HW 11

For my experiment with food I decided to eat vegetarian for 4 days. For the first two days it seemed that this would be easy, after all it's only four days until I can eat meat again. I never realized how addicted I am to eating meat. By the end of the second day I was sick of pasta and was craving some kind of meat. I almost gave up at one point, the temptation to eat meat was so strong and it was so easily available and cheap. However I stuck with it eating alot of pasta, sandwhichs without meat, fruits, vegetables, and anything else I could find that would satisfy my hunger but did not have meat in it.

The most difficult part of being vegetarian was the balance between taste and size portion with the cost of the meal. A good filling lunch was easy to find at place such as Organique but a simple sandwhich with cheese, tomato, and basil along with a water came out to 13 dollars. I could have just as easily bought two satisfying non vegetarian meals with that money. Another day I tried to eat ramen noodles from a deli which came out to 8 dollars with a drink and it failed to fill me up. One of the other days I decided to have pizza which filled me up and wasnt to expensive however I felt that it was defeating the point of eating vegetarian because it wasn't particularly healthy. It was a hard balance to find.

Although many movies provide eating healthy although not neccesarily vegetarian I proved my point to myself that it was not that easy. The food industry is so heavily controlled by fast food and other unhealthy sources of food that its hard to find your way around it. Yes you can go to the farmers market or to a place like Organique or the energy kitchen but not everyone has enough money to spend 10 + dollars a day on food. The healthy things to eat are very expensive and money plays a huge factor in what people decide to eat, hence the success of cheap fast food. A dollar pizza slice, although not very good, is much more filling than an apple or some fruit if your running low on money; it is very hard to escape cheap fast food.

Finally the health side of the experiment. Eating vegetarian definitely makes your body feel much better. Eating healthy even if it's not vegetarian makes a very big difference in how you feel. Last week on the day of a soccer game I ate at the energy kitchen and my body felt great during the soccer game and eve after. The day after i decided to have a grease filled pepproni roll from Bravo's and could hardly stay up in my last two classes. Although it was only a four days change I still did feel a positive change in the way I felt, it was enough to make me more conscious about what I eat.