Food is an important part of our individual identities. The food that we like to eat and the food that we eat every day are determined by a wide range of factors like culture, economics and geography. Hence, food can reveal a lot about a person’s values and history. This post documents my relationship with food, specifically vegetarianism and how I eventually abandoned it.

“popeye’s dream” at All Spice

Life as a Vegetarian

I was raised a Hindu; and, although my family wasn’t very conservative or strict, many associated practices like vegetarianism stuck. I ended up an ovo-lacto vegetarian in a household of ovo-lacto and lacto vegetarians. I always asked if soups had chicken stock, made sure asian food didn’t contain fish sauce or oyster sauce and informed friends of my dietary restrictions before attending a party or going out for dinner. Being a vegetarian added some overhead to my life.

Surprisingly, there were numerous advantages to being a vegetarian. Whenever we flew internationally, we would request vegetarian meals in advance. Special meals always came out first and seemed much more interesting than standard fare. I also never had to sit in the airplane and wait for the food trolley to finally make its way to my seat while the smell of food circulated through the cabin and made me hungry. I never worried that my meal selection could run out before I had a chance to order. Sometimes after eating out, while some friends would complain about upset stomachs because of undercooked meat, I was fine. During biology class, when we learned of parasites that can spread through meats, I never worried like some of my classmates did.

Tofu-Ball Soup (豆麩団子のお椀) at Kajitsu

Of course along with those advantages came quite a few disadvantages. I avoided barbecue restaurants, steakhouses, most fast food restaurants and whole cuisines like Japanese and Brazilian because of the lack of vegetarian options. I rarely bought lunch at school. Salad and cheese pizza were my go-to meals at theme parks, conventions and other places where food options were limited. When I started watching my diet more, I found that it was extremely carb heavy because being a vegetarian often meant avoiding proteins altogether and substituting with carbs.

Friends would frequently ask questions like “don’t you ever feel like trying meat?” and “what happens when you accidentally eat meat?” The questions bothered me a little; but, I would point out that just as I don’t eat meat, most of them don’t eat certain things because of personal preference and allergies. I was still happy as a vegetarian.

A Gradual Shift

Two changes started occurring in me that would eventually lead me to where I am today.

First is the gradual erosion of my vegetarianism. When I was a child, if I accidentally ate meat, I would spit it out and find something else to eat. My reaction to meat was never as harsh as that of many people I know who immediately lose their appetite or even gag or vomit if they accidentally eat meat.

brandade ravioli and skuna bay salmon at Longman and Eagle

As time went on, I slowly stopped caring if soups contained meat broths. I was fine with pulling the meat off pizza and eating it as long as there was no strong meat flavor. I even started to prefer refried beans cooked with lard. The knowledge of if something contained meat no longer mattered. I only started avoiding whole pieces of meat and food that overwhelmingly tasted like meat.

The second change is the result of the crystallization of one of my guiding philosophies. It happened in the fall of 2006 during my MIT alumni interview. Towards the beginning of the interview, the alumnus asked me a question that threw me off balance, “If you can boil your values and guiding principles into one statement, what would that be?”. I didn’t know how to answer. I was prepared for the usual shallow questions I received from other alumni, but I just didn’t know what to say to this one. I told I’m had to think about it and we continued on with the rest of the interview.

When I finally answered, this is what I said: “I want to be a swiss army knife. I want to be able to thrive in any place or any situation.” He loved the answer and it formed the cornerstone for the rest of the conversation. At the end of it, he told me that I had as good a chance as anyone of getting in and wished me the best of luck. As I left the room. I felt a mixture of excitement and confusion. I loved the words that came out of my mouth, but where did they come from? It was one of those moments when a solution seemingly appears out of ether, like when I’m staring at a difficult problem in an exam and all the puzzle pieces line up magically.

Around that time, I had started learning foreign languages, dabbling in self improvement, and getting good at things I used to hate. Clearly, this philosophy had been guiding me until that point without me ever realizing.

As I thought about it more, a glaring conflict emerged between that philosophy and vegetarianism. I hated when people were picky about their food or told me that they don’t eat certain foods for any non-medical reason. What a contradiction! I was the pickiest of them all. Here is this artificial restriction that is completely inconsistent with what should be my guiding principle, who am I to criticize others? At that moment of awareness, I decided that I would start walking down the road to complete abandonment of vegetarianism.

Final Steps

In high school, I started eating California rolls at sushi restaurants. I was for some reason under the impression that “imitation crab” was imitation meat and completely vegetarian. In fact, it’s made from fish and is very similar to fish balls or narutomaki that you may find in ramen. When I found out, I was pretty impressed with myself. I had been eating fish all along and I never realized! One day, while eating my California roll, a friend offered a few pieces of his salmon sushi, and I thought “why not?”. I was genuinely surprised. It didn’t taste especially fishy and had a palatable texture. From that day forth, I started trying many different types of raw fish. Whenever anyone asked me if I had dietary restrictions, I would tell them that I am mostly vegetarian, but eat raw fish. I wish you could have seen the looks on some peoples’ faces when they heard me say that.

arctic char and maine scallops at dovetail

Fast forward 4 years and being a vegetarian that ate raw fish was pretty good. I could now eat at most sushi restaurants with friends and I grew to love Japanese cuisine; but, all this raw fish got me thinking “if I can eat raw fish, why not cooked fish?”. So, I began eating fish at the fanciest of restaurants (only Michelin star or recommended) because I knew that they would use only the freshest fish and cook it properly. By my senior year, I was regularly choosing the fish option at restaurants and proudly called myself a pescatarian. I could eat almost anywhere, but I didn’t want to stop at that.

When I moved to California, I started easing my way into the rest of seafood. I would order one appetizer like oysters or fried shrimp heads. Slowly, I would order more and more seafood. By end of my first 6 months in the Bay Area, I was eating all seafood including some weirder things like sea snails and sea cucumbers. This satiated my appetite for change and new foods for some time.

Ramen at Hide-Chan

As my second year in the Bay Area came to a close, I had a thirst for change again. My conversion wasn’t moving fast enough and as I went from one summer barbecue to another, I was still effectively a vegetarian since I still didn’t eat hamburgers or hotdogs. One day at Ssisso we bought chicken wings and I tried a few. The Uber back to Ari’s place was difficult to say the least. Nausea rushed over me and I felt terrible. However, an hour went by and I was back to normal. I had started to eat chicken.

On the first day of Burning Man, a few people from my camp had made some pork stew and asparagus. I originally stuck only to the veggies, but after 10 minutes I thought “to hell with it” and poured a large ladle of stew into my bowl. It wasn’t too bad, though the few glasses of wine I had probably helped. I told myself that I’m going to eat everything from this point on. If anyone asks me what kind of diet I stick to, I’m not mentioning anything that ends in -tarian.

Next Steps

Me at Kajitsu

It’s been a year and a half since my “full conversion” and I couldn’t be happier. I can more easily adhere to high protein diets, better appreciate foreign cuisines and I have started to cook many classic meat-heavy dishes. Gone are the days of being the pickiest person at the table and being asked about my dietary restrictions. And I can finally order food from the standard menu when flying internationally!

I don’t want to stop here though. I may now be in line with the average American, but there still are many foods around the world that I need to try and learn to appreciate like insects, rotten foods, living foods and others that look downright revolting. For me, 2015 is going to be the year of bizarre foods. If Andrew Zimmer can eat it, why can’t I? Friends, join me if you are interested. It’s guaranteed to be intriguing.