Fall in Winter, The Continuing Saga of The Evil Gelatin
Of course I wore the shoes that have no traction today. I was late, they were slip on, and I didn't think about it until I was out the door.
So it isn't a great stretch when I say I wiped out right in front of where the campus shuttle drops everyone off for morning classes. I was inspired by my lack of coordination to look into some Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin films. I wondered how they managed to make a living conducting themselves in a ironically familiar manner to my icy indisgression this morning.
In any case, I limped home and consoled myself with a giant mug of hot chocolate and the salacious insert to the campus newspaper concerning sex and Valentine's Day.
It's getting harder and harder to ignore the fact that the mini marshmallows in the hot chocolate mix have gelatin in them. I try to reassure myself that they are indeed very very mini and I am probably consuming fractions of a milligram in ground, boiled animal bone, but the guilt remains. And somehow picking out all the marshmallows seems too daunting.
On the good side, I found a butter substitute that is gelatin free and vegan, and yummy called Earth Balance. I had been previously blissfully unaware that my margarine contained the stuff, as well as a whole host of hydrogenated and GMO-ed things. Thus my "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" became my "I Can't Believe I've Been Eating This Crap". That seems to happen a lot to me as I become aware of what is in the processed food I eat.
posted by: fractalmom (reply)
post date: 02.07.08 (9:19 am)
I just found this same spread for my grandaughter who is VERY allergic to milk protein. course, it's expensive, but what are you gonna do.
posted by: surrogate (reply)
post date: 02.07.08 (7:06 pm)
Okay, so I used to own a high-end pizza joint and we made these awesome vegan pizzas... or so I thought. After about a year of selling a couple of dozen of them a week to the same clientelle, much to their and my delight, I hired a kid who ratted me out to some of the customers because (and it's true, though I swear it had never dawned on me and I WISH he'd brought it up to me first - though he really didn't mean any harm, so I couldn't get too pissed off) he'd noticed I used honey in the dough mix to feed th yeast. And here I'd been so proud not to use any sugar! So I dealt with some really angry people for a couple of weeks when they figured out that perhaps, the tenth of an ounce of honey per dough-ball probably wasn't going to kill them, especially once I gave everyone who complained a coupon for a free Za - which from then on had a minute bit of organic cane sugar as the yeast nibble.
Later it dawned on me. Wait, in reality, yeast is animals too, and no one's complaining about that!
posted by: joliefille (reply)
post date: 02.07.08 (8:48 pm)
Reply to: surrogate
Wow!
I am so refreshed by your comment. I never even thought about yeast before. A couple things though: can yeast suffer or feel pain when it dies? For that matter, is it even sentient? Those two aspects are mainly what I consider when I choose not to eat meat or other types of animal products.
I have no problem with honey because the beekeepers I buy from harvest only enough and then let the bees have the rest. It wouldn't make sense to let your workers starve.
Also about honey: eating honey that comes from a 50 mile radius of your home helps with allergies since the pollination process in the honey gives you small doses of the irritant through your bloodstream that you build a tolerance to.
So yes, there are some crazy vegans out there, and in the words of Clinton, "I feel your pain".
I think for the super strict vegan, the lifestyle becomes more about restriction than health (hmm, obsessive restriction...sounds like anorexia or OCD) and more about making others bend over backwards to accommodate them than any high minded ideals they may tout.
And that, my dear friend, is NOT healthy.
So in short, I agree completely with you.
And sorry about the pizza. :)
posted by: joliefille (reply)
post date: 02.07.08 (8:54 pm)
Reply to: fractalmom
Do you get some sort of government help? I don't know very much about the law, but couldn't specialized foods in her case be considered a sort of medical necessity and their cost a medical-related expense?
posted by: nicole b (reply)
post date: 02.08.08 (7:56 am)
ahem, miss MA, you have disappeared from facebook just when I needed your address. I wrote you a letter Jan 30 and it's still sittin on my desk with a stamp on it. if you would be so kind as to e-mail me your address, I will send it on directly.
nblackburn@mail.bradley.edu
posted by: fractalmom (reply)
post date: 02.10.08 (3:44 pm)
Reply to: joliefille
yah. well. THAT would be lovely, LOL, but alas and alack!! no. so we get by as best we can.
oh, and watch the ice cream. my husband didn't believe me for YEARS that i could actually TASTE guar gum in ice cream. i can. and they all contain it, even the "high end" ones..except for Breyers all natural. Which does contain milk, but as the cows don't have to die to give us milk, I think milk is good. course, i'm neither vegan or anything else. decadent perhaps. at times. still, i do respect other's beliefs and dietary restrictions, except of course, when I think they are stupid. LOL.
posted by: joliefille (reply)
post date: 02.10.08 (6:33 pm)
Reply to: fractalmom
Milk is good, yes. :)
I'm not vegan, just vegetarian, and something about animal bones ground up and boiled didn't sit right with me.
Also, if you buy organic or free range milk and eggs (or better yet both and locally produced) then the cows that make that milk or chickens that make the eggs have to be treated humanely and have a pain/antibiotic/hormones/cruelty free existence. (Well, as for the pain I'm sure chickens must get a headache every now and then from listening to all the clucking, but you know what I mean!) :)