” At that point, someone will almost assuredly make a joke about ordering a salad, and while all of your pals are bonding over special-sauce soaked angus beef, you’re stuck nibbling on a packet of stale fries and sucking on a milkshake that, ironically, probably has a horse in it somewhere.

It gets worse, folks. Imagine being a vegetarian, forced to find food at a theme park, or a movie theater, or a convenience store. Hardly any fast food restaurants offer tofu alternatives, and if they do? The clerks always scowl at you, for making them walk over and warm up the frozen “pseudo-burger” that nobody has even thought about ordering for the entire day. If you want to become a social outcast over the course of an afternoon, trying being a vegetarian standing in line at Wendy’s sometime.

Reason Number Three:

Being a Vegetarian is, Ironically, Detrimental to Your Well-Being 

OK, let me preface this one by saying, yes, there are plenty of health benefits to being a vegetarian. We all know that vegetarians tend to live longer than omnivores, and for the most part, they are in way, way better shape than the rest of society. Even I’m willing to admit it from experience: after five years of eating tofu tacos and black bean enchiladas, my cardiovascular health is better than it’s ever been in my life.

Now, as for the negatives: being a vegetarian means FORGET about ever having muscle mass. Trust me, I have tried, and I will be several shades of damned if I haven’t been able to gain an ounce of sinewy tissue since going strictly veggie. At one point, I even bought one of those $15 bag of whey protein powder to bulk up, and all it did was make my BM smell more flowery than it used to. I guess it’s not 100 percent impossible for someone to go vegetarian and gain muscle, but it’s totally unfeasible if you plan on having a 40 hour a week job and NOT living in the gym on the weekends. And let’s not even talk about the mental health implications of vegetarianism, which has been linked to elevated rates of depression, anxiety and somatoform disorders. And you thought developing “soy boobies” was the biggest risk associated with going vegetarian!

Reasons Number Four:

Being a Vegetarian ALWAYS Puts You in Awkward Social Situations

Nobody likes vegetarians. Omnivores make fun of us for having too limited a diet, while vegans berate us for having too vast a diet. People automatically assume that you’re a vegetarian for ethical reasons - you are all for animal rights, you have some political slight against the fast food industry, etc. - so when other hardliner vegetarians find out you’re an apolitical vegetarian, you end up being ostracized from your own peoples.

Imagine this scenario. You’re showing up at your girlfriend’s place for the first time, and her mom walks it with one of those plastic alligator smiles and drops a big, fat plate of meatloaf in front of you. It’s the family specialty, she says, something that’s been passed down through the families since the middle ages or some shit. You poke it with your fork, and you gently meep, “gee golly, this dish sure is swell and all, but since I’m a vegetarian, I can’t eat this thing that has such an emotional tie to who you are as an individual.”  Your girlfriend is embarrassed, the mom is visibly disappointed, and the patriarch is ready to stab you in the face with a butter knife. Now, repeat seven hundred times, and that’s pretty much du jour for college-aged me. Even if you somehow mange to obtain a philosophically edible meal, things get way too political as soon as someone notices you are a vegetarian. All you want to do is jam some beans down your throat, and all your table mates want to do is start World War 3 over the pros and cons of pork. It’s physically impossible to have a normal social experience when the auger of you being a vegetarian floats over the table like Jacob Marley’s ghost every time you pick up a spoon and a wad of napkins. Trust me…I know.

So, with all of this information taken into consideration, is vegetarianism still a wise call for most modern-day Americans? Well, as long as you have plenty of money, and don’t mind being unable to eat at 90 percent of restaurants or social events, or care about having muscle mass and the ability to lift anything that weighs over 20 pounds without passing out, or don’t mind having people launch projectiles at you during heated get-togethers, than, yeah, I’d say that going vegetarian isn’t that bad of a deal. But for everybody else? Whatever you do, don’t put down that corn dog…

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The Tofurky Roast & Gravy Kit!

Ever wondered what was in one of those big, green shoeboxes? Well, wonder no longer, Internet…

I’ve seen the Tofurky Roast & Gravy kit in the organic section of my local grocery store for the last three Thanksgivings, and this year, I decided to bite the proverbial, tofu-and-soy-based bullet and finally buy one of them.

As something that sort of resembles a vegetarian, there’s not a whole lot of meat-centric foods that I can say that I miss - barring pepperoni, for some inexplicable reason. In my last six meat-less years as a consumer, I really can’t say that I have said to myself “hey, you know what I miss? Turkey!” at any point in time - but seeing as how I’m a dude that obsesses over the most trivial, insignificant of consumer matters, I reckon it was only a matter of time until I plopped down my $9.99 in American dollars for some good old fashioned tofu-gobbler.

Before we move on to the set itself, I guess I need to say a few things about vegetarian-meat substitutions. I’ve tried, and for the most part, enjoyed, some of Tofurky’s other products - and rest assured, vegans, vegetarians and omnivores with REALLY out there tastes - there’s a ton of pseudo-meat on the market for you to sample and most likely abhor. On the general subject of tofu, I acknowledge that most people on the planet hate it with a passion, but what can I say? I’m a dude with rudimentary tastes, and by golly, I like its literally formless, shapeless, texture-less and for the most part, flavorless qualities. And in case you’re wondering, yes, vanilla IS my favorite ice cream flavor, too. I am THAT white bread, apparently.

