Gupta Said

About 10-15 years back, finding veg food at restaurants was kind of difficult. In Europe, chicken soup was classified as veg to my surprise. And here in US, the veg options in restaurants used to be restricted to eggplant or mushroom based entrees - neither of which I really fancy especially when you are spending ten bucks for the meal.

However, over a period of time, the veg choices in the menus have mushroomed all over the place especially here in California. Several restaurants now carry decent list of veg entrees (that are not eggplant based!). The success of Italian and Mexican restaurants has largely helped us vegetarians. Both of these cuisines have some very nice veg recipes as also the Indian cuisine.

I have been raised as a vegetarian although I did start to eat some white meat from around my college days. Eating some meat helped me to survive as I travelled through Europe and other parts of the world during the early days of my consulting career. However, for the last decade or so, I have been more strict on myself and have more actively sought out vegie food whenever I eat out.

Clintons raised Chelsey to be a vegetarian and it helped to bring publicity to vegetarianism. With the changing lifestyles of our society, I think the human body is adapting itself to be less dependent upon meat. It is realistic to derive sufficient nutrition from a vegetarian diet. A vegetarian diet is more helpful in controlling cholesterol besides being more humane.