In my constant attempt to bring down my global footprint, I decided to give vegetarianism a chance. To be honest getting down my global footprint wasn’t my only motivation, I also wanted to improve my diet which according to the government should contain at least 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day and by my calculation contained almost two a day (during the week, none at weekends).
So I trialled vegetarianism for two weeks, I decided on 1 week originally, but after the first week I had been eating fish almost every day so I decided that for the second week I could only have fish on one day.
So I made salads, potato salad, tuna salad, feta cheese salad – I didn’t get as far as a nut roast and I never touched Linda McCartney’s, I even went to a barbecue with some salmon fishcakes. I’ve discovered vegetables I never thought of before; kale and swede readily spring to mind.
Did I miss my meat? not really, but then I knew I only had a short time before I could have some again, but the enjoyment I got from finding new vegetables to eat meant that I didn’t rush out a buy a steak afterwards. The hardest thing about being vegetarian was that the sandwiches in most supermarkets are usually packed with meat, the only vegetarian options being egg and cress or cheese ploughman’s, neither of which is very interesting. Come on folks where are the roasted vegetable or the olive and salad sandwiches they don’t have to be Cordon Bleu to be tasty.
As a result my diet has now changed to include more fruit and vegetables (I try to buy them in season and grown in the UK) and also nuts which help to replace the protein lost from eating less meat, but I could never give up meat completely.