A coworker is trying to switch to a vegetarian lifestyle, and since I am the only vegetarian most of my coworkers know, they referred her to me for advice. This wasn't a bad idea, if you base it on the principle that sometimes one's purpose in life is to serve as a warning for others. I'm happy to pass on what I've learned through my mistakes.
When I made the decision to stop eating meat, it was not done cold turkey (ha ha). I was fed up with bad experiences attempting to eat chicken (underdone, mostly, but the last straw was when I bit into what should have been a morsel of sweet and sour chicken that was instead fried bone), so chicken was the first meat cut from my diet. This triggered a domino effect that led me to eliminating red meat, later pork, and finally fish. As the years passed, I became less tolerant of any animal products, and stopped eating meat broths and gelatin as well. However, being of the lazy persuasion, I didn't exactly do a lot of research. I didn't read labels like any meat-avoider worth her salt should.
The eye-opening moment for me was lurking in my bag of McDonald's french fries.
"Honey," Husband began, "I almost didn't tell you this, but I knew you'd want to know..." pregnant pause, "McDonald's fries have beef tallow in them."
"What?! Why??" Not that I cared why. He had let the cow fat out of the bag. It was in the fries, and I couldn't change that. I had been eating them for years, blissfully ignorant of their evil ways. And because my love of french fries is somewhere between my love of bubble baths and my love for my first born child, I was shaken to my very core. Would I never be able to eat the most delicious of all potato preparations again? That's when the ingredient checking began. Fortunately for me, McDonald's is pretty much the only fast food restaurant that hates me; there is no beef tallow in other franchises' fries. Unfortunately, plenty of meat is sneaked into plenty of other food products:
Yogurt - gelatin (discovered, devastatingly, after I fell in love with Dannon Whips and
had already eaten several containers, and almost all brands have it)
Broccoli-cheese soup - chicken broth base
Chip dip - gelatin
Queso dip - beef broth
Spinach-artichoke dip - chicken broth
Wendy's Caesar salad - bacon
biscuits - lard
Cracker Barrel corn muffins - fried in bacon grease, and there is some form of meat product or another in damn near every other menu offering at this place
Zio's tomato and alfredo sauces - beef broth
95% of the time, your wait staff will not have a clue which menu items are vegetarian, and you can double that figure* if you're trying to ask the kid behind the fast food counter.
If by asking my advice my coworker is hoping to glean advice from a professional vegetarian, she should consult someone else. However, at the very least I can pass on the most priceless gem of wisdom in the sea of attempted meatlessness: Always, always check the ingredients.
*I'm pretty sure this figure of double 95% is accurate.
