Well, it’s that time of the year again.

Regular readers should know that, during what is known as Holy Week in the Philippines, I make the effort to try being a vegan during the time period. Not for religious or spiritual reasons or anything like that. It’s more of a test for myself if I can actually go through an entire week without eating or drinking any form of animal products. It started way back a decade ago with just three days and has blown up to an entire week since then. I even did it during a bad bout of gout and the vegan diet worked pretty well during this period.

However, I did think it was time to put it to the test using actual real data. No guesswork regarding how well I’m feeling or second guessing if it was the vegan diet that helped me get over the gout. No, this year, I decided to really check on my health and go take a blood test afterwards. There are certain factions who say veganism is the healthiest way to eat. Well, I wanted to check the numbers to see if and how it was affecting my body.

But I still had to eat for the week. Usually, I would really do some extensive planning and preemptively get all my grocery needs a couple of weeks before. This year, however, I didn’t have to go through that much trouble because, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, being vegan in the Philippines is a whole lot easier than it was a decade ago when I started! It’s just a matter of knowing where to look!

By the way, since I’m going to be posting a lot of stuff that I purchased and leaving links to them, this might seem like a sponsored post or something like that. This isn’t that. This is just a record of my experience and, since I did have a positive experience from them, I’m giving them the proper credit.

I still had the staples I’ve had in the previous years. I still went to the nearest Healthy Options to get my Bob’s Red Mill Textured Vegetable Protein, Soy Protein Powder and Vege Soup Mix. I also got some vegan soup cubes to go with my Vega Soup Mix. I did a quick combination of tomato sauce, the vegan soup cubes, soy sauce and miscellaneous spices with some water to rehydrate the Textured Vegetable Protein to make a vegan ground meat substitute. The soup I had with my lunch while the vegan ground meat substitute I had with some rice for a light dinner. These were both good but there was no doubt since, like I said, I’ve been doing this for a decade already.

For breakfast, I originally opted for some simple things like oatmeal, corn flakes and soy milk. That did change a bit when I went to a supermarket called Unimart here in the Philippines. They had a couple of products I actually used before but, for some reason, I didn’t think of using them during my week of veganism until the very last minute. The first thing I noticed was something called Ve-G Sausage, which is a soy based breakfast sausage in a can. They were pretty good and the did have the same taste of vienna sausages. There was around twelve in the can so I had one or two sausages per day and they did well in satisfying my usual meat cravings.

Like I said, I was originally planning to get some soy milk but did find something at Unimart that had more bang for my buck: Veg-Tan Soy Milk Powder. I got a huge box of soy milk powder, much more than what I would get if I bought it in liquid form! I can’t really say it was great. After all, it tastes like soy milk and the taste of soy milk is something you do have to get used to. Still, Veg-Tan Soy Milk Powder does taste like soy milk if you dissolve the powder correctly. Best of all, you can add more powder to make it thicker like I do!

I also supplemented my breakfast with some toast. However, plain toast is just, well, plain. But I couldn’t add things like butter to it. Luckily, the week before my vegan week, I stumbled across a local restaurant close to where I lived called Finkels. It’s a restaurant focused on more mediterranean dishes like falafels and hummus! Well, those are vegan, right? So, I had some falafels and hummus delivered from Finkels! However, it wasn’t completely vegan as the dish had some tzatziki drizzled on top of the falafels. As tzatziki is yogurt based, it didn’t fit my vegan diet for next week. It’s a good thing I order this a couple of days before as I was able to eat the falafels and the tzatziki. I was left with the hummus and some harissa, with the former I would spread on my toast for breakfast and the latter I would top off my TVP meal. It also did come with a couple of healthy sized pita breads… but I polished that off pretty quickly. Went really well with the hummus.

For my desserts, I gave myself a couple of options. I went to a local bakery supply store called All About Baking. Not to make cakes or anything. Rather, I went there to get my a big bag of dried cranberries. You get them in this nice big bag and they’re a great snack to munch on once in a while. Honestly, this is something I do regularly so this wasn’t unique to me.

