DAY 1: Eating Vegetarian

Monday, November 2

Today was the first day of the sustainable vegetarian diet. Here’s what I ate:
1. Egg and cheese bagel
-Plain bagel, Bodo’s
-2 brown eggs, Farmer’s Market
-Swiss cheese, Harris Teeter
2. Banana
3. Old Orchard 100% Juice Berry Blend
4. Cascadian Farms Organic almond butter crunchy granola bar, WA
5. Fuji apple, Carter’s Mountain
6. Left-over pasta
-Organic penne pasta
-Farmer’s market tomato
-Farmer’s market zuccini
-Blue Bunny Organic carrots
7. Shenandoah Joe caramel latte
8. Flatbread pizza
-Farmer’s market tomato
-Organic mushrooms, CA (USDA and California Certified Organic)
-Harris Teeter shredded mozzarella
-Olive oil
-Dried basil
-Harris Teeter flatbread
9. Hunter Farms 2% milk (from cows not treated with rBGH), High Point, NC
10. Bread and jelly
-Whole wheat bread, Midlothian, VA
-Polaner All Fruit Raspberry Fruit Spread, NJ

Looking over my meals, most people would have included meat in all three of them: sausage or ham on the breakfast sandwich, maybe meatballs in the pasta, and pepperoni or sausage on the pizza. All three meals were sufficiently filling without the meat, and also simpler to prepare. Although I guess I could have gotten pre-cooked meat for all of them.

I incorporated a lot of local items into my diet. I was trying to use up the veggies I got at the Farmer’s market last weekend so that’s why they showed up in the left-over past and on the pizza. The apple I just got this weekend when I took my mom up to Carter’s Mountain. Those apples are beyond delicious! I guess the Bagel counts as local? I don’t know where they got the ingredients. The eggs you can really tell a difference in buying local, free-range eggs vs. the grocery store eggs. The yolk is way darker and more nutritious and they really just taste better. I’ll try to remember to take a picture if I eat them later this week. I also don’t know if I could count the Midlothian bread as local. I got it because it was more local than the other bread at Harris Teeter, but its still all the way to Richmond. Better than Nature’s Own or something I guess. It also has fewer ingredients than grocery store bread.

I don’t know if the organic items were much more sustainable since they all came from the west coast.

I’d say the least sustainable thing I ate was probably the banana. The granola bar definitely had the most ingredients by far (13).

I guess the main challenge of a vegetarian diet is making sure you get enough protein, which is why I ate the eggs this morning. I thought maybe there’d be a significant amount in the almond butter bars but looking at the box there’s not really.

It was easy to eat vegetarian today because I made all my own food. We’ll see if it’s more challenging when I try to eat out.

-Elizabeth, the vegetarian dieter