“You don’t eat meat, you don’t eat dairy, where are you getting your protein from?!”
“Well, I get a lot from spinach-“
“And don’t tell me spinach!”
She doesn’t want to hear it. My mom swears all vegetarians look ‘pale and frail’, and vegans are walking corpses in her eyes (only a slight exaggeration here). These days much of our conversations are spent with me frantically trying to reassure her that I’m not going to break a bone climbing the stairs from my advanced osteoporosis that has no doubt set in since I’ve given up dairy. I tell her about the protein myth, about how most people eat WAY too much protein and how excess protein can cause osteoporosis, but she can’t/doesn’t want to hear it.
So now in my family, food has joined politics on the list of forbidden conversational topics.
-MONK