In assessing Tofurky as a comprehensive product, you have to begin with the packaging itself. As you can see, it’s quite green, and comes with this really neat-looking sticker that says “100% Vegan,” because let’s face it, we all own at least one spiral notebook that could be aesthetically improved by such an adornment. The box tell us that the product is, among other things, “gourmet,” “meatless” and “delicious,” which to me, sounds just a bit cocky. The box also promises that it serves at least five people, but I don’t know - this is a pretty small box to feed that many people, and in case you forgot, goddamn, are American folks some real fatsos.

As far as the rest of the box exterior goes, you’ve got the basic stuff: ingredients, cooking directions and some photos of people that, for reasons which may never make 100 percent sense to anyone, decided to take pictures of themselves holding Tofurky kits while visiting world monuments. Yeah, you laugh now, but admit it: after a really great candy bar, you just know you’d wave that shit in front of the Sphinx, if you could.

Oh, but you don’t know how awesome this stuff is UNTIL you actually open up this thing. Even casual bystanders have at least wondered what actual Tofurky resembles, and the results do anything but disappoint.

The first thing you’ll notice is a paper insert asking you to adopt a real-life turkey. And you better believe, it gets better from there.

The insert gives you a website URL to check out and lists a few facts that are really, really hard to find scientific research behind, like the factoid that turkeys have an emotional spectrum on par with those fostered by cats and dogs and that most turkeys actually have the mental faculties to do simple fractions. Well, I may or may not have made up that last one, but if I was trying to get people to adopt birds that kind of look skinless Predators, I’d be giving the general public as many fantastical facts and figures as I could dream up.

Oh, and on the flip side of the insert? An offer for a Tofurky tee-shirt and a whopping SEVENTY FIVE CENTS off Tofurky-branded products. I like the fact that, by placing the two on literally opposite sides of the same card, the company is FORCING people to make major moral decisions between saving the lives of hideous creatures OR saving almost a dollar on vegetarian salami. I’ve heard of ethical dilemmas before, but this is ridiculous!

And I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up the “hidden” advertisements for some of Tofurky’s other products, which are printed on the tucked-in paper flaps that you can only see once the box has been opened. There’s nothing too exciting here - unless tofu ground beef and soy sausage is your idea of heart-pounding - but there does seem to be an all-faux-pepperoni pizza on sale, which I will assuredly be taste-testing at some point in 2013.

As far as the contents within the Tofurky box that contain calories (wait, do corrugated  boxes themselves contain nutritional bric-a-brac?), you’re basically getting two towers of scientifically modified food facsimiles.

The Tofurky roast itself comes wrapped in a plastic ball, about the size of a small cantaloupe. At first glance, it doesn’t look all that heavy, but once you actually lift it, you’ll realize just how hefty the dish really is. It’s not quite bowling-ball-dense, but yeah, you could potentially bludgeon someone with it, if worse came to where.

The gravy, I guess, is a little less intriguing. It’s basically just a plastic cup filled with frozen brown stuff, but once you actually microwave the stuff, you’ll detect a savory odor that, shockingly, seems to smell sort of like gravy.

The back of the box offers a couple of different recipe variations, but I’d advise you to just baste the dish in olive oil and cook as is in a nice, thick tuxedo of Reynolds Wrap. All in all, it’s not a bad wait time - about an hour and a half for a dethawed vegan-friendly butterball - so it gives you plenty of time to whip up other tantalizing entrees, like Spa-Chili and Thai Pizza, in the downtime.

And the final product, shockingly, looks kind of like a roasted turkey chunk. It ends up turning a nice light brown hue, and is stuffed to the gills with a really nice stuffing mix, that tastes just about as good as any “real” stuffing mixture I’ve ever tasted. The gravy is also pretty darned yummy, sort of comparable to the brown gravy you’ll find at KFC. As far as the side entrees go, this Tofurky roast is shockingly similar to a “normal” Thanksgiving banquet; hell, some of your non-vegan friends might even find it edible, for about five minutes, at least.

Which brings us to the Tofurky roast, as a comprehensive dish. One of my friends gave me the absolute best description of the roast’s taste when she said that it tastes just like those Salisbury steaks they used to give you in the cafeteria around Thanksgiving-time back in elementary school. I really can’t say that the Tofurky roast tastes like actual turkey, but it at least tastes like some sort of digestible, quasi-palatable meat-stuff, that, if absolutely nothing else, ought to give you nice, warm, fuzzy thoughts about being eleven again.

As a whole, the Tofurky Roast & Gravy set, surprisingly, isn’t all that bad. The gravy and stuffing is downright phenomenal, and while the roast itself may not taste exactly like a turkey, it at least has a rich, filling texture and flavor that does a good enough job aping some kind of meat as to be edible.

For omnivores, whether or not you’ll dig the dish is a 50/50, but I think most vegetarians and vegans will probably enjoy it. Hey, it’s either this, or just paper plate after paper plate of cranberry sauce, ain’t it?

BONUS TOFURKY VIDEOS! 

My official Tofurky Roast & Gravy unboxing...in high definition!

The unwrapping of a fully cooked Tofurky Roast...also in high definition!

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