Vegetarian for a Week
An Activity

***Do not make the mistake of thinking this is an easy project!***
To get the most out of the experience will mean doing more than simply eliminating meat from your diet. Experiment with some vegetarian recipes and new foods. Find creative substitutes for meat.

Summary of activity:

• Do a bit of research to learn what a typical vegetarian or vegan diet would avoid eating (be sure to include a list of sources you used in your written report).
• Compile a list of basic guidelines (do's and don'ts) for maintaining such a diet. In conjunction with this, you might like to make a poster (see below) of vegetarian, vegan, and non-vegetarian foods (if you are visually or artistically inclined)
• Plan and prepare: do some meal planning, look for some vegetarian recipes (on the Web or in books), visit your local grocery store and survey their vegetarian foods area or find out where else vegetarians might go to get their food (see below). You might want to do a restaurant survey (how can vegetarians eat out?) (see Web resources, below).
• Try to follow such a diet for a week, maintaining a diet journal that notes the things you eat and the things you would have ordinarily eaten but did not because of the diet.
• At the end of the week, reflect on the experience: How difficult was it to maintain the diet? Where did you fall short? Were you able to maintain it the entire week? If not, why not? Do you think you will continue the diet on an ongoing basis? Why or why not? Why do you think such a diet is part of a religious lifestyle? Do you think a spiritual life should impact on what and how we eat? Why or why not?

Alternatively, you might want to try a Taoist diet (using the same five step process noted above)

Here's a book on the history of vegetarianism you can read and review either independently or in conjunction with this experience with a vegetarian diet.

Web resources for research: (also search the Web for other resources)

• Jain Food (from Jainworld.com)

• Vegetarian Diets: Quick Facts

• Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians

• Learn more about Religion and Vegetarianism at the International Vegetarian Union Website

• Vegan 2000: Religious Reasons for Veganism

• GoVeg.com and their Vegetarian Starter Kit (from PETA)

• The Vegetarian Resource Group provides information about nutrition, restaurants (including fast food restaurants), recipes, and FAQ file plus more

• What do vegetarians eat? provides an diverse list of foods suitable for vegetarian and vegan diets

• VegCooking resource for vegetarian cooking advice, recipes (including "ask the Vegan chef"), shopping and dining guides (from PETA)

• Majula's Kitchen vegetarian recipes and cooking videos by a Jain woman (she makes cooking vegetarian look easy and tasty).

• Vegetarian and Vegan options in fast food resturants

• Taoist diet guidelines (additional resources)

Vegetarian foods in your local grocery store: a survey

• Visit your local grocery store and see if they have a vegetarian foods section. If you need to visit several stores before you locate such, make note of this. (you may ask the store manager to direct you, some stores have special areas in the frozen food section or elsewhere). You might also want to see how many (if any) specially shops near you sell vegetarian foods (perhaps a health or natural foods store).

• Where was the store located and how many did you have to check before finding what you were looking for?
• Did you locate any specially shops near you where these foods can be found? How many?

• Make note of how large this special foods section is:

• How many feet wide is the section? (not how wide the aisle is, how wide the shelves are, end to end, as you are facing them)
• How many shelves high is the section?
• What kinds of foods are on the shelves (no need to list every single item, simply the general kinds of foods)

• Compile an informal report on your findings to share with your classmates (in class or on the discussion board)

A poster:

• Begin with a piece of paper (9X12 construction or craft paper should suffice).

• Divide the paper in three parts so it looks like this:

or this:

Or any other creative configuration to appropriately represent the allowances and limitations of the various diets

• Locate images of different kinds of food (several examples of each).

• Paste each image in the appropriate section of the paper (refer to your research findings).

• Label each image as well as each area of the paper accordingly (example: "milk" on the "vegetarian but not vegan" side)