Icky Purism

I'm not a very picky eater--but nonetheless, the average restaurant or grocery store I go into tends to carry more food that I wouldn't eat (or perhaps not even consider food) than food I would eat. Part of this is because I no longer eat animal products, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. I also avoid high fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, and pretty much anything with a chemical-looking name that I can't identify. My first impulse upon considering whether to buy something is to check the ingredients label--and often times my next reaction is wrinkle my nose in annoyance or disgust. It doesn't help that I also don't like to spend much time preparing food (although sometimes I wind up doing so anyway), and I'm recovering from a childhood aversion to plain fruits and vegetables. I also don't feel like I even have all that much time to spend eating--especially when I'm spending the better part of my day at my university, where I only eat what I can carry with me because I don't want to spend the money eating out (assuming I can find something I want to eat) and I'm too lazy to stick things in the fridge at the commuter center.

I'd like to reiterate here that I love food--it just has to be good food =/. Preferably also convenient. I feel like I get enough food even if there are hungry periods (I tend to basically eat as much breakfast as I can before leaving, then snack through the evening once I get home.) Most of the problem here is my class schedule, but my standards don't help. They aren't part of the problem, though--I blame other peoples' lack of standards there. Not saying that isn't still my problem to deal with--I don't get to tell other people to alter their diets to make it easier for me to eat out and find food.

Sometimes I wonder if I get too extreme. I don't think it's healthy to think too much about one's food--in my case, it gets a bit too close being an obsession if I let it. I don't think I'm alone here--I recall hearing someone on Youtube saying that they agree with vegans that it's immoral to exploit animals for food and that refusing to support the industries that do so is the moral thing to do, but for that particular person, concerning themself that much with something as essential to their survival as eating would not be conducive to their mental health, so they were content to be immoral in their eating practices. I can sympathize with this, it's just that in my case there's enough vegan food I like so it's not difficult to cut out animal products. It also probably helps that my mom is vegetarian and I was raised vegetarian until I was six and decided I wanted to eat meat (because if it's so bad, why is practically everyone else eating it? thought my six-year-old self.) So I'm used to paying attention to protein intake and eating meatless food--before I cut out meat, I still kept track of protein just because anything high in protein was conveniently filling, which meant less food to carry (assuming I was eating something portable like jerky or protein bars.)

So I can avoid the obsessing-over-my-food mentality if I avoid most restaurants. And meals at peoples' houses. Oh, and supermarkets, because of distaste for processed foods and ingredients. In other words, pretty much everywhere most people get food from. Given that I'm a bit of a loner and rarely go out to eat much anyway, it's not too hard to develop a bubble mentality where all those restaurants and supermarkets don't exist.

But sometimes I start to want to get rid of my leather and wool, even though doing so would clash with my frugality and dislike of waste. To me, not getting as much use as possible (or throwing away *shivers*) something an animal had to suffer and die to produce is much worse than appearing to condone the industries that put those animals through so much misery in the first place. And I'm 93ish-percent sure those abhorrent circumstances aren't what make me want to get rid of the things--it's just this nasty tendency I have towards purism. I do my best to repeat to myself that I won't buy any more, and it would be overly frivolous to replace so many perfectly useful things just because of how they were made. But I think if I can make my somewhat new eating habits more automatic and avoid places where animal-derived "food" is sold, the purist in me will be more likely to lay off. Wish me luck?