Elizabeth Song | Vegan options growing on campus, and rightly so

Weekday afternoons, you'll find the Magic Carpet food truck perched on the corner of 36th and Spruce streets. The magic lamp emblazoned on its green awning tempts students with promises of cheap culinary delights and meatless Mediterranean marvels.

Try the magic tofu meatballs, and you'll understand why the Magic Carpet has become the alternative street food option for Penn's vegetarian population. I mean, what could better symbolize the growing food counterculture on campus than our first vegan-friendly food truck?

Slowly but surely, meatless diets are making ripples on Penn's campus, and it's coming to a dining hall near you. While a freshman in Kings Court/English House last year, I stepped into the dining hall one night and emerged into a perfect vegan wonderland, filled with Tofutti soy ice cream and steaming platters of "tofurkey," imitation turkey made from that amazing culinary chameleon - tofu.

So what's with the rise of vegan diets? And why are they emerging at Penn? According to a survey conducted by Aramark Corp. in 2004, nearly one out of every four American college students supported offering more vegan options on campus, prompting the emergence of vegan-friendly items.

Now think back to high school. As a vegan, you'd be the lonely kid in the cafeteria with soy milk and hummus wraps. Not so at Penn, where vegan options range from cheeseless baked ziti to vegan chili.

For all you meat-lovers out there, vegan is basically code for non-diary. That means no milk, no eggs and no butter in addition to standard vegetarian restrictions. But it's more than simple vegetarianism. Officially, it's a lifestyle choice that rejects the use of animal products. For some, this ethic extends to not wearing fur, wool or lipstick. "It's part of the movement away from Wonderbread and the extra-processed foods towards a sense of ethics," College senior Katie McGlathin said.

OK, so it all sounds great in theory. But I was skeptical at first. Despite loving the Magic Carpet, I'm not the strictest vegetarian on the block. In fact, I fervently wish that PETA would fall into the sea with California. Like Scientology, a religion made to benefit the rich, I wondered if veganism is just a more benevolent sort of food elitism. After all, "vegan" is one of those words that you need a college education and a liberal social circle to really understand. In West Philly, the term has as much street credit as "pilates" and "macchiato."

The more I investigated, however, the more I realized most people don't know about the implicit costs of producing the food we consume. By making a conscious lifestyle choice, vegans are taking their convictions and turning them into actions. Corretta Scott King, for example, became vegan after discovering that animal rights was an extension of the ethic of nonviolence that her husband had championed.

Yet there's a dark side to living in the food minority. McGlanthin confides that she felt nervous putting Penn Students for Animal Rights on her resume. And when she had a lunch interview last spring, she didn't want to look unaccommodating and obnoxious due to her food preferences.

"I felt embarrassed doing something I do everyday," she said.

So, even as the options and public acceptance are improving, living vegan isn't such an easy thing. It's a life of scrutinizing convoluted ingredient labels (sometimes painfully reminiscent of obscure organic chemistry compounds) and prepping your own food. Yet it's more than adhering to the nitty-gritty details of a strict diet. "The chief stumbling block is not the inconvenience or the taste, but fear of being hassled by friends and in social circles," fifth-year Linguistics graduate student Ian Ross said.

At the end of the day, you have to admire vegans. They're willing to go that extra mile to understand what goes into the politics of consumption. Perhaps the inconvenience of being vegan is a necessary price to pay. It's activism at its most essential - taking a stand in what you eat.

Next time you're in 1920 Commons, give the vegan carrot cake with Tofutti cream cheese icing a try. You don't know what you're missing out on.

Elizabeth Song is a College sophomore from Clemmons, N.C. Striking a Chord appears on Thursdays.

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