Obligatory not today, but a while ago, I tried to go vegan. I needed to make a healthy change in my life, including losing some weight. I was a little chubbier so it didn’t hurt to eat more vegetables. I wanted to look better too. It was rough at first. I had to get used to the taste of different things I’ve never had before like tofu and seitan.
At first it was going really well. I was losing a few inches all around and clothes were getting baggy. I was looking good. Then the craving for meat set in. I knew it was coming. It seemed a little too easy to go cold turkey (pun intended) from eating meat. I was getting tired of tofu and textured vegetable protein mixes. It was all tasting the same. I wanted a steak. I wanted pork chops.
I began searching the health food stores for good meat alternatives, I wasn’t going to give up going vegan, I had a good thing going. Every store had huge varieties of meat substitutes, but none of them hit the same.
A friend of mine suggested looking online for health food webstores that deliver straight to your house. It was a little more expensive but I was getting desperate. I found one that looked legit and promised the best vegan meat on the market. It was promised to be just like the real deal. I ordered a few pounds of ground vegan beef to try and make burgers with. I missed burgers the most and the thought of one made me drool as I clicked the place order button.
It was next day delivery. It came in a freezer box and looked just like those Impossible burgers in the stores. Already I was impressed. I had already bought the rest of my ingredients to make the best vegan burger I’ve had in my life. I took some out of the package and began shaping a patty, it felt just like beef but a little different. Crumbles of soy were scattered throughout the “protein” to look like fat. It was an impressive substitute.
It sizzled and browned just like a real burger too. The aroma of it cooking sent me back to memories of family cookouts before I went vegan. I assembled my burger and without hesitation ravenously took a bite. It was the best thing I’ve ever had in the entire world. I was hooked. It tasted better than the real deal.
The rest of the ground was used in dishes like spaghetti bolognese and lasagna. Within a week, it was gone and I was ready to order more. I figured why not try some other products by them to see if they were any good.
I bought chiken nuggets, more ground vegan beef, and even some bone in wings. The chicken nuggets were juicy and flavorful. I think they were seitan but whatever they marinated them in made them taste and feel just like meat. Then came the wings. The texture wasn’t like the nuggets or the ground beef. It felt like biting into the real muscles of meat and the bone looked so real. They were a little chewy but tasted great.
I was addicted to ordering off this site. I had to become their top customer. It became such an addiction my weight loss became weight gain. I had to cut back. I didn’t want to but I had to. The mirror wasn’t agreeing with all I’ve been eating. The withdrawals sucked at first. It was like going vegan all over again, but the weight started to come off again.
Then the withdrawals never went away. Instead they got worse. The cravings got worse. I felt like I was going to need methadone. I was dizzy, irritable, and fiending. I couldn’t give in.
I tried to live life as normal until my friend asked to go out to eat with me. It was a vegan place of course. They got the cauliflower steak and I got the bang bang soyrizo tacos. While she was cutting into her steak, her knife slipped and cut deep into her arm.
I don’t know what came over me. The sight of her exposed wound drove me insane. The hunger I felt was like no other. I don’t know if it was because of the withdrawals or what but I wanted to sink my teeth into her arm right then and there.
I shook off the impulse and took her to urgent care. While waiting for her to get stitches, I gave in. I had to buy one last thing. I saw they had a new product. It was like a pork roast apparently. I decided to splurge the extra money to try it out, it was one last hurrah after all.
Again, the package arrived the next morning. I opened the box and saw it. A slab of faux pork roast. I wondered again how they could make it look so real. I don’t know why I didn’t do this before, but I decided to check the ingredients list to see if it was soy or mycelium. There wasn’t one. I thought it was weird since it was required to have one where I lived.
I decided to pull up the website again and navigated their page to try and find ingredient lists. I wish I didn’t. The only ingredient listed was: vegan meat (100% human).