Is there such thing as a Christian diet? Have you ever heard of “Christian food”? I’ve heard that Catholics eat fish on Fridays, and my friends that are Seventh Day Adventists don’t eat pork, but beyond that, I don’t know of any diet specific to Christianity.
So I made up my own.
It might have been a Lent/Easter thing? Or maybe it started sometime in the fall. I just know that sometime in 2017, I told my husband James that I was thinking of only eating meat on Sundays and other days of holy celebration, like Christmas or Easter or possibly Tuesdays (because we take Taco Tuesday pretty religiously here).
I was surprised when James quickly agreed to give it a shot along with me. Apparently, he had been watching a bunch of health documentaries on Netflix and he was game to try eating a more plant-based diet.
And so we began the feastetarian diet.
feast·e·tar·i·an
/fēstəˈterēən/
noun
- a person who has a primarily vegetarian diet but occasionally eats meat or fish to mark days on the church calendar.
“Tamara is a feastetarian, which is like a flexitarian but with more religious intention. And maybe more branding possibilities.”
OK, the definition needs some work.
I thought our new “Christian food” diet would be really hard at first. I mean, yes, I have a lot of friends that are full-on vegetarians and they seem reasonably happy with their life choices, but us? What on earth would I cook six nights of the week? Would we starve?
Probably.
I tried being a vegetarian before, but it only lasted six or seven months. All I remember is that I was always hungry and that I constantly craved street meat. It was as if my body missed nitrates of all things. I gave up my vegetarian diet entirely on the day I found out that I was pregnant with my daughter River — I literally went to a restaurant that afternoon and ate a bucket of chicken wings. Of course, I threw everything up later on, being pregnant and all, but that’s beside the point. My vegetarian phase was over.
Reasons to Choose a Feastetarian Diet
I always felt a bit sad that I couldn’t make it work though. There are a lot of good reasons to eat vegetarian, and I sometimes wish that I hadn’t given up so easily. Happily, my new feastetarian diet has gone a long way towards soothing my conscience. For example, purposely eating less meat helps me:
1) reduce my carbon footprint, making me a better steward of creation,
2) afford more humanely-raised and slaughtered meat,
3) remember that not everyone is as fortunate as I am,
4) spend money more wisely, and
5) be more mindful of my overall lifestyle and it’s worldwide impact.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “oh man, I hope that there are future blog posts about each and every one of those five points — anything to avoid another blog post about your laminator“. You bet there is. But my laminator is pretty awesome though. Just sayin’.
So Why Not Vegetarian?
Given the benefits of a feastetarian diet, you might wonder why I don’t just go back to doing the 100% vegetarian thing. Honestly, I might someday. But right now, I’m comfortable with what we’re doing for a few reasons.
First of all, I don’t like doing anything that’s too hard. Yeah, it’s a laziness thing. And eating feastetarian is actually not much of a sacrifice at all. If I start to miss meatballs or chicken enchiladas, I just schedule them on our next meat-is-a-treat night. I enjoy those meals so much more now, too. Pork chops with mashed potatoes is no longer the backup meal that I throw on the stove when I can’t come up with anything else — it’s something I look forward to because I eat pork chops maybe twice a year.
I truly thought giving up meat six days a week would be so much harder to do. In fact, in anticipation of failing this food experiment entirely, I think my original feastetarian plan included meat for entire 12 days of Christmas and all seven principal feast days, the eight feast of Lord days, and the nine other major feast days of the Anglican church, in accordance with the sacred text of Wikipedia. And if that didn’t give us enough meaty days, I was prepared to throw in the Memorial days as well, because there are a lot of those.
It turned out, though, that Sundays and the big holidays have been more than enough. And at least a half-dozen times, I’ve been annoyed to realize that it was “roast-a-chicken Sunday” when all I really wanted was a sweet potato with some spicy peanut sauce.
The second reason that I prefer our feastetarian diet to a vegetarian diet is that it’s less of a burden to my family and friends. If I’m eating at their home and there is a meat-free option available, I pick that. Otherwise, I just count the meal as my feast of the week and it’s no big deal. I’m enough of a pain to my hosts by insisting that my oldest child follows a gluten-free diet. Nobody needs me to complicate meals even more.
My third reason for picking feastetarian over vegetarian is that it’s easier on my husband and my kids. They eat a lot of meatless meals because that’s what I cook, but I don’t force them to follow my diet. I like that I can save Sunday’s leftover chicken or chilli or whatever for my husband to eat throughout the week when he’s tired of cauliflower. I believe that it’s healthier overall for him this way. Back when I tried a stricter vegetarian diet ten years ago, James would eat the meal I made and then, an hour or two later, he would pull a burger or a Jamaican patty or chicken fingers out of the freezer and zap them in the microwave. So much processed food. So. Much. Salt. I like to think that I’m keeping him healthier by cooking meat occasionally.
Finally, I like the idea of tying my meal choices to the church calendar. As a Protestant, I don’t know much about liturgical seasons or saint days or anything like that — we kind of collectively dropped the ball there. Reading up on the saints is practically a hobby of mine now, and not just because I’m looking for more days that I can eat bacon. No, it’s more that I really love reading stories of real people that were so connected with God, especially stories of the women. And I love reading about the ways the Catholic church and the Orthodox church use feasting and fasting to deepen their faith. Serious, Protestants: we’re missing out! Feast days, saint days, holy days, memorial days, liturgical seasons, ordinary time — I’ve discovered there’s so much more than just Easter and Christmas. It’s wonderful.
Would you consider giving up meat sometimes? Becoming a flexitarian or a feastetarian? You can do it any way that you like. Lots of people do a meatless Monday; others eat vegan on weekdays and then whatever they want on the weekend. It doesn’t really matter how you go about cutting back — it’s just about finding a system that works for you.
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