On your vegan planet—a lonely sphere orbiting light years away from your family’s meat-slicked universe—you begin the day with your ritual bowl: buckwheat groats buried under vegan protein powder, drowned in plain soy milk, jeweled with berries, peanuts, walnuts, and a dusting of cinnamon. To wash it down, you baptize your dark roast coffee with soy milk and stevia, a brew that tastes like contrition disguised as virtue.
Next comes your supplement sacrament: creatine, magnesium, B-12, turmeric, algal oil omega-3. You don’t take pills—you swallow the illusion of control.
After your workout, tofu takes center stage—sautéed over cucumbers, peppers, and arugula, slicked with balsamic, buried under nutritional yeast, Calabrian chili sauce, and herbs. Beans are optional, as though this carnival of legumes were still missing a clown. Alternatively, cube the tofu, simmer it in Thai peanut sauce, and pretend it’s indulgent.
Post-nap comes the protein potion: more powder, more soy milk, leftover tofu blitzed in the blender, maybe apple slices draped in nut butter. You tell yourself this is food; your ancestors might call it penance.
Dinner is a coin toss: tofu tacos loaded with vegetables, or the trusty oatmeal rerun—protein powder, berries, peanuts, soy milk. Meanwhile, across the table, your omnivorous family devours salmon, chicken, and spaghetti and meatballs. You watch the plates like contraband. Temptation comes later, as you clear dishes: a forkful of salmon swallowed in secret, or chicken “accidentally” folded into tomorrow’s tofu salad.
And then? The halo slips. You tumble from vegan heaven into flexitarian purgatory, the dietary halfway house for frauds, traitors, and the morally spineless. Yet you persist. This new regimen gives you clarity, structure, and—against all reason—happiness. Whether that happiness is genuine or the first symptom of nutritional madness, we’ll investigate another day.
Cinemorphosis 
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