Transitioning from vegetarian to vegan

After just over a week into my research, I am currently experimenting with a vegan diet. I am not yet declaring complete transition from vegetarian to vegan, not least because I have a lot more to learn and achieve before I can make such a statement.

I am therefore transitioning from vegetarianism to veganism, and whilst I am not ready to call myself vegan yet, I am not sure that I am vegetarian, as I am not eating dairy or eggs, hence the description of transitioning.

1 March 2018

I admit that it is becoming a bit of a cliché amongst those considering the transition to veganism, and I fell into the trap of believing that cheese would be the real issue.  I have always been a great fan, and was not sure, out of completely selfish reasons whether or not I could give it up. Perhaps it is the association, with a nice glass of red after a slap up meal, or maybe there is some truth behind the suggestion that cheese triggers the same part of the brain as hard drugs. Wow! I never realised that there is in fact a hard drug called cheese heroin, totally unrelated to the dairy product - it's amazing what you can come up with following a simple Google word search.

Whilst going slightly cold turkey over the omission of the real cheese product from my diet, I tried listing in my mind the pros and cons of eating cheese, and currently have more items on the cons list than the pros. Not least that it is a lump of saturated fat made from animal milk, possibly some mould and in some cases animal rennet, which I understand to be made from the lining of sheeps stomachs. If I can keep this mentality up, then maybe I have it cracked.

I am currently trying a selection of vegan cheeses, but to date have only had ones made from coconut oil, which are pretty rubbery. There are several boutique vegan cheeses out there and more run of the mill ones coming onto the market and into our supermarkets, so I will certainly be persevering, and I may even dabble in trying to make some myself based on some recipes I have come across.  I will report back if this happens.