A slow start to 2018

As it’s been a couple of months since I’ve posted, I thought I’d have a belated start to the new year with a bit of a review. I haven’t fallen off the vegan wagon, quite the opposite, in fact. It’s rather that nothing really happens in rural France, especially in winter. Life has been trundling along pretty much as usual. The locals continue to spend their weekends careering around the countryside killing defenceless creatures, whilst we curse and swear, and continue searching the supermarkets for any trace of vegan food.

We’re now heading into our fifth year of full-time living in France. We certainly weren’t even vegetarian when we arrived here, and I can remember cooking maigret de canard for our first Christmas dinner (2013). How times have changed. I’m not sure when exactly we started off down the meat-free route – looking back at the blog, I reckon it was sometime in late 2015. Certainly by early 2015 we were dabbling with vegan, and I see that we followed Veganuary in January 2016. Since then we’ve stuck pretty much to the vegan lifestyle, unless some badly-labelled dairy-laced product accidently finds its way into the shopping trolley. Mr Orange has now been trained to check the ingredients labels on chocolate bars!

Since my post at the end of November, we have converted all of the household cleaning and personal care products to vegan and/or not tested on animals, including the candles we like for an evening ambiance. The only exception I think is Mr Orange’s Lidl mouthwash, mouthwash being hard enough to source here in any form. The next step? Well, we’re currently investigating vegan dog food, but at present the budget does not allow for an expensive failed experiment. The last time I was given some vegan dog chews Bumble flatly refused to eat them.

Even in France there are signs that the vegan lifestyle is becoming more popular and the farmers are on the defensive. There was even a report on France 3 TV recently, although I did feel that the reporting was a little partisan and gave more than necessary support to the opposition. This region is so rural that it will be the last to change. The situation seems to be quite the opposite in the UK, and never a day goes by without a new vegan product popping up my social media feed, or another big chain offering vegan alternatives. Ben & Jerry’s. Vegan cheese seems to be available in all of the main UK supermarkets. I have finally managed to track it down in the Limoges bio shop, Grande Panier Bio, but it’s a 60 km round trip. Sadly, too, the end of the year saw a step backwards locally, as our veggie friends decided to close down their pop-up restaurant and head back to the UK. I can’t blame them – not only is the market there more open (and open-minded), but it’s so much easier to run a business.

So, once again, no new year resolutions, although I am trying to have a dry January, and already feel so much better for it that I may continue. I’ve also jotted down a few random ideas for 2018, and one of these was to investigate vegan nutrition a little more closely. I was primarily concerned that we may not have the correct nutritional balance in our meals, as I didn’t always include tofu, beans or lentils in every meal, and I have to be wary of how often Mr Orange is presented with a plate of the pernicious pulses. Then, by chance, I noticed a Facebook post about a popular plant-based book with the rather gruesome title of How Not To Die. Intrigued, I downloaded a Kindle sample and was immediately hooked.

The brains behind the premise of How Not To Die and the related NutritionFacts.org website is a medical doctor committed to sharing evidence-based research. As a sceptic household, we love evidence-based. The main premise of the book – which is supported by research – is that diet has a major influence on health, and the prevention and cure of major first-world illnesses and disease. To my reading of the book, I added the free app ‘Dr Greger’s Daily Dozen’, and this has turned out to be a really easy way for me to check the nutritional balance of our diet. The result has been an immediate increase in the quantity of fruit and vegetables that we consume, especially berries (Lidl bottled cherries or frozen raspberries) and cruciferous vegetables (rocket, radish and broccoli) and the introduction of a daily tablespoon of ground flaxseeds. It’s too early to say whether this new regime will have a positive influence on our waistlines, but I can only hope that along with the Yoga With Adrienne and Calm meditation, this emphasis on the plant-based aspect of our vegan diet will simply become absorbed into the daily routine.