It is almost a daily struggle for Arham* to find dinner. Going from one café in the university to another, all he finds is meat-based options.

“Do you have any vegetable dishes,” he asks at the counter. “No, what we had is finished” is the usual reply. Slightly dejected, Arham decides to order in what he had the night before and many other nights since he adopted a plant-based diet.

“It is a very simple thing for me — when I hear the word “chicken”, I do not automatically think about food, which is what we have been conditioned to think, instead I imagine a sentient life,” says Arham, who became a vegetarian, and then a vegan, in October 2021.

It wasn’t a sudden decision, nor did the thought occur to him out of the blue. He had been contemplating this for a while, coming up with counter-arguments rooted in nihilistic philosophy to justify continuing his consumption of meat.

“Finally, I realised I cannot justify this anymore. It was not easy, because anything that gives you pleasure is hard to give up. The reason to eat meat was because it tasted delicious and not to eat it was because we were putting sentient lives under harm,” he says.

The limited availability of non-meat and non-dairy options is only one of the challenges for vegetarians and vegans in Pakistan. The greater hurdle is often social acceptance

Vegetarianism is a dietary practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat. Veganism takes this a step further, by avoiding the use of all animal products, including dairy.

In recent years, many Pakistanis have reduced their meat intake, reportedly due to the rising prices of meat; however, for Arham and many others, the decision is premised on morals that present the ‘choice’ to consume meat as one that is not bereft of consequences, such as animal cruelty and harmful effects on the environment.

Eshaal* has been a vegan for four years.

“I did a lot of research, watched videos of a vegan on YouTube, who would put clips of chickens in poultry farms with their heads being chopped or them being burned alive — I found it disturbing,” she says. “Over time, I saw that I was pushing meat on the side of the plate, without realising. I started thinking, ‘What is making me do that?’”

Eshaal adds that it took her six to seven months before she consciously made the decision to become a vegan.

At the start, Eshaal kept her decision hidden from her parents but had stopped consuming animal products. It didn’t take long for her parents to catch up.

“At first, they would pass remarks but I was adamant. Soon, my father started doing his personal research and slowly our home shifted towards a better lifestyle,” says Eshaal.

While Eshaal’s parents have gradually come to accept her decision and have become increasingly supportive — ensuring that, whenever they go out to eat as a family, Eshaal has vegan options — many others have to keep the decision hidden from their families in fear of being ridiculed.

Arham tried to keep his decision hidden, making excuses to avoid eating meat whenever he went home from his hostel, but soon his parents got to know from elsewhere.

“Although my parents were getting an idea and it was becoming obvious, since I used to eat a lot of meat and then suddenly I would only eat mushrooms when at home. I hadn’t informed them. This hurt my father when he got to know and he called me up in a half-trembling voice,” recalled Arham.

As a strictly religious person, Arham’s father feared his decision of becoming a vegan had more to it than just moral reasons. “He said that ‘I have heard you have adopted a new ideology.’ I didn’t want him to know because I knew he would misconstrue it as me going against religion,” added Arham.

Ali, who prefers going by only his first name for privacy reasons, became a vegan during the pandemic but says he has to sometimes consume meat against his will, in order to keep up the charade with his family.

“I have to eat meat sometimes, just because my family forces it on me and I can’t tell them my reason for not eating meat, because my parents are fairly conservative and do not like their children exploring new ways of living for themselves,” says Ali.

All three of Arham, Ehsaal and Ali found the switch to a vegetarian diet physically easy to make.

“Most of the time, it hasn’t been hard,” says Arham, “which is surprising for me actually, because I used to eat a lot of meat earlier. Before I never had daal or saag and now I am in love with those things.”

But being a vegan requires some effort, especially in Pakistan, where substitutes for dairy products are not easily available. 

“I make normal everyday food but with substitutions like pasta,” explains Eshaal. “Instead of a white sauce, I would make the paste using cashews. I make soups with lentils. It is hard to get plant-based milk in Pakistan and it is expensive too because it is imported, so I try to make as many things as I can on my own.” Eshaal has been making her own food since she became a vegan.

Vegetarianism is misunderstood and stereotyped. Many think that being a vegan means risking your health which is far from reality.

“If I see the healthiest population in the world, they predominantly adopt a plant-based diet which is also high on fibre, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants,” explains nutritionist Alina Shahid. “They are naturally low on fat, sugar and salt. Adding vitamin B12 supplement would make the diet an ideal diet as per research. A plant-based diet also has a role in reversing cardiovascular diseases.”

Shahid believes that people should consult their health-provider to ensure that they are not missing out on any essential nutrients in their diet, in order to adopt this “harmless, fragile and subtle” diet confidently.

“When we get evidence that cancer-fighting and heart disease-fighting nutrients are obtained from plants, not animals, and anti-inflammatory nutrients are obtained from plants, not animals, and fibre too — these factors make it a healthy option. If you are choosing the right balance of food, you wouldn’t even need supplements, and a vegan diet works for you and the environment,” she adds.

Another myth surrounding the diet is that vegetarians/vegans cannot fulfil their protein needs. “Vegetarian protein is not limited to these, but some options include beans, chickpeas, lentils, seeds like flaxseed and tofu,” says Shahid.

Despite the health benefits, people react differently to those who have adopted this lifestyle.

“The biggest struggle is the social aspect, because you will probably lose some friends, wouldn’t be able to tell your friends and miss out on social events where almost all the food is meat-based,” says Ali, adding that his choice has caused arguments between him and his friends.

Ehsaal says that people joke about it at first and then come up with arguments.

“I have heard so many iterations of the same argument,” says Eshaal. “So to say, ‘If you are on a deserted island and you have a goat and there is a friend, will you kill the goat or kill your friend?’ Or ‘If there is a goat and nothing else, what will you eat?’ To that I say ‘If there is a goat, it must be eating something too’,” chuckles Eshaal.

Those who have made this lifestyle change say that it is more than just a change in diet but is instead an attempt at opening one’s eyes towards a lot of cruelty around us.

“Consuming so much meat is only one of the many terrible things that we as a society do, so I have just stopped doing one part of it,” says Arham. “Apart from that there are many other terrible practices like the consumerist culture and everything is interrelated. What we do affects not just us, but our planet and environment.”

**Names have been changed to protect identity Somaiyah Hafeez is a freelance feature writer.*
She tweets @sommulbaloch*

Published in Dawn, EOS, January 1st, 2023