Why I am Not a Vegan

Dear Michael Pollan,

The other day while on a hike up the backside of Belleayre Mountain in Highmount, NY, I started dreaming about my post climb meal.  It was neither artisinal nor locally made.  And it boasted a number of ingredients that did not exist prior to the invention of modified corn starch products.

Was there ever an athlete that dreamt of eating a bag of organic carrot sticks or a broccoli rabe and mushroom sandwich after a big competition?  I seriously doubt it.  Several years ago I recall reading an interview with Mark Allen in Outside Magazine.  Mark Allen, you may remember, was one of the big three  superstars of the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon.  He had just been out for a 100 mile training ride before the interviewer met with him.  And since Mr. Allen was a guru to many budding long distance athletes, nutrition was a very important subject.  The writer, in fact, made a big deal of the post training lunch Mark was eating; A hummus and sprouts sandwich on whole wheat bread.  Well, I have news for you.  After the interviewer left, I am quite certain Mr. Allen wolfed down a quart of  Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey with a Snickers Bar chaser.  No one, not even the most disciplined Zen Monk, rides 100 miles on a bean sprout sandwich.

And it is thus in the mountains as well.  Here is a partial list of what I have seen eaten at the summits of hills and mountains between the elevations of  2,500 feet and 15,000 feet:
Beefaroni in those little microwavable cups (eaten cold of course),
Dole fruit cocktail in corn syrup packed in those little non-biodegradable plastic cups,
A Dunkin Donuts Muffin,
Peanut M&M's,
Slim Jim and cheddar cheese food product,
Pop Tarts (frosted of course),
and cold pizza left over from the pre summit feast in town.
To be fair I have seen an orange peel or two littering the trail to the summit.  But anyone who is inconsiderate and  slovenly enough to leave non-indigenous food plant debris on a hiking trail deserves no credit for PC eating.

Though in the interest of full disclosure I will confess that one of my favorite summit lunches is a hummus and cucumber sandwich with carrot stick snacks.  But I follow it up with by a Baby Ruth Bar and I wash it all down with artificially flavored and sweetened Gatorade powdered drink mix. I guess organic gluten free fig bars from Whole Foods are enough to satisfy a summit sized appetite but I never have seen one pulled out of a backpack.  I have, on the other hand, seen an entire clip (slang for one plastic sleeve of the cookies) of Nabisco Fig Newtons eaten on Mount Rainier after a nice glissade down the Muir Snow field.

My wife, a woman known to eat an entire bag of Swedish Fish on Christmas Morning, has tried to convince me that I need to develop a taste for bitter winter vegetables.  Why?  So I can look forward to a mound of  kale and turnips after a day on the ski slopes?  They don't sell collard greens in the Belleayre Mountain Ski Lodge.  They sell fried onion rings, hamburgers and beer.  And rightly so.  Bode Miller never made it to the gate fueled up on Belgian Endive and Rapini.  Winter vegetables are okay for Volvo driving, Birkenstock wearing, Bernie Sanders voting Vermonters who make goat cheese for a living.  But between treating gum disease in my suburban NJ hometown and summiting 3500 foot Catskill peaks on weekends, I barely have time to boil some steel cut oats.  Convenience rules.  Besides, stress is going to kill me way before the high fructose corn syrup shuts down my pancreas.