There are a growing number of vegetarian products on the market, supplying anything a vegetarian might desire, from veggie substiutes for chicken, duck, fish, pork and beef to canned goods and instant noodles. At the same time vegetarian restaurants are everywhere one turns. These range from serve-yourself cafeterias to vegetarian hot-pot joints to restaurants specializing in Japanese or Western vegetarian cuisine. There are even vegetarian versions of the one-price "all-you-can-eat" restaurants now all the rage. It is as if vegetarianism has become a mark of the times, a diet for the new age.
In recent years there has been a wave of diet changes sweeping across the planet, which some have branded a "new-age diet revolution" and others have called a "back- to-nature diet movement." Whatever you call it, it means a vegetarian diet.
Is vegetarianism really the way of the future? The growing popularity of vegetarianism was noted as one of ten major diet trends by the American Dietic Association in 1992, as was a general decline in the consumption of meat.
A Gallup poll revealed that the number of vegetarians in Britain had doubled over a decade, with about one-fourth of all young British women not eating meat for health reasons.
According to statistics compiled in 1994, 12 million Americans were then vegetarian, with their ranks swelling at the rate of about one million a year.
There are no accurate figures for the number of vegetarians in Taiwan, but in a 1990 China Times survey more than half of all respondents said that they had been vegetarian for at least a short period of time, and 14 percent claimed to have long-term experience as vegetarians. These results suggest that the gourmet Lin Hui-yi is not far from the mark when she estimates that half or more of the population is-"broadly defined"-vegetarian.
Veggie monks and nuns
People become vegetarian for different reasons: Some because of basic religious principles, some in displays of religious observence with worldly rewards expected (such as not eating meat in the mornings in the hope that the Goddess of Mercy will help your son pass his university entrance exam), others for their health, and still others for the environment.
The first of the five Buddhist prohibitions is against killing, and Buddhists, who believe that you reap what you sow, make up the largest group of vegetarians in Taiwan. The Northern Song dynasty poet Huang Tingjian once wrote a poem entitled, "Thou Shalt Not Kill": "I eat the meat of many beasts/ Names differ where blood and bones do not/ In forms they make a multitude/ Yet in essence one is like another/ To them I give but pain and torment/ And take such sweet fat in return/ No need to call for Hades' judgment/ I know enough to know I'll burn." A Zen poem that has been passed down through the ages reads, "Soup in the bowl for hundreds and thousands of years/ Our grievances go deep like those of an ever-stormy sea/ To know how a soldier feels as his fated hour nears/ Listen at the butcher's door from midnight to three."
Yet in truth vegetarianism is not rooted in Buddhism, and the early Buddhists did not even stress vegetarianism. When Prince Siddhartha, the founder of Buddhism, went begging, he ate whatever people put in his bowl, including meat. In Thailand, Japan, Tibet and Korea, there are monks and nuns-both Mahayana and Hinayana Buddhists-who eat meat. Only in China are Buddhist devotees completely vegetarian.
Chiang Shu-ling, who handles public relations for the Ling-Jiu Mountain Prajna Culture Foundation, says that vegetarianism among Chinese Buddhists can be traced back to the Southern and Northern dynasties era, when the pious Buddhist Emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty, who thrice donned monk's robes and thrice shed them to resume his imperial duties, wrote an essay entitled "Forsake Alcohol and Meat" in which he urged Buddhists to become vegetarians. From that time on, vegetarianism in China was linked with the Buddhist prohibition against taking life.
Dead ducks coming for payback
The origins of vegetarianism aren't known. In very early written records in China from the era before the Qin dynasty, one can find mention of vegetarians and vegetarian offerings to gods and ghosts. Weng Yun-hsia, formerly a senior researcher at the Foundation of Chinese Dietary Culture, points out that in ancient China special "palace vegetarian food" was provided for the emperor and his wives and concubines. In the Yuan dynasty there was even a "vegetarian office" responsible for cooking and seasoning it.
And though vegetarianism does not stem from Buddhism, Buddhist beliefs and practices are related to why most full-time vegetarians in Taiwan have chosen their diets, and why many more people abstain from meat on the first and 15th of every month.
Wu Wan-yi, head chef of Kaohsiung's Fragrant Root Vegetarian Restaurant, was a cook at a non-vegetarian restaurant until he had a dream in which flocks of dead chickens and ducks and schools of dead fish came for revenge. Upon waking, he resolved to put down his meat cleaver for good and become a vegetarian.
