What happened when I ate woke for a month

It's important to get the nutrition balance right on a limited diet. Photo / 123rf

At the top of many people's list of "things to make me a better person" for 2020 will have certainly been the intention to eat less meat. Whether it's vegetarian or full vegan it's the thing to do for your health, for the planet, for animal welfare and for the sake of always having something reasonably woke to talk about.

Especially if you are an Uber driver. My driver proudly told me within minutes of me hopping in his car that he had been vegan for a month.

"It's a great way to lose weight," he said, looking meaningfully in the rear view mirror at my size 16 frame.

He had watched a documentary on Netflix and that was it. Life changed.

After 10 minutes of the vegan discourse I asked him how he was feeling on his diet which seemed to consist mainly of the vegan offerings now available at Subway and Domino's.

"How are your energy levels?"

"Not great," he admitted.

It was now my turn to take a long look at him from the back seat. He was pale and he was in his 70s.

"You might want to get a blood test," I said as I hopped out of his Mercedes. "Your B12 is probably low."

Therein lies the rub. Getting the nutrition right on a limited diet, no matter what it is, can be beyond most normal people. Unless you know your stuff it's really easy to get depleted of the essential vitamins and minerals which keep you healthy. Yes, you can be vegan and healthy but you also have to have done a bit more research than watching an hour-long documentary on Netflix. I know some very fit and healthy vegans but they also have bookshelves heaving with books on the topic and have spent years working out how to do it right.

Professor of Genetic Epidemiology Tim Spector, author of The Diet Myth: The real science behind what we eat, put himself on a vegan diet but found his blood tests revealed low B12 and folate. After months of trying to rectify this by eating eggs, taking supplements and eventually having B12 injections in his bum, he realised that by eating one steak a month, he could get back to normal.

Unfortunately, many meat-free eaters will simply turn to faux meat – the not chicken chicken made out of some soy or the not meat hamburger pattie made out of some beetroot. It seems that without meat we still crave the taste, but do they really taste the same? And do you really know what goes into these scientific miracles?

Wendyl Nissen hasn't even told her husband Paul Little she has been vegetarian for a month. Photo / Jason Oxenham

Instead of eating a small piece of meat from a cow, which free ranges, eats grass grown in the sunlight and adds manure to the paddock to regenerate the soil, are we really going to replace it with highly processed food, designed in a laboratory and made out of ingredients none of us recognise?

Our choices when it comes to eating seem to have focused on demonising certain foods rather than concentrating on how those foods, whether they are animal or plant, are produced.

Thanks to the army of activists in this country who have worked tirelessly to ensure that chickens are free-range, pigs are out of crates and grain does not get fed to our cows, here in New Zealand we have the luxury of being able to buy eggs and meat which have been produced well by anyone's standards – even McDonald's uses free-range eggs now. There is still the cruelty of the slaughter and the drain off polluting waterways but these things are slowly changing.

Perhaps we should also look closely at the vegetables and fruits we are piling on our plates and how they were produced with the use of pesticides, which are contributing to a crisis in insect populations, some of which are being driven to extinction. The use of fertilisers, which also pollute our waterways, and the use of low-paid workers. How salads are packed into plastic bags filled with gas which carry a salmonella or listeria risk, fruit and veges are imported from overseas using fossil fuels, and it's all wrapped in endless miles of plastic and covered with little plastic stickers.

In a perfect world, we Kiwis would be able to claim that all our meat is perfectly produced and all our veges are grown well, and the reality is that we're not far off it. Compared to most other countries in the world we are leaps and bounds ahead in this area. We can buy organic meat and vegetable products for a few dollars more in our supermarkets, something you could not do just a few years ago.

So instead of going all out and cutting out meat completely, perhaps we should focus on buying well-produced food and support those farmers and growers who have made the effort to change their practices.

I've been vegetarian for the past month but not in a way that means I tell every stranger I meet in an Uber. And not in a way that means I refuse a delicious duck salad a friend made for me for dinner or fresh snapper my neighbour gifted me. I've told no one, not even my husband Paul, who remains a devout eater of meat albeit free range, home killed and less than he used to. He thinks I'm just eating more vegetables than before. I scan restaurant menus for vegetarian options and have eaten amazing Buddha bowls, halloumi salads and spicy noodles. I drink delicious smoothies, make vegetable pies and pile my plate full of rice and vegetables from my garden topped with one of my hen's fresh eggs. I feel great, full of energy and light on my feet. But, like Tim Spector, I will be having a steak once a month.