A Competition in Guarding the Plate

There’s something about competition that energizes the spirit. A pride that emanates when you look into your opponent’s eye and you think: “You can’t do this better than me. I’m going to beat you.” That’s a sentiment I’ve experienced first hand on the playing field, on the hard wood and on the hard court. But I never thought that I would experience that feeling over a plate of vegetables.

My competitive streak landed me in an odd situation two weeks ago when News-Press Managing Editor Jody Fellows and I were openly lauding the wholesome goodness of meat. We wondered how anyone could go without eating this delectable staple food group. That’s when it happened.We simultaneously decided to have a contest, Jody, Staff Reporter Darien Bates and I. We’d see how long the three of us could go without eating meat. But there was a snag, it seems that Darien used to be a vegetarian, giving him an inherent advantage and sending the odds-makers into a tizzy. This was solved expeditiously, however — veganism.

Vegans, for those of you who don’t know, don’t consume any meat or other animal bi-products. Thus, the taboo list consisted of any meats, eggs, butter, milk, and cheese or other dairy products. The jury’s still out on honey. Apparently honey is the Michael Jackson of veganism. Nobody’s sure what it is.

Basically, the rule of thumb for veganism is, if you think you can eat it, you’re wrong. This proved to be the hardest part of the contest and proved our ultimate undoing.

In any competition you need to be mentally focused. All three of us are former athletes, we’ve all played through various injuries. Jody finished the last portion of his baseball season with a broken pinkie. Darien gritted through a soccer match with a partially torn hamstring. In one baseball game, I had something in my eye. I think it was chalk. Don’t laugh, that stuff burns.

My point is that we have the mental fortitude to push through a little adversity. But complying with the rules of veganism is downright draining. You have to scour menus for months to find dishes that even come close to complying. And then you still have to make a special order to make sure that animals aren’t within 50 miles of the food as the meal is prepared. We ate the Veggie at Quiznos (no cheese), fried tofu, a dish called Fake Cow Slim from Bangkok Blues, Jody even ordered a cheese-less pizza. The sheer exhaustion of finding foods that comply with the diet essentially led to a traditional lunch of chips and salsa. And nuts. Lots and lots of nuts.

As you’ve probably conjectured by now, there are certain dietary repercussions from eating a diet consisting of one part chips, one part salsa, one part Fake Cow Slim, and eight parts peanuts. Let me just say you have no concept of the pain a peanut can inflict.Small, but potent. Curse you Mr. Peanut.

All of our friends and relatives told us we were crazy. Why would we put ourselves through such an ordeal? Why not drop out?“I didn't want to lose," Jody says, as I ask him. “I'm not going out like a punk.”

That's why we couldn't break. That's why we refused to give in, even when friends sucked every last morsel of meat off a chicken wing, even when we watched our eggs and milk go sour in the fridge, or when we lay awake at night clutching our stomachs like the guy from “Alien.” We couldn't give up. It was like Jim Valvano was talking to us from inside the alfalfa and sprouts of the “Healthy Dog” from the Lost Dog Café, urging us on.

Ultimately, we broke (We're just men … ). I succumbed to the temptation of a cheese pizza as I watched college football. Jody fell off the wagon at I.H.O.P. Saturday night, because, well … “It's freaking impossible to find vegan food at 4 a.m.”

And that's how Darien, whose spirit is an unassailable temple, won the News-Press Vegan Contest and thus claimed the prize of a steak dinner. Fortunately for our wallets, Darien doesn't eat red meat.

If you've actually read this far, I'm sure that you've seen the utter uselessness of a contest of this sort. I'm sure you're confused, as our friends were, as to why we would waste our time with a competition of this sort. But, the answer is in the question, so to speak. It's because of competition that we do it.

When you think about it, all of life is a competition. At its most basic, life is survival of the fittest, but even for advanced beings such as us, it is of primary importance. We compete on playing fields, yes, but we also compete in the classrooms to get into better colleges, where we again compete to get better jobs, where we compete to get a better salary so that our families can have the tools that they need to compete in school or in their jobs and the cycle repeats itself.

Competition is in our very nature. Sometimes you need to poke fun at it just to stay on an even keel. Otherwise you may end up going, well … nuts.

Mike Hume may be emailed at mhume@fcnp.com