Hung Yin-lung, proprietor of the Fa Hua Vegetarian Restaurant, likewise used to work as head chef at an omnivores' restaurant. "I used to have more than my fill of wine, women, meat and gambling," he remarks. "I was an alcoholic, in fact." What changed him was meeting his guiren-or spiritual benefactor. "After meeting him, my whole character changed and I became a vegetarian."
In fact Buddhism is not the only religion to advocate vegetarianism. Genesis 1:29 reads, "And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat." Following such Biblical instructions, Taiwan Adventist Hospital, which is run by the Seventh Day Adventists, cooks vegetarian food for all its patients.
For the environment
Environmentalists make up another sect of "vegetarian missionaries" who forcefully make the case against meat.
At first glance, vegetarianism and environmental protection might not seem to be clearly linked, but environmentalists argue that much of the environmental havoc accompanying rapid population growth in recent years-including pollution, the cutting of rain forests and loss of water resources-is directly linked to the livestock industry.
To satisfy mankind's hunger for meat, forests have for thousands of years been chopped down and turned into pastures, often only to end up as wasteland where not a blade of grass grows.
Li Te-wei, secretary-general of the Living Environment Protection Society (LEPS), notes that one-fourth of the world's population is underfed, but nearly two-thirds of all food is grown to feed livestock. One pound of hamburger requires that four-and-a-half pounds of grain be fed to cattle. If everyone reduced their consumption of meat by five kilograms a year, the amount of grain saved would be enough to feed 60 million people.
In terms of water resources, the amount of water required to create one kilo of protein from animal products is fifteen times the amount needed to create one kilo of protein from plants. Half of the world's fresh water supply is used for livestock.
The amount of wastes produced by a pig is four to five times the amount produced by a person. There are 21 million people in Taiwan and 10 million pigs, which together produce the same amount of wastes that 60 million people would.
Beyond its impact on the global environment, the modern livestock industry, in its pursuit of economic efficiency and large- scale production, also treats animals inhumanely. John Robbins, founder of the US-based EarthSave International, was heir to the Baskins and Robbins ice-cream empire before he abandoned a career in the family firm to throw his energies into persuading the people of the world not to use inhumane methods in raising animals for human consumption.
In his book Diet for a New America, Robbins explains that mother hens don't lead broods of chicks around the barnyard looking for worms anymore. Today's chickens are all raised in narrow cages. To keep them from giving each other illnesses or injuring each other, they are all on antibiotics and their beaks are clipped.
To create succulent veal, male calves are taken from their mothers on the second day of their lives (to prevent troublesome mother-child bonding). They are put where they can't move or stretch out. To produce veal of the highest grade with the proper pale coloration, farmers will even give the calves ironless food, making them anemic. And they keep the calves in the dark to reduce their activity and thus prevent their muscles from hardening.
The treatment of pigs isn't much better. To produce succulent pig's trotters, pig farmers cover the ground with cement so the pigs can't dig in the earth. As a result their outer hooves become longer than their inner hooves, and they are unable to stand with good balance unless on soft ground. This in turn leads to deformed legs and backbones-all of which cause great pain.
Abroad there are many environmentalists and humanitarians who refuse to eat meat in protest of livestock industry practices.
And in Taiwan, too, there are environmentalists who have acted on their beliefs and made an example of themselves. "While I raise my voice to defend the lives of animals in the wild, can I have lower standards for myself in choosing what I put on my dining table?" asks Li Te-wei. Ever since the LEPS was formed, co-workers have taken turns preparing a vegetarian lunch for everyone in the office to eat.
Yet except for the occasional environmental activist, few people in Taiwan are vegetarians for environmental reasons. Li Te-wei believes that this is because Taiwan is shut out of most international organizations, which means that Taiwan has a limited intake of global information.
Healthy eating
Aside from those choosing to be vegetarian for religious or environmental reasons, among those swelling the ranks of vegetarians are many who have forsworn meat to lose weight or improve their health. Abroad, such "health foodists" make up the majority of vegetarians.
Li points out that many celebrities are vegetarians, including Wang Han, the holder of many long-distance swimming records, as well as several famous foreign sports stars.
