[Blog Post #4] Interview Synopses

Interview Synopses _ Vegetarian 004

Our team aimed to get wider aspects of vegetarians comparing their life style in Korea with other countries. There were some similarities and differences that we found out through this interview.

1) Daniela – Living as a vegetarian in Germany– Minseon Kim

Our first interviewee was Daniela who has been living as a vegetarian for 5 years in Germany. She watched a documentary about treating animals violently and made up her mind to become a vegetarian. She is a lacto-ovo-vegetarian who does eat dairy products. It seems to be very hard to live in Germany without having those products, because there serves cheese and yogurt everywhere.

NUTRITION and HEALTH

In order to take enough protein, she tries to get enough beans, not taking any supplement for vitamins or protein, instead thinking of a variety of food intake. She didn’t experience any health problem after being vegetarian. She told that she became skinnier, saying that naturally it is difficult to get a lot of weights, eating only vegetables and some products that contain less oil.

SOCIALIZATION

In Germany, people can find any dish that they want almost every time. There is at least one vegetarian dish in each category of the menu. Recently many traditional restaurants opened near the central city, so there came more choices. Unfortunately, however, they could seldom find vegetarian dish in the country side. About 10% of the people are vegetarian. So it seems very easy to find friends who are vegetarian. Germans often do a barbeque and they put meats a lot on the grill. So she needs to bring substitutes for that like meat made out of tofu, grilled cheese, and some corns. Korean restaurant also serves vegetarian dishes. However, when she travels, she happened to have some difficulties not knowing about the ingredients.

BELIEF and CREED

People generally accept her decision of being a vegetarian and Daniela also respect the non-vegetarians life style. In order to keep living as a vegetarian, she said awareness is the most important factor. She said if someone ignored the pledge at least one time whether unintentionally or on purpose, it would be really tough to change the diet. She hopes that everyone consume less meat in order to keep our planet and our environment more sustainable. She thinks this kind of awareness can reduce unnecessary energy to get meat, leaving our food resources more usable.

2) “J”- A Professor of Environmental Studies-Sooyung Jeon

 J is a professor of Environmental Studies and has lived as a lacto-vegetarian with is wife for more than 20 years.

NUTRITION and HEALTH

At first, J and his wife did not realize significant changes in to their bodies. However, whenever they eat processed food, they tend to develop indigestion. He believes they have become sensitive to artificially processed food because vegetarian life “detoxed” their bodies.

SOCIALIZATION

J says “I have an ability to automatically sort vegetarian dish owing to long years of vegetarian life”. So at normal restaurants, he gets to have what he needs. His vegetarian traits does not interfere with is daily socialization.

According to J, it is true that he sometimes gets overly sensitive and picky about things. But everybody has a nervous breakdown once a while and it is quite unfair to blame temporary mood fluctuation over one’s lifestyle.

BELIEF and CREED (Direct quotation seemed more effective)

 I majored in geography and proceeded to environmental studies. I learned about how much mankind have been damaging our mother planet. At first, I thought those things happened mainly because of our greed. But actually, the more I studied, the more I was convinced that these catastrophes owed more to ignorance than greed. Greedy industrialists are just a small fraction of humankind. It’s the ignorance that propels the whole phenomena. If I were to teach “Environmental Studies”, I myself had to be a role model to my students and drive people out of ignorance. I became a vegetarian because I felt a sense of responsibility as a environmental educator to send a little message to my colleagues and students.

Actually, I neither want to convert people into vegetarian nor hate them. A lot of people think that vegetarians despise humankind and exists only to advocate animals. In my case, that is quite not true. I am a vegetarian because I care for the whole planet/ecosystem, not just for “rabbits and sea lions”. Since humankind is definitely a member of this world, I do care a lot about our species. I think there is nothing wrong about the ultimate predator(human) to consume low-ranked creatures. The problem does not lie in consuming animal products but in consuming those products without knowing the cruel and violent process involved. I do not want to covert people into vegetarian, but I try to convey the facts in order to divest ignorance.

3) “A”-The owner of a vegan restaurant PLANT-Soomin Kim

Our last interviewee was A, the owner of a vegan restaurant PLANT in Itaewon. She has lived 2 years as a vegetarian, and 7 years as a vegan. She has lived in California and moved to Korea a few years ago. At first, she has started a bakery online. As the size grew, she decided to open up an offline vegan restaurant. At first, she cooked all the menus from what she had usually made herself, but now there are chefs and popular menus created. We had a nice meal at the restaurant before the interview.

NUTRITION and HEALTH

“A” disagrees with the opinion that vegan diet is unhealthier than normal diet. She believes that it is even much healthier because vegan diet usually contains low fat or cholesterol, and more iron or Calcium per calories. She says that enough protein or nutrients can be consumed not only by eating meat but also beans or other vegetables.

 She gets recipes online or by creating her own. She gets some of the unusual ingredients such as ‘vegan butter’ or certain kinds of beans from a foreign market.

SOCIALIZATION

 A says that it is more difficult to live as a vegan in Korea than in USA, California. While there are a lot of vegan options or people who understand vegans, many people in Korea, especially elder ones, are not used to vegan diets or their ideas. Even though they are slowly catching on the idea, it is still difficult to keep the vegan options.

Many of the customers to her restaurant had a research online. She does not join a certain vegan meet-up, but she has made a lot of friends among the vegetarian customers who come to the restaurant often. She also interacts with other vegan restaurant owners.

BELIEF and CREED

 A believes that her life would have been much easier if she was not a vegan. However, as she learned about the cruelty of animal factory farms, she has decided to stay as a vegan. Learning more about the process of manufacturing meat product, her decision as a vegan has become clearer. It is not that she hates the taste of meat. Even though she agrees that meat tastes good, still she thinks it is not worth contributing to the harm of animals. She states that firm belief is the most important quality of a vegetarian.

 According to her, there are some people influenced by her diet, becoming a vegetarian. However, she never tries to force meat eaters to start as a vegetarians. She believes that everyone has their own rights to choose what to eat.