I’m 100% with you on this. It sounds like copium, but creative limitation absolutely comes into play here. Before becoming pescetarian, vegetarian, and then eventually vegan, my diet was terrible and had almost no variety despite the fact that I like to cook for myself. If I went to a restaurant, it would be the one thing I knew I liked. At home, even though I could technically make essentially anything I wanted, there was an intense gravitational pull around meat and cheese keeping me in the same sets of dishes with little variety. It was generic burgers or pepperoni pizza or canned soup or basic burritos or pasta Alfredo/with meat sauce or paninis consisting of 90% meat/cheese and 10% everything else. If I was feeling “healthy”, it was either a type of meat with a baked potato and broccoli or a salad of iceberg lettuce with ranch, garlic croutons, bacon bits, and cranberries.
Now, I try (and often end up loving) new foods almost on instinct including the “weird” ones; I’ve come to understand that so many foods I didn’t previously like were either prepared improperly or I wasn’t getting the right kind; the meals are almost inherently healthier; I use a huge variety of spices and sauces to make my meals different and vibrant every single day; and my dishes don’t revolve around essentially “a single type of meat with some ancillary stuff” or cheese and carbs.
Nothing was physically stopping me from doing that on an omnivorous diet, but I personally would never have because I treated meat and cheese like a crutch.
I’m 100% with you on this. It sounds like copium, but creative limitation absolutely comes into play here. Before becoming pescetarian, vegetarian, and then eventually vegan, my diet was terrible and had almost no variety despite the fact that I like to cook for myself. If I went to a restaurant, it would be the one thing I knew I liked. At home, even though I could technically make essentially anything I wanted, there was an intense gravitational pull around meat and cheese keeping me in the same sets of dishes with little variety. It was generic burgers or pepperoni pizza or canned soup or basic burritos or pasta Alfredo/with meat sauce or paninis consisting of 90% meat/cheese and 10% everything else. If I was feeling “healthy”, it was either a type of meat with a baked potato and broccoli or a salad of iceberg lettuce with ranch, garlic croutons, bacon bits, and cranberries.
Now, I try (and often end up loving) new foods almost on instinct including the “weird” ones; I’ve come to understand that so many foods I didn’t previously like were either prepared improperly or I wasn’t getting the right kind; the meals are almost inherently healthier; I use a huge variety of spices and sauces to make my meals different and vibrant every single day; and my dishes don’t revolve around essentially “a single type of meat with some ancillary stuff” or cheese and carbs.
Nothing was physically stopping me from doing that on an omnivorous diet, but I personally would never have because I treated meat and cheese like a crutch.