In addition to the living proof of vegetarians' greater vitality, many have looked inside the human body to show that it is not suited for eating meat. A Columbia University researcher named Huntington who has researched the anatomy of digestion notes that carnivorous animals' digestive tracts are short, whereas human intestines are 4-6 meters long, with numerous folds. The long process of human digestion is thus not suited to meat, which easily spoils.
Moreover, with only four short canines among 32 teeth, humans don't have the teeth of animals whose diets are centered on meat.
Modern people seem more and more to believe the old Chinese adage that "illness comes in through the mouth" and hold that there is a close connection between health and diet. Yoga vegetarians categorize foods as having either happy, changing or lazy natures. They believe that eating fruits and vegetables will create happy cells, whereas consuming stimulating drinks and spices increases anxiety and produces bad spiritual effects. Meat, meanwhile, makes people lazy and neglectful, wreaking havoc on both the body and the spirit.
There is no concrete evidence of meat's pernicious effects on character and spirit. Its ill effects on health, however, are well documented by modern medical science.
In recent years, various medical studies have found that people living in affluent societies consume too much animal fat and protein and are afflicted with various "diseases of civilization."
Research shows that populations with high consumption of fat have high rates of breast cancer, and many studies have shown that high consumption of fruits and vegetables reduces rates of stomach and intestinal cancers. Been H. Chiang, director of Taiwan National University's Graduate Institute of Food Science and Technology, points out that fiber in food can absorb cancer-causing agents and shorten the time that digested food passes through the large intestine. It is indeed effective in protecting the large intestine from cancer.
Hence, many hospitals provide vegetarian meals for their cancer patients, and in particular encourage them to consume raw organic vegetables and their juices. Dennis Chao, a dietitian at Taiwan Adventist Hospital, says that in addition to cancer patients, the hospital also recommends vegetarian diets for people with cardiovascular disease, overweight people, diabetics, and those suffering from gout.
Green revolutionaries
Because people have all sorts of different reasons for becoming vegetarians, the definition of a vegetarian diet varies. The religious vegetarians are mostly vegans, which means they abstain from eating animal products of any kind, including eggs and milk. Those who are vegetarians for health reasons often consume eggs and milk, while some who call themselves vegetarians in Britain and the United States abstain from eating the meat of land animals for health reasons, yet eat fish and other sea food. Vegetarians for environmental reasons have a still wider range of diets: some just don't eat animals raised by man; others, who don't even want to kill plants, eat only fruit. . . .
Chinese Buddhist vegetarians not only don't consume meat, eggs and dairy products, but also refrain from eating spring onions, garlic, onions, leeks and the scallion-like Allium bakeri.
Man Kuan, a monk who is editor-in-chief of Universal Gate Magazine, explains that there are two reasons that Buddhists don't eat those five forbidden plants: The first is that the five have strong smells and cause bad breath, which shows disrespect when reading prayers or making offerings; and the second is that they are all strong stimulants that rev up the sex drive. Buddhist devotees want a clear heart that is free from desires, and so these five plants are forbidden.
Fake flesh
Even if religion, the environment and one's own health all tell people to swear off meat and become vegetarian, taming an appetite is no easy feat. Dennis Chao knows all the bad points about eating meat, but she admits that although she is a vegetarian, once every week or two she has a craving for meat.
So how do we go about "integrating theory and practice" and cast aside both that chunk of meat in the hand and the one in the heart? Knowledge isn't enough. Perhaps the only way is to rely on meat substitutes, and soothe carnivorous desires with haute cuisine.
A company that is the agent for a Japanese veggie ham producer is working at producing all kinds of vegetarian processed and semi-processed food products. These include non-meat substitutes for Guifei chicken, triple-delicacy abalone, baked duck, ham, triple-layered pork, and so forth. Their flavors and textures are quite like the actual meats and have been well received by restaurant owners. The company's owner Chiu Chiu-yue says that the texture is very important: "It's got to be just like meat!" she says. "The traditional Chinese conception is that vegetarian food lacks nutrition, and that only big hunks of fish and meat are really nutritious. When vegetarian food is made to imitate meat, it helps people to jump this psychological hurdle!"
It's an attitude problem that isn't unique to the Chinese. In America too, you can find vegetarian ham and hamburgers. But there are geographical differences in regard to the stress placed on flavor and nutrition.