What was unique was Pan De Manila‘s Vegan Mango Ice Cream. Now, I honestly didn’t expect a local chain bakery like Pan De Manila to offer vegan desserts, let alone vegan ice cream options. But, lo and behold, they do. However, when I did go to my local Pan De Manila branch, the only flavor they had was the Vegan Mango Ice Cream, which, thankfully, tasted pretty good. It doesn’t exactly have the soft texture of actual ice cream as it’s made from coconut milk. Still, the flavor is good enough so you won’t miss the flavor of mango ice cream made from milk.

So, I generally had breakfast and dinner covered. What about lunch? Well, this is where things got interesting. While I was fully prepared to go do what I usually do and prep a ton of vegan food using the TVP and the soup, I did stumble across a place called Greenery Kitchen while shopping for ingredients. Originally, I thought Greenery Kitchen was a service that would send you vegan meals for the entire week. So, I didn’t think that would be for me.

But I did check out their branch in Shangri-La EDSA and they actually do serve bulk meals. Well, not exactly “bulk” but packs that would serve around two to three people. I got three meal packs, specifically the Chili Con Carne, Salpicao (which usually meat cooked in garlic oil) and sisig. Honestly, these were really good! I honestly wouldn’t mind eating any of these even if I wasn’t on my vegan week. They were all made from another kind of TVP and I can’t help but be a little jealous on how they made them taste so much better than what I usually prepare. Guess I’ll have to go back to Greenery Kitchen to see if the other dishes are also this good.

So, anyway, that was generally what I ate during my week of being vegan. Breakfast was the Veg-E Sausages with toast and hummus from Finkels and sometimes with cereal. Lunch would be the stuff from Greenery Kitchen and extended using the Bob’s Red Mill soup. Dinner would be my version of the rehydrated TVP with a topping of some of the harissa or sriracha for some added flavor. Desserts would come from the cranberries from All About Baking and the Vegan Mango Ice Cream from Pan De Manila. I would round it all off with three soy protein shakes from the protein powder and the Veg-Tan Soy Milk Powder. Honestly, this was the easiest I’ve had it being a vegan for a week since I started this all a decade ago. It seems really weird that the Philippines, which is still a third world country, has some people fully embracing the vegan lifestyle as there are many more options than before. I guess that’s a good thing in the long run as it gives people more options.

However, this still leads to the second part of this year’s experiment with veganism: is it actually good for me? I wasn’t concerned about losing weight. In fact, I made it an active goal to not lose any weight this year. On that front, this week was successful as I entered the week at around 130 pounds and ended it at around 128 pounds. Two pounds isn’t something to lose sleep over as I’ll probably gain it back once I start eating meat again.

But the proof would be the actual blood test after the week of just eating plant-based products. Now, my blood work has usually be pretty good, with most of my numbers being really good. However, I’ve always had a problem with my uric acid levels, which would be why I got my gout several years back. And my red blood and white blood cell counts would dip below normal once in a while. That’s why I usually take iron suppliments even though that shouldn’t be the case on an omnivore diet. Honestly, I was really curious if there would be any improvements after being on a vegan diet for the week.

So, what were the results? Well, without going into great detail… not that good! While there was some bad stuff, like my fasting blood sugar being a smidge over the recommended level, that’s been kind of my normal for me for quite a while now. That’s nothing to be alarmed about right now. For me, the biggest disappointing number was my uric acid levels. My numbers for this has been pretty high and I wanted to see if being vegan would drop it down. It didn’t. But what makes it bad is it actually went up! That’s not good!

So, I guess going vegan isn’t the right path for me. While it’s something I can do for the short term, based on my blood work values, it doesn’t seem like it something I should be doing for the long term. Yes, you can say a week’s worth of going vegan isn’t sufficient time to get accurate values. But, at the same time, you would think doing something for a whole week should be a good indicator of how things are going. While going vegan may be something I might still be doing for a week, it doesn’t seem healthy in my case.

Shame, really. Just when it’s gotten so much easier to go vegan.

Have you tried going vegan? Have you tested your body afterwards? Let me know in the comments section below!