Dubai’s vegan community offers food for thought

Dubai: It’s hard to put down that beef bacon sandwich and try being a vegetarian, let alone go vegan.

But for the hundreds of vegans in Dubai, living without meat or any animal products is as natural as drinking a glass of water.

Khoolood Khan, 27, is a lawyer in Dubai and has been a vegan since January 2013.

For her, the choice to be a vegan makes a statement about the exploitation of animals. Since she lives in a place where she can buy various foods that fulfil her daily required nutrients without animal products, she doesn’t see the point.

With a bit of time, her friends and family have accepted her decision — for the most part. Khan explained that with her friends, she just faced a bit of confusion and questions about her motives. But her family has a difficult time understanding. Khan is originally from Pakistan, so her vegan lifestyle is not in line with her cultural upbringing.

Khoolood finds it easy to be vegan in Dubai. The city has grown to include more and more options for her diet. She also finds that restaurants are very accommodating to her needs. In her experience, the cooks will make her an off-the-menu feast when there isn’t a vegan option.

Going vegan can be a big step for most, but for vegetarians it’s an easier choice to make.

Ryan Gazder was born a vegetarian but decided to become a vegan in 2006. He didn’t have the common family pressures of going vegan because he was a vegetarian in the first place. But even so, the change was not without its problems.

“When I turned vegan I started losing my memory,” he said. “I started forgetting things.”

Blood test results showed that Gazder wasn’t getting enough vitamin B12. Now, he stresses that all vegans should take B12 supplements and even get regular blood tests taken in order to ensure there are no nutritional deficiencies.

For him, being vegan is an extremely healthy choice — as long as he’s careful to eat well. That means refraining from excessive sugary carbohydrates like rice and bread.

Gazder see himself as a little extreme on the vegan scale. So he finds being vegan in Dubai can be difficult. He doesn’t want meat touching his food and doesn’t want plates and utensils that have had meat on them touching his food either.

Finding out that certain restaurants cook their fries in the same oil they cook their fish made him feel very violated.

While dating in his twenties, he didn’t really care if his girlfriends ate meat, but through the years that has changed. Sharing food becomes a bit of a problem for him if his girlfriend is a meat eater.

Gazder also struggled with something many can relate to — he is a devout chocoholic. He found himself being selectively vegan until 2012 because he loves chocolate and cakes.

He works in the food industry and recommends to restaurants what they should have on their menus. This has led him to always being very conscientious of food – doing lots of food research, finding out about the treatment of animals and how the raising of farmstock impacts the environment.

His list of the problems with eating meat or animal products is a long one. For the animal itself, he is concerned with problems that range from the way they are looked after and the conditions they are kept in, to the way that they are killed.

Gazder said that although he never really liked milk, he believes the way that the cows are given hormones and how they are treated is “disgusting and unethical”.

Natasha Oneto has been a vegan for just over a year. Before this, she was a vegetarian for 13 years and moved to Dubai eight years ago.

“My mother became a vegan actually, after I told her about it,” the French native said.

Oneto makes a point of keeping herself well informed on being vegan and she said her friends have told her that she often sounds like a dietician.

France has some of the most delicious cheeses in the world, and Oneto admits that it was difficult to give up cheese at first. But now that she has committed to the alternative diet, she says she can’t even handle the smell of cheese at the grocery store.

Apart from concern over the treatment of animals, the health benefits of going on a plant-based diet has inspired many to make the change.

When Jerold Paulraj’s mother was diagnosed with cancer, he began exploring alternative methods of treatment. His research led him to turn vegan — and he even managed to convince his mother to eat the same way.

“What I personally noticed was my body’s reaction — stomach aches and fevers,” he said. Eggs and a lot of meat had been a huge part of Paulraj’s diet as a body builder.

According to Paulraj, within three months of his mother beginning a vegan diet, she was healed, with doctors heralding her recover as “a medical miracle”.

At first his friends mocked him — but now are amazed. However, they still aren’t ready to try out the vegan lifestyle.

To him, the health benefits of a vegan diet make it a logical life decision. Now he is looking to open a lifestyle activity centre that concentrates on not only being active, but maintaining a healthy diet.

— Marianna Wright is an intern at Gulf News