The stereotypical Mongolian diet is meat-based, as much of the land is unsuitable for agriculture, people have traditionally relied on livestock for sustenance. Au contraire, my childhood diet was quite distant from this stereotype.
After subscribing to spiritual cleansing lessons guided by Sri Sri Shankar, my father stopped indulging in carnivorous customs. Although my mother did not entirely convert into a vegetarian, I was young and impressionable: quickly following my father and his new life doctrine.
I was content with my new pure diet, or one free of the suffering of animals as my father would phrase it. Unfortunately, my mother would frequently share concerns about my stature and health to her relatives; when compared with my classmates, I was short for my age. In response, my father would profess that it was close-minded to reject a vegetarian lifestyle.
As I became older and did not become taller, I started to contemplate the possibility that there may be some physical side effects of eschewing meat from my diet. My mother and relatives might have had a point, and I was facing an ultimatum: Should I follow my spiritual beliefs or adhere to my culture?
A trip to the countryside to visit a family locally renowned for their plentiful livestock provided an opportunity for me to reflect on my dietary decisions. Hospitality and kindness permitted us to dine on the finest quality livestock the family had to offer, but my father and I opted for alternatives. The matriarch of the family then lectured me on the traditional diet and the progression of the human diet, and ultimately how my lack of adherence to that tenet was the cause for my short stature. Extreme winters and summers had led to the development of a meat and dairy oriented diet: a high protein-based diet during the freezing winter, and a lighter dairy-based diet during the scorching summer. The fact-based argument, which made sense to me, led me to compromise on my diet.
Over time, I modified my diet and incorporated poultry and various varieties of meat; eventually, I had growth spurts surpassing forty centimeters. While my father advocated for the consumption of vegetables exclusively, my mother advocated for meat and dairy products, and I remained somewhere in between these two extremes and ingested both vegetables and meat. It may seem like a post hoc ergo propter hoc explanation of how my change in diet resulted in an eventual jump in stature, a balanced diet improved my health and satisfied both my parents.
Section Editor: Brooke Leath
Section: Health & Wellness
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