Coming Out

My boyfriend of the last 3 years is finally coming out to his family as vegan on Sunday. We've successfully attended two family gatherings, including the usual giant piles of food, without anyone knowing that we don't eat meat/dairy. These family gatherings typically happen around Christmas, but this year they decided that it would be easier for everyone to attend if they held it in the summer--which means barbequing.

We have no idea how they'll react. In fact, we've specifically avoided telling them for 3 years now. So to help ease the situation, I've decided to make all the most delicious vegan summer-time foods I can think of and bring enough for the whole family. This will most likely consist of barbeque seitan, potato salad and some sort of fruit pastry. Maybe some horchata as well.

I'm sure we'll be getting all the tired old questions/answers: "How do you get your protein?" "But humans need meat!" "Are you a member of PETA?" "I heard about these parents who killed their baby by feeding them nothing but vegan food!" "Where do you get your calcium?" "Well I reeeeaaaally love animals; they're freakin' tasty! Om nom nom!" "So are you a bunch of hippies or what?"

I'll make a report here after it's all over. Wish us luck.

**UPDATE**

Well, grandma called my potato salad "alright." I guess it's not a complete rejection so I'll take it as a win? Most of the other guests had left by the time we arrived, but there were still large platters of dead stuff lying around. I found out my boyfriend's brother's girlfriend is vegetarian. He even said he was considering it himself. This was quite the pleasant surprise. Since everyone else had already eaten or left, it was just me, my boyfriend and his brother left with all the vegan goodies!

Surprise, Surprise: More Research Indicates Diet is Best Cure for Diabetes

I just came across this article on BBC claiming that they've found a way to reverse diabetes by "eating only liquid diet drinks and non-starchy vegetables." Really? Eating a plant based diet can reverse diabetes? Oh, wait, we already figured this out years ago when research found that a vegan diet worked so well on a group of diabetes patients that a lot of them stopped taking their insulin or became diabetes-free.

To be fair, there's a lot of differences between the two studies, in the one talked about in the BBC article, they were only allowed to eat 600 calories a day and we all know that eating just non-starchy veggies isn't all that great for you because you need more variety in your diet. Also, it only lasted 2 months and then the patients were allowed to go right back to their shitty Western diets without much change. As Mike Tyson would be able to tell you, staying healthy means staying vegan. What? Do you want to get diabetes again??