Things continue to gradually improve. I’ve been working really hard trying to get into substitute teaching, but it’s taking forever and now everyone is on Winter Break so it’ll be a while. Meanwhile, I have COVID thanks to my current job at the preschool 🙄 Apparently my boss, who would probably have been a nice person if she hadn’t sold her soul to capitalism in order to achieve middle-class status and be able to raise her kids, has an official policy that when you get COVID, you have to come back on Day 6 and you can’t wear a mask or it will scare the parents. Which violates both state and federal guidelines, and I feel like I should have at least been informed in advance that she was doing this because that’s presumably where I caught this. So, she’s Satan and I hate her guts and I still have to show up next week and be cheerfully diplomatic because she’s not the only one who needs $$$.
Meanwhile, I’ve been aggressively combing through all my expenses to see where I could cut back, and decided to revisit the algae oil situation. I had been spending $1.44/day on algae oil from Hippie Farms. Which, this is not an exact measurement because at least 50% of the time I am out of algae oil, but it’s $1.44/day when I have it. I asked on Reddit if there were any cheaper options, and it seems that algae oil is the only way to get “EPA” and “DHA.” Which, I do not exactly know what these words mean. All I know is that my doctor said to take fish oil for my heart. I do not know if there are other omegas besides Omega-3 (presumably omegas 1 and 2 exist somewhere???) and are the terms “omega” and “fatty acids” interchangeable, or is it possible to have one without the other? Fortunately, I did take one Chemistry class back in Bible college so I decided to look it up, and I found this seriously underrated YouTube video:
and this article:
So, BASICALLY, if you take fish oil, it is good for your heart, but if you eat 3oz of salmon a week, it cuts your risk of heart attack by up to 50%. In other news, these enigmatic fatty acids aren’t just good for your heart; they can also contribute to executive function. Which is one area of extreme weakness for me.
Now, it’s hard being vegan because once you’ve made one exception, you’re headed down a slippery slope. I already made an exception for my cat after reading this book:
However, hopefully if the planet can survive my cat eating 5oz/day of meat (which is also a budget line item I’ve been eyeballing), then it can survive me eating 3oz/week of salmon. I also found out that you can buy this fish oil at Walmart for $0.60/day, which would end up saving me about $20/month.
But then it’s like… where does it stop? Because now I’m basically making exceptions for meat in:
- Cat food
- Turtle food
- If it’s free (like at work when leftovers would be thrown out anyway)
- Medication/supplements
- 3oz per week of salmon
What’s next? And I don’t want to use all-or-nothing thinking here. I don’t want it to be to where I eat salmon once a week and next thing you know animal products are “okay” again and I’m eating all of them. Besides, how is it possible that we evolved to need fish oil? Are bonobos out there catching salmon? If I eat things that are unnatural to my species, am I going to be feeding my cat potato starch next week? And it’s an annoying thing because obviously there are answers out there, but nobody will give them to me because they don’t think I’m smart enough to understand. I asked the vet why it’s healthy for cats to eat potatoes if cats evolved to eat meat, and I know she has an answer in her brain, but she just gives me dumbed down answers. She’s a vet; she’s obviously taken more Chemistry than one class in Bible college in 2009.
But I digress. The cat food book explained the science behind the recommended diet, and the vet just recommended specific brands of cat food, so this far I’m following the information in the book. I even literally asked the vet for book recommendations. My point is that just because I want to eat mostly a plant-based diet because I think it’s usually best to be eating what’s natural for a species to eat (plus there are a zillion other benefits to eating plants that I have belabored in other posts), doesn’t mean that I’m going to be able to eat only plants forever. And this is where a lot of vegans get destroyed. We decide to eat a tiny bit of animal products, then we get completely kicked out of the vegan community, and then we’re full-blown omnivores.
So this is going to be the next test: being able to find the absolute minimum amount of animal products that is safe and responsible. I’m thinking guidelines could be things like not eating animal products for the sake of taste or convenience (neither of which applies to salmon anyway 🤮). We will see how this plays out. Eating a plant based diet is really important to me. I just want it to be part of a balanced life.
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