"I have this dream that I could be an Emergency Food Fixer Guy (that's the official title). Imagine me in a lab coat or trench coat full of spices. If someone's cooking a nice meal for a date or something and it's too spicy or salty or just doesn't seem right, for a low, flat rate of -- you know, whatever-- I could come over and fix their food and save the day."
Matty Kime, vegan chef and emergency food fixer guy, is a resident of Memphis, Tennessee. He dreams of someday winning Survivor, bikes regularly, and consumes more garlic and kombucha than you do. For this feature, he graciously agreed to answer some questions I had about veganism: from his own personal experience and reasoning to whether veganism is a healthy or affordable diet.
A: I went to The School of Natural Cookery in Boulder, Colorado. I took a 4 month course specializing in how to make Vegan food. The program was a little different in that it geared me towards becoming a personal chef: it focused on teaching you how to match various flavors and spices to cook with rather than focusing on recipes.
Q: Why did you decide to go there?
A: I was thinking about going to culinary school after high school. I looked into the Culinary Institute of America and Johnson and Wales, however I decided I wanted to take some time off. I became vegan in the meantime and figured that I should follow that in my kind of schooling.
Q: Do you feel like what you learned at the School of Natural Cookery positively influenced any other aspects of your life?
A: Well, I’ve always been interested in cooking. I’m glad I went. Being vegan made me cook whole meals more often and more creatively. My school experience helped me get my foot in the door, and I guess you could say it helped build the foundation for how I cook now and gave me a certain level of confidence.
Q: So how long were you a vegan, and how much of that time would you say ate unhealthily?
A: I was a vegan for 9 years; I would say that I ate unhealthily for the first year and maybe the last year of that. And I guess I eat kind of unhealthily now.
For a long time I kept a really balanced diet. I didn’t drink caffeine or eat any junk food at all. I cut out some other things as well. I didn’t start being a vegan for health reasons, but my reasoning shifted that way over time. Over time I started losing sight of my first reasons, such as the environment, or meat industry – the reasons that are bigger than me.
Q: So why do you think you’re not a vegan now?
A: Pretty much out of laziness.
The first meat I had in nine years was at a farm where I was living for an internship—one of our objectives was to only eat food that grew within 100 miles of us. One day, we caught some ducks from the edge of the property and prepared them for dinner that night. I decided that I wanted to take a full part of the experience, including eating the meat.
But when a friend told me that certain Doritos are vegan, that was the true source of my downfall. I started getting a lot more lax after that. I’m currently re-evaluating what’s healthy for me, and hopefully choosing a diet that’s less harmful to me and more conscious of the infrastructures and industries involved. Between chickens sometimes eating other chickens and the amount of methane being released into the atmosphere because things are done on such a large scale, there’s nothing good or healthy or positive about the meat industry.
Q: So what do you think about genetic modification as the next step in the industrialization of food? Like how they’re trying to genetically modify salmon to speed up their growth, or create genetically modified but otherwise organic food (according to a January 2011 Popular Science article)?
A: When people talk about how it’s needed to feed the masses, it’s just an excuse really. It’s all about making it more available for cheaper; trying to turn a profit, and picking systemic solutions over sustainable practices.
But that’s been going on for a while. Like how green peppers are just red peppers picked early-- that’s why they’re usually a bit cheaper. It makes for more immediate food and money.
Did you know that square watermelons are really popular in Japan? They’re genetically modified to adjust to the space they’re in and grown in glass boxes.
Q: And do you think that being a vegan is affordable? Especially to do so healthily?
A: You know, some people think you can’t get enough protein as a vegan. I think that some meat has pretty poor proteins (for example, pork). The most important protein combination I know of is legume (such as beans or lentils) and grain; they compliment each other very well. And that’s very cheap! The problem is a lot of vegetarians and vegans don’t know how to be healthy and end up eating mostly chips and fries.
My ideal super-food meal is quinoa, garbanzo beans or lentils, and seaweed or some kind of green that’s high in nutrients like kale or broccoli; maybe with other vegetables and garlic.
(cheap trick: if you buy bulk and mark your quinoa as millet when you buy it at Whole Foods, it’s a lot cheaper and they probably won’t notice)
Q: Hey thanks a lot, Matty. Is there anything else you’d like to say while you’re still on your soap box?
A: If you eat fresh garlic and ginger every day, you’ll never get sick.
(But your friends might tell you that you smell bad.)
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