As an avid consumer of meat and dairy products, I never thought that I could try eating a vegan diet. Almost everything that I usually eat is not vegan-friendly. However, after learning about the effects of the meat and dairy industry on the environment, I decided that I would give the 7-Day Vegan Challenge a try. The rules for this challenge are simple: do not eat anything that contains animal products for seven days straight.
For breakfast, I made simple meals such as oatmeal or noodles. My lunches had more variety and consisted of vegetable dumplings, kimchi pancakes, and more noodles. For dinner, I ate sautéed vegetables with rice, and I cooked several recipes from bloggers “The Simple Veganista” and “Nora Cooks.” For snacks, I ate Harvest Snaps green pea crisps, oranges, and sunflower seeds.
I initially thought that I would just eat fruits and vegetables for every meal, but I was surprised by the diverse array of recipes that I found, like black bean burgers and vegan meatloaves made out of chickpeas. Despite all these different recipes, I still had difficulty deciding what to cook. Because of the pandemic, I did not want to go to the store and buy ingredients, so I was left with the limited amount of vegan-friendly ingredients that I had at home. Most of the recipes that I saw called for staple vegan ingredients such as cashews, vegan meat substitutes, and nutritional yeast—all of which I did not have. I did, however, have lots of beans and tofu. I used the beans to make a vegan shepherd’s pie and the tofu to make kung pao tofu.
During the first few days of this challenge, I found myself getting hungry a lot quicker than usual. It took time for me to adjust to the new vegan meals since I was not used to eating such light meals. Another hurdle that I faced was the fact that I did not know how to cook. Since my family is not vegan, they did not know how to cook vegan food, so I had to make most of my meals myself. The only things that I have cooked prior to this challenge were rice and oatmeal, and my lack of culinary knowledge caused me to usually take almost two hours to prepare just one meal for dinner.
Despite all the difficulties that came with the vegan challenge, I did experience a few benefits as well. I did not eat any junk food because most of the junk food that I normally eat contained dairy or eggs. As a result, I had a healthier diet and I felt like I was more consistently energized instead of having random spikes of energy throughout the day. Since I had to cut out dairy from my diet, I had fewer breakouts as well. Additionally, I had to pay attention to everything that I was eating during this challenge, making me more health-conscious. I did lose one pound from this challenge, but other than that, I did not experience any changes to my physique.
Having completed the 7-Day Vegan Challenge, I do not plan on becoming vegan. Many of my favorite foods, such as egg tart and cheesecake, contain dairy and eggs, and I am not willing to give them up. However, I do plan on including more vegan foods in my diet because being vegan for a week made me a lot healthier. Having a vegan diet is also much better for the environment, with the meat and dairy industries accounting for 14.5% of the world’s greenhouse gases. This percentage is equivalent to the emissions from all cars, trucks, airplanes, and ships combined, according to The New York Times article “Your Questions About Food and Climate Change, Answered.” Overall, I recommend the 7-Day Vegan Challenge to anyone who is interested in becoming vegan or wants to have a healthier diet.