Vegetarian products made in Taiwan are exported to Germany, France, the United States, Canada, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, and Chiu's company has even established a branch office in Los Angeles. But the buyers of these products are still largely ethnic Chinese. Chiu Chiu-yue points out that they are unable to penetrate foreign markets largely because "tastes differ." "Foreigners want natural products and a light flavor, put a lot of stress on the nutritional content, and don't want vegetarian food that imitates meat," Chiu says. "The demands they put on food are quite different from ours."
Eating veggie meat
With mock meat well approximating the real stuff, many vegetarian restaurants are basing their menus around this fake flesh: "sweet and sour veggie pork," "top-grade veggie tripe," "eggplant with veggie fish-sauce," "good fortune veggie ham". . . . These are just some of the meat imitations that can be found in large vegetarian restaurants.
In Taiwan some people find these fake meats hard to accept. Ethnologist Chuang Po-ho remarks, "The whole idea of vegetarianism is to eat plant foods, but Taiwan vegetarian food ends up trying to imitate the appearance, flavor and texture of meat. It's really very strange!" His experience from several times eating vegetarian food in Taiwan has been that "every dish is the same. . . . It's like a bad dream!" In contrast he has nothing but praise for Japanese vegetarian food: "Japanese vegetarian cuisine puts a stress on raw foods and the actual taste of the vegetables themselves. In true vegetarian cuisine you can taste the original flavor!"
Hung Yin-lung, who has worked in the vegetarian food industry for 13 years and is a long-time vegetarian himself, believes that veggie meat does a good job of "tricking the taste buds," and provides a convenient means of getting people to become vegetarians. Producing veggie meats not only meets the needs of vegetarians, but it also attracts meat-eaters to make their own assessments. "Half of our customers are meat-eaters," he notes.
Yet most true vegetarians aren't fond of these meat substitutes. "We can't stomach the 'big fish' and 'big meat' you find in vegetarian restaurants now," Hung says, who prefers to eat meals of steamed tofu and stir-fried vegetables. But not all vegetarian restaurants are working to make things conveniently meatlike; some are moving in the direction of healthy and natural vegetarian cuisine. The proprietors of the Tang-tang Kitchen, Su Tang-tang and her Japanese husband Saotome Osamu, have veered from the Chinese vegetarian tradition in putting stress on completely unprocessed vegetarian food, showing their culinary skills only by choosing how to cook and season the vegetables. "Vegetables taste good as they are, and after adding natural seasonings can be left well enough alone," Su Tang-tang says. "There's no need to process them to have variety."
Take the potato. By simply cooking and seasoning it differently, you can prepare it in a great variety of ways: miso potato, potato in hongshao brown sauce, potato in mapo hot sauce, baked potato, Japanese-style potato salad, potato and stir-fried green pepper, and so on. Besides being fried or boiled and sprinkled with soy sauce, eggplant can also be baked with cheese or miso. Asparagus can be skewered and deep-fried in flour batter and natural seasonings.
Though only open for a year and some months, the Tang-tang Kitchen is already well known. Quite a few people, knowing its reputation, have come to study how to prepare simple and delicious vegetarian food, which is testimony to the speed at which the vegetarian ranks have grown of late.
The fear of imbalance
There is a saying that "by eating your vegetables and your tofu, you'll stay in good health and stave off the flu." But method is needed to stay healthy on a vegetarian diet. Been Chiang points out that most vegetarian diets lack vitamin B 12, vitamin D, calcium, iron and zinc. Vitamin B12 is found only in animal foods, and vegans must take vitamin supplements for it. Vegetarian diets have ample stores of other vitamins, however. All one needs is a basic concept of nutrition and a willingness to eat a variety of vegetarian foods, and one needn't worry about nutritional imbalance.
Chiang Shu-hui, who is a forceful promoter of vegetarian diets, says that a good balance of foods would be as follows: 55-60% grains, 15-20% vegetables, 15-20% fruits, and 10% beans and sprouts. She recommends that vegetarians first eat sprouts so as to create a beneficial alkaline environment in the intestinal tract. Fruits should be eaten an hour before anything else, because if the stomach and intestines are first digesting proteins before carbohydrates, fruit will back up in the stomach and spoil before being digested.
Because most people don't know very much about nutrition, Li Te-wei provides these two simple principles: First, eat grains and beans together, such as red beans and rice, "eight-treasures" congee, and lentil and rice porridge; and second, the more variety in the colors of food eaten, the better.
