This week I haven’t done anything crazy. I haven’t tried anything new or ate anything different than I normally would. I have actually felt pretty sick, so I haven’t been eating a lot. So, food-wise, there isn’t a lot to write about. I have been going to the gym though, which has made me feel better. I wanted to spend this blog and talk about different countries and how accessible a vegetarian diet is.

I feel like it is pretty easy to be vegetarian in the US. It is also pretty easy to be a vegetarian here at Penn State. What is inspiring me to write this is that I went to dinner on Sunday and there weren’t many vegetarian options. Sure, they always have the salad bar but that’s not really much effort or variety for vegetarians. Anyways, there were about five different meat options for people to choose from. For me, there were no vegetarian options. There is normally some vegetarian or vegan “meat” option, such as vegetarian burritos or vegetable tikka masala. But for Sunday, there wasn’t. So what I had for dinner was a baked potato, mushrooms, and strawberries. Now, given that my dream diet would be raw vegetarian, this would be good practice. The dinner was good but I wouldn’t really constitute it as a meal that should be worth $5. This got me thinking about the countries that are comprised of many vegetarians and this case of not having much to eat would be a rarity.

Chicken Tikka Masala

Starting with India, which is the first country I think of when thinking about vegetarianism, this is the country with the lowest consumption of meat. There is an average of approximately 8.8 pounds of meat consumed by Indians every year. In the US, there is an average of 270.7 pounds of meat consumed by each American every year. That is an insane difference between the two. Given that, approximately 31% of Indians are vegetarian while only 3.2% of Americans are vegetarian. So it makes a lot of sense that for my Sunday dinner, there weren’t a lot of meat options. When I first went vegetarian, I though about losing probably my favorite dish in the world, chicken tikka masala. But then I thought of all of the vegetarian options I see on the menu when I get Indian back at home. Many meat options are either already vegetarian or simply made vegetarian. This type of food would be great for any vegetarian, and a wonderful place to travel if you practice vegetarianism.

Some other countries that are comprised of many vegetarians are Ethiopia, Jamaica, Singapore, and Israel. There are some religious reasons for not consuming meat as well as the environment which is ideal for growing crops. These would also be great places to travel or to try their cuisine because there would be many delicious vegetarian options.