Vegan food ≠ health food

I had seen the Food Fight! badge on a few blogs, but never clicked on it. Now, thanks to the latest entry by Jess at Get Sconed!, in which she reviews Nacheezmo dip, it's come to my attention that it's a vegan grocery store in Portland (but of course- where else?!). It promises "Grade-A Vegan Junkfood" and by the looks of things, it delivers on that promise; sadly, it doesn't deliver internationally.

This had me thinking about a conversation I had with an acquaintance a few years ago; on the phone, planning to visit her, I mentioned that I would "bring the junk food". Her immediate and sincerely incredulous response was: "But you can't eat junk food, you're vegan!" But as many of us are well aware, there are ever so many kilojoule-laden, fatty, sugary, or salty foods that are vegan. And we have the waistlines to prove it (so there goes the myth that all vegans are skinny, too). No junk food? Oh, you just watch us!

Consider the following list: dark chocolate, cola, crisps, microwave popcorn, hot chips (in vegetable oil, of course), Oreos, 2-minute noodles, corn chips and home-made guac, frozen soy desserts, Irn Bru, and naturally, vegan cupcakes. That stuff is hardly even incidentally nutritious, and all that's before we go to the effort of looking in specialist shops or ordering online.

Of course there are people who follow a vegan diet as a health diet, and eschew processed foods, sugar, fat and the like. Personally, I'm not one of them, and the apparent perception out there amongst non-vegans that we are all a bunch of "health nuts" is misguided. Much as I'm pleased to be able to order a vegan meal on a flight, I do wonder at the tendency to replace the "normal" chocolate dessert not with, say, a vegan truffle or a couple of squares of vegan chocolate, but with a fruit salad. I may be vegan, but I reserve the right to eat a load of unhealthy shit, damn it!

In the end, though, I also realise how lucky I am to live in circumstances that allow me to pursue my wish to be vegan. In this country, in this city, I'm surrounded by fresh fruit and vegetables, pulses and legumes, bread, pasta, rice and tofu. I'm not counting on food from the back of an aid truck, or forced to cook up whatever I find on the rubbish piles near the slums where I live. I have choices about what I eat, and for that I should always be so very, very grateful.