Vegetarian fortnight half way report

Not really had much to report in the past few days cause being a Vegetarian hasn't been that much of a problem. Have found that there is a limited choice when eating out and I've not been eating any more healthily. Only other major impact is having to drink spirits in pubs which don't sell Veggie beers which seems to be a lot of the pubs I was in on Friday night.

Photographic Film

Just found out all Photographic film contains gelatine, not sure how much this should impact on the bet. I don't know any actual Vegetarians who don't go to the cinema because the film making process involves killing cows in order to shoot the movies, so I guess if it doesn't bother them it shouldn't be an issue for me. I'll just resolve not to buy any photographic film in the next two weeks which shouldn't be a problem.

Day II

Breakfast consisted of a fried egg roll from a Tesco cafe (it's pretty likely the egg was fried somewhere near meat, but I skipped over that minor detail).

After a brief moment of panic when my boss suggested a Carvery for lunch I ended up in Debenhams eating Macaroni Cheese with Chips and Broccolli (again I'm not 100% sure the Cheese used didn't contain animal rennet, but I'm going to ignore that as well).

Tea was a quick affair grabbed from a Sainsbury's in Glasgow, a Cheese Ploughman's sandwich. I'm getting a bit worried about the cheese thing though, my four main meals in the past two days have all contained cheese!

Unfortunately I couldn't remember which of the beers available at the Barfly were vegetarian so I opted for a Jack Daniels (luckily they had Pepsi and not Coke) I wasn't 100% sure it was safe, but the gamble paid off when I checked later.

So that's 2 days down and 12 to go.

Day I

Day 1 was going well, I'd replace my morning bacon roll with a slice of buttered toast and had picked up some cheese and onion sandwiches from Somerfield. Despite being warned against Cheese and Onion crisps, Walkers claim theirs are vegetarian on the packet, so that's fine with me.

My first downfall came when I ate a snickers, despite checking the ingredients list for anything remotely animal sounding I later found out that they aren't suitable, although I can't find out exactly why, although I believe it has something to do with the whey powder. (info here)

So there you have it, I failed only 12 hours into the challenge, through no fault of my own. I dutifully let Rosie know that I owed her a tenner and sadly looked forward to the meat I was going to have for tea. Unfortunately Rosie said since I didn't know at the time, it was ok and I could still go on with the bet.

My second upset on Monday came when my brother announced that a lot of beers aren't vegetarian. I thought he was taking the piss, but via the wonders of the internet found him to be correct, I downloaded a list of the more common ones which were safe and kept it on my iPod should I need it in a pub emergency.

For tea I had a Tesco microwave Spinach & Ricotta Canneloni, suitable for vegetarians, but contained 41% of my recommended daily salt intake, so probably not so good on the health front.

A cheeky pint before going to the cinema with Rosie allowed me to test out my vegetarian beer buying prowess, unfortunately the two lagers they had on tap I knew I couldn't drink (Kronenbourg and Stella), so I had to settle for a bottle of Becks (German beers are ok because the German purity laws don't allow beer to contain anything other than Barley, Hops and water).

Day one and despite not being a strict Veggie I thought I'd done pretty well.

2 week vegetarian challenge

So when I was drunk last Saturday, I vaguely remember making a bet with Rosie that I couldn't live for two weeks on a Vegetarian diet. It seemed like a good idea, so rather than losing face (or a tenner) since midnight on 07/11/05 I've stopped eating anything derived from animal products.

As far as non edible things go, I've decided I'll not buy anything new which is made from animals but will continue to use things I've bought previously (e.g. shoes and soap) more for reasons of cost and practicality.

I also figured if I was gonna be nice to animals, I should also boycott companies such as Nestle, Coca-Cola and McDonalds since being shitty to humans is pretty important as well.