What's your PQ?

[Guest guest]

That's " Plant Quotient " .

 

PQ = Calories Consumed from Plants / Total Calories Consumed

 

For those of us who are ethical vegetarians and vegans, calculating

our PQ may be a useful self-assessment tool to see where we are, to

see how far we've come, and to see how far we have to go to meet our

goal. We could even plot changes over a period of time to see if we

are trending up or down, or perhaps we have " plateaued " .

 

A score of zero would suggest somebody eats no plants. On the other

end of the specturm, the score of one (or 100%) would suggest

somebody eats an entirely plant-based diet.

 

Although the PQ, as I formulated it above, is concerned only with

what we eat, I think it provides a meaningful way of assessing our

progress toward the goal of causing the least harm possible to

animals as we nourish our bodies. In contrast, labeling ourselves

as carnivores, omnnivores, vegetarians, and vegans seems to lead to

unproductive bickering over the definition of these terms. And

these labels are not necessarily indicative of progress in our

journey, as you can see from th example, below.

 

Charting my own journey might have looked something like this:

 

1) I started out with a PQ of around 33% (this is when people called

me an omnivore). I was getting about a third of my calories from

plants, and the rest from animal sources.

2) Then (while still being called an omnivore) I started subsituting

plants for animals in my diet, and my PQ increased steadily over

several years to around 70%.

3) For a few years I plateaued at 70% simply because I lacked the

incentive put a little extra effort into investigating new food

options, and to plan ahead for the inconvenience of eating out at

the home of friends/family or in restaurants..

4) Then I got the push I needed when my first daughter was born and

I didn't want her to eat meat on account of me feeding it to her,

and I didn't want to be a hyprocrite. I stopped eating meat (people

called me a vegetarian, but I replaced it with extra dairy and

eggs. In fact, I'd say I even replaced some of the plant sources of

food I had previously eaten with more dairy and eggs. At that

point, although I went from being called an omnivore to being called

a vegetarian, my PQ actually dropped to around 60%.

5) Then I realized (as I was loading up on dairy) that I'm actually

partially lactose intolerant, so I cut out dairy (but not eggs). I

replaced milk, yogurt, and cheese with soy alternatives, and my PQ

jumped up to 90%.

6) Finally, I replaced eggs from with tofu scramble, egg replacers,

etc. I also replaced honey with rice syrup and agave nectar, and

started buying unrefined sugar. My PQ moved up to somewhere around

99%, and people began calling me vegan.

7) Since then, I have started reading product labels more carefully

to avoid animal products lurking where I hadn't expected to find

them ... and my PQ is inching up toward my goal of 100%.

 

So, that's been my journey.

 

Not that I expect this to catch on (I'll be happily surprised if it

does!), but in theory at least, I believe measuring and discussing

our PQs would help us understand our own and each other's individual

journeys better, and that could enable us to better help the animals

by helping ourselves and each other.

 

- Alan

 

- Alan

[Guest guest]

Wow, Alan, that is such a great way of looking at it! Definitely food for

thought. :-)

 

Liz (probably about 80%, which is much worse than before my children were

born...time to get crackin')