by Das Govind

Created on: December 04, 2008   Last Updated: April 05, 2010

I am not a vegetarian, however I do not eat red meat and abstain from meat at least four times a week. This has caused great havoc in my life as I like to travel and visit exotic destinations.

Europe has proved a great challenge on my visits to Germany, Netherlands and Austria. They tend to eat a lot of cold meats there, and even have boiled eggs and cold meat delis like ham and bacon on display for an early morning breakfast. The people in these countries basically live on pork and beef and regard these foods as part of their staple diets. It is very hard to even pick up a cheese sandwich in these countries as they most definitely contain some form of bacon or ham. France is also another culprit in being unfriendly to vegetarians. You could get away with the green leafy salad, but again the vegetarian has to starve , and have the bother of being served up with snails and uncooked meats (or at least these products look uncooked). On my recent travels to Paris, after visiting a French restaurant I was served a pink salmon fish dish which looked like cat food, that tasted totally gross.

The vegetarian traveller most of the time has also got to put up with rude waiters and shop attendants who cannot understand why a person will not eat meat. Vegans, I am assuming have a harder time as they also abstain from dairy products. Travelling eventually does take its toll on the vegetarian traveller as he/she struggles to keep up with the rest of the group, and it gets worst as the body is deprived of essential nutrients and proteins.

On my recent travels to the United States of America I was relieved to discover that they do cater for vegetarians a little more as compared to the European countries. However, there is still a neglect on that front. I was quite impressed with the hotels in Las Vegas, when I sat down for a dinner buffet,as they seem to cater for almost everyone. Vegetarians and vegans are well taken care of as they can tuck into delicious roast veggies and tofu products, which are quite yummy as well. I was actually spoilt for choice in Vegas , and the vegetarian cuisine in the Stratosphere was superb. Places like fast food outlets like Wendies and Mexican places do not do a good job of catering for vegetarians in the USA. Vegetarians only have the option of the unhealthy French fries or in the Mexican place the bean taco.

The English love their pork and roast beef. Vegetarians get rather a roar deal as well, especially when a person walks into a convenience store and looks for a vegetarian sand which ; all they seem to get is a cold badly made cheese sandwich. Many vegetarians opt out or carry their own food around when travelling through England.

I hope that the world realizes that unless they do something to cater for vegetarians, these people are not going to spend their money travelling to places that do not cater for them, and with the current economic crisis affecting the first world, these places need the much needed revenue to avoid a recession.

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