For years I’ve tolerated my friend’s need for a strict vegan diet. I am lectured nearly daily about the benefits of veganism and the injustice of my murderous, meat-craving lifestyle. It’s gotten to the point that we can’t go out anywhere decent because there are few places vegan-friendly enough to suit his tastes. He has many redeeming qualities, so our friendship remains strong despite our philosophical differences. However, if there were an issue that would be a deal breaker, it would be his terrible, terrible gas. Its pure, unmitigated evil is indescribable. I’m pretty sure that in a highly concentrated form it could change laws of physics. Just god-awful. To make a dumb question long, are the rumors about vegan body odor, and specifically vegan gas, really true? Or is my friend just a naturally awful-smelling individual? –Scott, via e-mail
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Notwithstanding your assurances about redeeming qualities, Scott, I have to wonder what’s keeping this relationship going. It can’t be your friend’s pleasant personality, since he continually hectors you and accuses you of sordid crimes. It isn’t his scintillating conversation, unless lectures on your murderous, meat-craving lifestyle are your idea of diverting chat. It’s obviously not his attractive physical presence. So what are you getting out of this–stock tips? Weekly payments? Great head?
Vegetarian nutritionists claim this phenomenon abates once the intestinal flora adapt to the new menu; perhaps your friend is an intransigent case. However, I suspect high gas production is inherent in any diet consisting predominantly of plant products. Cows and sheep, for example, are marvelously adapted to all-veggie fare, yet they generate such prodigious quantities of methane-laden flatulence that some authorities regard them as major contributors to the greenhouse effect and thus to global warming. Some vegetarians have seized on this as further evidence of the wickedness of animal husbandry, to which skeptics mindful of people like your friend reply: Oh, sure, let’s quit having the ruminants pass gas all day in distant fields so we can do it ourselves at close range.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Slug Signorino.
