Of Flexitarianism

Ah yes, I am kinda going flexitarianism these days, which means reducing meat consumption from my diet but not eliminating it completely. How did this crazy idea came about you might wonder? Well it all started with the canteen food in my company.

Each stall, other than the economical rice stall, has different dishes everyday. So for example, the western food stall can have chicken chop on Monday and fish & chips on Tuesday and so on. However, the western stall really really cannot make it. The chicken chop is cold, the fish taste weird, the chicken cutlet contains more flour than chicken and looks pretty badly fried and above all, the portions are so little that I mostly cannot last till knock off.

The noodles stall, well, their noodles sometimes are horrendous. Because of the production line nature of the stall, the noodles sometimes are not well cooked and the noodles are still stuck to each other because they simply grab a lump of noodles, put it into the bowl and add the soup and other ingredients. One of the dishes I can tolerate is the la mian or otherwise known as the hand-pulled Chinese noodles. They really do have cooks to do the hand-pulling in front of us and so the noodle is really much more edible compared to the usual ones. But of course, the trade-off will be the long queue, which most of the time we can live with that. Another edible dish will be the laksa, of course not as good as outside, but consider the lesser evil in here.

So that leaves the economical rice, if there’s no dish that I fancy from other stall, I will mostly ended up here. But here lies the next problem. The meat choices here are very limited and absurd. I see variant of chicken wing in so many of their selections every single day, fried chicken wings, curry chicken wings, braised chicken wings, sweet and sour chicken wings. If not chicken wings, I get hot dogs and pieces of stirred fried chicken cubes which are extremely salty and hard. And also, they are particularly stingy with the portions for meat too, just a small serving for 1 buck to 1.20. Whereas, if it were a vegetable selection, it was a whopping serving and it cost way more economical. So, that’s why I started avoiding meat and going for veg and egg and toufu, which not only have bigger portions, they taste much better and value for money too. It’s like somehow they are encouraging us to eat less meat or something.

There’s a few things I achieved by doing that. Now, I spent much less money on better quality and filling food. I am eating healthier and complaining less about getting that cold and dubiously uncooked chicken chop. Because of this, I started becoming more health conscious and started getting more fruits than just getting that coke.

I thought that’s just in the workplace. Yet, I became more mindful even when I eat outside, becoming fussier, if you like, in the selection of food I get. Also perhaps because I am living such unhealthy lifestyle after working that I now try to compensate with a healthier diet. But of course, I wouldn’t try to pull my friends into a vegetarian restaurant or refuse to chomp on that steak. I’d like to think of it as a flexible choice and oh god that steak is still completely irresistible.