Pledging to be a Vegetarist (vegan activist)

I hardly ate vegetables (except cucumbers in the nasi lemak & preserved kiam chye) throughout my growing-up years, preferring to gorge on all parts of the chicken, lamb, beef, pork (even the brains which was considered a delicacy), wild boar, pigeon and even hare (rabbit)!

Eating has always been an adventure in my family. We would return from our trips across the border (ie. Singapore) with packets of frozen foodstuff & cans of exotic-sounding food and started opening it up to see what was inside. As Singapore is very cosmopolitan, we get all kinds of food.

I also ate all kinds of fish, abalones (when it was still affordable), top-shell, lobster, crabs, shellfish of all shapes & sizes, squid, sea cucumber, jelly fish and yes, shark's fin!

When I turned twenty one, I was working & eating out. I began to appreciate stir-fried veggie Chinese style, then progressed to the Malay ulam (raw vegetables from the villages) & salads from the buffet line. But meat has remained my main favourite.

Along the way, I have many times attempted to go vegan but meat addiction was strong & I lack the resolve. There was much mis-understanding about vegans, or vegetarians. To make matters more complicated, in Chinese vegetarian cooking, they do not use garlic or onion but have mock meat, colouring, taste enhancers & lots of oil to make it tasty & appetising!

When I began my fitness training two years ago, I made a resolve to not eat large animals, ie. beef & lamb (but I was still attached to pork) and I have so far been able to stick to it (except a few times when I did not realise the soup or gravy was beef-based until latter).

For the past month, I have cut out chicken & pork. But it was not easy, not because of my addiction to it, but difficulty in finding vegetarian food that's not laden with saturated oil! I alternated between Indian Brahmin vegetarian & Malay fish/seafood/ulam & Chinese vegetarian & home made salads. It was an up-hill struggle trying to find healthy vegetarian food.

An accidental turn at the Taman Tun (Jln Burhanuddin Helmi) junction one day took my gym friend & I to an organic health food restaurant cum grocer called Eco Green for breakfast. And at the counter, I picked up the Climate Change initiative, an event organised by Justlife organic food shop at Stadium Putra in Bukit Jalil on Aug 9 & 10.

And this is where I learned the benefits & more importantly the DIRE EFFECTS of meat eating to the environment! I was never a fan of organic food. And as usual, with ignorance one usually makes wrong evaluations. Before we putdown a movement as pure sensationalism or commercialism, we should find out more information about it...