Note: This post contains description of certain bodily functions. You have been warned! 
After having been eating between 90 and 100% raw for almost 50 days, I wanted to try a larger cooked meal – to see what happens. Given that transitioning to raw, and later incorporating small amounts of cooked foods back into my diet, I experienced no problems, I did not expect anything out of ordinary to happen this time either.
I have been eating vegan foods exclusively since 2001, so I was not going to try a turkey carcass, but I decided to eat as badly as I could – let’s call it… for scientific reasons 
Like in years past, I prepared my Thanksgiving feast, which was made of:
- half of a Tofurky
- half a container of mushroom gravy (made by the same company that makes the Tofurky)
- 2 very large potatoes, mashed with quite a bit of Earth Balance
- 1 can of jellied cranberries, yes the kind with high fructose corn syrup – I am living on the edge here!
The result looked like this:
Cooked Thanksgiving feast
This was A LOT of food and I have to admit, it tasted great.
But at the same time, it was not as satisfying as I had expected it to be. This was especially true of the mashed potatoes. They were ok, but that comforting feeling that eating them usually creates was all but gone.
I had this meal quite early on Thanksgiving Thursday, and due to its size I did not have to eat again that day.
The next morning, I decided that since I had the other half of the Tofurky left over, I should repeat the meal for brunch. This time, however, I cut back on the mashed potatoes by about a half, and on the Earth Balance in them by about three quarters.
This meal was also pretty good, but because it was much smaller, few hours later I started to feel hungry. It was time to get back to eating raw and a green smoothie seemed like a good idea.
It was not.
Only about 15 minutes after I had the smoothie, frequent and fairly… violent trips to the bathroom begun. The discomfort (that’s such a mild word!) lasted only for an hour or two, but for the next two days I had a problem with gas like I have never experienced before. To put things in perspective – even I did not want to be in the same room with myself
Eventually, thank goodness, that too went away.
So the lesson learned is as follows… eating an occasional bigger cooked meal won’t cause me too much trouble… if I let it digest before having a large raw meal.
Now that I got this experiment out of the way, I am back to eating great majority of my meals raw, except for an occasional chocolate tofu knish I am finally planning on going to Kaya’s Kitchen, a local vegan restaurant, this Saturday, but I will definitely have something much lighter and smaller than what I ate for Thanksgiving.
And it won’t be followed by a smoothie!
Related posts:
