The problem with food started some eight years ago, when I was in secondary school. It was in the last days before Christmas 2001 that I was administered cortisone in order to put an end to the severe bronchitis that had affected me for a couple of weeks. The ailment successfully cleared my lungs, but uncovered a more serious condition that had developed unnoticed in the past months. Cortisone has the bad habit to cause havoc in blood sugar levels, an unbalance that my failing pancreas could not regulate.
Days were strange, spent in a wonderful, sweet exhaustion; I craved for water, quenching my thirst with juicy grapefruit and smoothies, and sleeping nights long and deep. A few days into the new year, my mother, who had noticed a weight loss I deemed imaginary (hey, there's always some to lose!) dragged me to the nearest laboratory for a blood test. I still remember my last class, that first day at school after the winter break, the bottle of water on the lab bench of the chemistry class. The unquenchable thirst had resorbed, at least.
My memory fast-forwards to our doctor's office. I don't recall the words he used, but he told me that I had diabetes. The insulin-dependent one. Diabetes. I knew few things about it, but one memory in particular came up. Back when I attended elementary school, one girl out of the bunch that ate at the canteen had it. She had to prick her finger every time and test a drop of blood. And at Easter, she cried because she was the only one who could not eat the nid de Pâques (Easter nest) or the chocolate egg given on that day.
So I was going to be that girl. The one who cannot eat chocolate. Man, life sucks.
Back home that evening, before I got admitted to the hospital to start the insulin treatment, my mother tried to get me to eat something. I did not touch the bowl of pasta with cheese, and literally crushed the quarter of apple against the garden's door in a fit of anger against this injustice. As if there wasn't already enough to be bothered with in my life. One day later, after entering the adults' diabetes ward of the town's hospital, comfortably tucked in bed, pampered by the nurses who had rarely so young patients, watching movies on TV channels we did not get at home and realizing that I would spend a few weeks eating in bed, I suddenly thought that even this could have a good side.
In fact, the disease had brought me something I had long yearned for: something to fight against that was not myself. One week after leaving the hospital, I travelled to Paris to participate in the finals of France's most famous spelling contest (sort of a spelling bee, but way more vicious) and won the national trophy in my category, the achievement of my short life so far. In the following spring, I got my first boyfriend. I had anger, and energy, and drive, a magnetic drive.
My insulin schemes and HbA1C levels went to the thrash after a couple of years trying to cope with the overly strict diet I was put on by my first nutritionist. I was literally starving between my insufficient meals and compensated with snacks. Another aspect of the insulin treatment I was receiving back then, the injections at fixed times, made me unhappy -- you cannot eat what you want, and now you cannot even sleep what you want? All in all, the lack of flexibility had stripped me of my appetite. Hungry or not, there was no choice but to eat. Still hungry? Deal with it.
The switch to a self-monitored, more flexible insulin scheme came as a relief. This is the one I am still following today: A base injection of slow-acting insulin to cover 24 hours, and quick-acting insulin before each meal; more injections, but more freedom. That switch came a little too late for the bad habits engrained, leaning towards a mild form of eating disorder with self-harm undertones, as my blood sugar levels kept on climbing whatever the efforts to lower them. Another (wrongful) idea was holding ground: the less insulin, the less weight. And the meals I was eating at school were sending me straight into sugar-induced slumber. Hello, overcooked pasta dishes!
Different school, same issues: In my first years at the university, I struggled to stay awake during the morning conferences just after breakfast (losing the struggle more often than not and sleeping head on the table) and loathed the repulsive ersatz of food served at the nearest cafeteria (hello, leftover pasta served as entrées three days after they were cooked, and brick rum pudding!) I gave up trying to control my blood sugar levels altogether and sent my diabetologist to hell. He was saying over and over again something that I respectfully pushed back to the edge of my conscience, that I had to accept my condition, my disease.
I was still fighting, against myself. Hard to tell when it sank in, how early or late it was: my body had turned against itself and I was carrying around a dead organ in my body. I was disabled. I was weak. Accepting that? No fucking way.
Then, I left for abroad.
The year I spent in a Finnish city changed my life, not by an about-turn, rather somewhere sideways, unexpected and unimaginable. Chucked out the career in European Affairs and decided there would be no return, or if any, only to leave again. Left on my own in the Finnish student flat, without my mother's prepared-with-love dishes but, unlike the premises of my former French run-down student room, with a real kitchen including oven, dish-drying cupboard and actual space, I started cooking, making up my own soups and cakes and rediscovering the simple power of fresh fruit and vegetables.