Dennis Chao suggests that prospective vegetarians take it slow. She says that meat-eaters who try to turn themselves into vegetarians overnight often have negative reactions. "Some people who become vegetarian have bad color for the first two or three months and often catch colds." Chao holds that gradually adjusting over the course of six months to a year works better.
Starting with vegetarianism. . . .
To be a vegetarian requires not only great personal resolve and persistence but also a supportive environment. Only then is one likely to stay the course. With any of these conditions missing, the pressures to eat meat will mount.
Vegetarians are often not completely in control of the surrounding environment. Eric Vognild, an American who is vegetarian on moral grounds, stopped eating meat when he was 12, but since arriving in Taiwan four years ago, he hasn't been able to avoid consuming it occasionally. He notes with resignation, "Sometimes if you go to a friend's house and you don't eat the meat, the parents won't be happy." Yet eating meat to be a good guest leaves him with feelings of guilt, so the whole issue causes quite a dilemma.
Liu Hung-wei, who manages an organic food store, explains that although he wants to be a vegetarian, his family, and parents in particular, have been completely unaccommodating. Stuck in the old ways, they chide him for "going overboard" in pursuit of "what's trendy."
So as not to trouble others, some vegetarians are "vegetarian when convenient" (meaning they'll eat vegetables that have been cooked with meat) or "meat eaters with three conditions" (I didn't kill it; it wasn't killed for me; and I didn't see it get killed). Ultimately, "the inner belief in vegetarianism is more important than perfect formal observance, and sometimes one needn't be overinsistent," says the monk Man Kuan.
In any case, whether the decision to become vegetarian stems from religious, environmental or health reasons, and whether one eats eggs and dairy products or becomes an all-out vegan, the decision starts reflection about the endless pursuit of material pleasures and satiating of appetites. Perhaps if we are to learn how to reduce our desires, vegetarianism is a good place to start.
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"All you can eat for NT$65!" As the ranks of vegetarians have grown, so have the lengths taken to gain their patronage.
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To make veal as tender as possible, calves are condemned to spend short, painful lives in cramped spaces where they can not even stretch out. (courtesy of Life Conservationist Association)
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Devotees who strictly follow the Buddhist commandment against killing make up the majority of Taiwan's vegetarians. (photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang)
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Seafood flavor, pork flavor, soup stocks, oyster sauce, mala hot sauce. . . what a varied assortment of ingredients are on offer at vegetarian supply stores.
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In their color, texture, fragrance and taste, processed vegetarian foods have developed to the point where they can now pass themselves off as meat. (On the right is vegetarian "streaky pork.")
p.24
Vegetarianism doesn't equal deprivation, and veggie food can still mean high cuisine.
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Many sorts of vegetarian cuisine are available in Taiwan, including "yoga vegetarian food," which has found a following among women. (photo by Pu Hua-chih)
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To prevent the intake of chemical pesticides, vegetarians for health reasons try to stick with unpolluted organic fruits and vegetables. (photo by Pu Hua-chih)
p.27
An organic farm on Mt. Fu in Wulai. Vegetarianism is perhaps the start of a journey toward nature and health.
"All you can eat for NT$65!" As the ranks of vegetarians have grown, so have the lengths taken to gain their patronage.
To make veal as tender as possible, calves are condemned to spend short, painful lives in cramped spaces where they can not even stretch out. （courtesy of Life Conservationist Association）
Devotees who strictly follow the Buddhist commandment against killing make up the majority of Taiwan's vegetarians. （photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang）
Seafood flavor, pork flavor, soup stocks, oyster sauce, mala hot sauce. . . what a varied assortment of ingredients are on offer at vegetarian supply stores.
In their color, texture, fragrance and taste, processed vegetarian foods have developed to the point where they can now pass themselves off as meat. （On the right is vegetarian "streaky pork."）
Vegetarianism doesn't equal deprivation, and veggie food can still mean high cuisine.
Many sorts of vegetarian cuisine are available in Taiwan, including "yoga vegetarian food," which has found a following among women. （photo by Pu Hua-chih）
To prevent the intake of chemical pesticides, vegetarians for health reasons try to stick with unpolluted organic fruits and vegetables. （photo by Pu Hua-chih）
An organic farm on Mt. Fu in Wulai. Vegetarianism is perhaps the start of a journey toward nature and health.
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