In the meantime, my blood sugar levels had gone out of control, and the crisis culminated in a call from my mother, crying on the phone and begging me to stop harming myself. It felt miles away from where my mind was, as the depression she suspected upon my gloomy Christmas visit was not because I was away from home, quite the opposite; it was because I was for a short while away from the wonders of my newfound home. Fine, very well; upset and indignant, I decided to take on a strict diet, restrictive enough to show absurdly that I could very well make myself unhappy if they wanted it so. From this regime actually stems my fondness for light meals and soups, and I quickly shed off the weight gained during the time of excesses. Still, I was angrily starving myself. With the same energy and drive that had animated me long ago.
I turned vegetarian a few months later, following the example of my Finnish friends. A scandal regarding chicken farming had broken out the previous year, and the documentary exposing the mistreatment of animals literally talked a significant share of the population out of eating meat. It had to make sense, I thought; my friends were sane, intelligent, even remarkable individuals, so what would I share with them if not the moral grounds for that choice? Cutting up a raw liver bought once on sale for freezing was the first of the last steps: it was simply gross. And not even that good.
There is no stepping back. The following Christmas was to be celebrated the Finnish way, so I prepared all four traditional joululaatikot, including the liver casserole for my mother and grandmother, as I had scruples about imposing my life choices to others. Never. Again. The bowl of wobbly ground raw liver was much more than I could tolerate. Next year's a salmon, my mother agreed on. But even fish was progressively taken off the table: as much as I like it, even if it a kind of meat, of greater concern in my own conception of vegetarianism is the mass industrial production of food. A recent article in French leading daily Le Monde provided facts regarding the issue: the production and consumption of farmed fish has recently overcome that of wild fish, for the first time in history. Resources are depleted.
There are enough facts available everywhere in the Web to spare me the demonstration. But one idea drives my behaviour: we cannot feed everyone on Earth the way Europeans or Americans are eating, but this is nonetheless what the once called third world is striving towards. Additionally, one does not need to be a conspirationist (hello, Mulder!) to understand the influence of industrial lobbies on our everyday habits and what we hold as healthy, for meat, for products like sugar (notably, sugar lobbies in France bribed MPs to bar a bill that would ban TV ads for candies and sweets during the peak hour for children watching. Hello, democracy!)
I have been a vegetarian for several years now and I still have questions. Does the rennet used to ferment my beloved French cheeses origin in a slaughtered calf's stomach? How are produced the milk I drink and the eggs I eat? If I knew, would I consider it as ethical? Would I find it right? I dispose of no evidence, and admittedly rely on hearsay, on what the people I trust hold as true or persist to question. But as long as I cannot ascertain myself the conditions of production of animal products, the principle of precaution applies. A moral precaution more than anything.
I moved back to Finland just like I promised, and continued the journey to the North, with the reindeer-herding Sámi people from Finnmark, in Norway. The hunks of reindeer meat roasted on the open fire during our excursions were a heavenly treat. Nothing illogical in that, in my personal grasp of the idea of vegetarianism: I am no zealot of animal rights, but favour a more encompassing view of cultures and traditions; what bugs me in the process of industrial animal production is how the said animals are considered as, and turned into, what they are not: products. In this respect, eating the flesh of an animal the herders personally cared for, raised in the wilderness, led through the tundra to the place where it could graze on lichen and berries, slaughtered themselves and recommended the soul of to Nature matches my ethical prerequisites more than any regular organic product would do.
My problem with food is thus a combination of problems leaving little room of manoeuvre. The strain of the sugar highs on my body and mind, even with appropriate insulin treatment, led me to decrease my carbohydrates intake, cutting off refined sugar and relying on low glycemic index food for complex carbohydrates (in common language, rather beans and peas and a triple serving of veggies than rice and pasta). A reduced carb diet is particularly challenging when the "free foods" that are animal products (meat and dairy) are ouf of reach to make the bulk of the diet (but honestly, Atkins' cheese and bacon scrambled eggs always sounded like a joke to me.)
I am very much on a budget. I am wary of processed and industrially prepared food of any kind. I understand that producing vegetables out of season and importing them from overseas puts a strain on the environment, on biodiversity and carbon dioxyde levels. I would prefer to always rely on local products and find uses for outcast crops (like rutabagas. No one loves rutabagas), and I would prefer to buy always organic or switch to complete vegan instead of only tending towards it, but for now there are limitations to my budget or my creativity.
There is one field I can act on, though.
The problem with food is that no kitchen book fulfills all what I expect from what I eat. In the immensity of the Internet, finding a budget low-carb vegan recipe without fancypants or too exotic ingredients is still a challenge. Not all recipes posted here will match all requirements, being essentially vegetarian; actually I am not sure any of them will (banana soft serve, maybe?) so take this for what it is, or hopes to be: a step in the right direction.
