About the author - a short autobiography of a natural food addict
My interest in natural food started long time ago in Novosibirsk with a Samizdat xerocopy of the book by Armenian physician Ter-Ovanesyan. Ter-Ovanesyan considered cooked food to be the reason of all evils besieging the mankind from the dawn of history till present. Wars, famines, diseases, dishonesty, cruelty, greed, all that was brought to life by cooking fire. This impressed me and being naturally inclined to the idea that if everybody does it, it must be wrong, I started zealously follow Ter-Ovanesyan's rigorous regiment.
Ter-Ovanesyan did not prohibit eating meat, but demanded that those so inclined eat it raw. Not being a raw-meat eating type, I had to stick to vegetarianism that, given prejudices of time and place, was probably a good reason to being a candidate for a mental institution.
I had no idea of vegetarian nutrition, so I just ate whatever remained of usual Soviet diet minus meat, fish, and eggs. After about six months I gave up my experiment, but only temporarily, with the intent to resume it in more favorable conditions. And I expected my future nutritional prospects to be far more favourable indeed. I was preparing to emigrate from Siberia to Israel with its abandance of fresh fruits and vegetables.
As a side note, I must say that knowing about good food what I know now, Soviet food was not so bad after all. From the point of view of a natural food addict, an average Soviet ate not worse than an average American. With my current knowledge of vegetarian nutrition, I would be able comfortably live as a vegetarian if a time machine would have taken me back to Soviet times. The problem was lack of information and attitude to vegetarianism that the Russians share with the French, the Spaniards, the Germans, the Greeks, and many other European nations.
In Israel, there being a vegetarian is very common compared not only to Russia, but also to Europe and even the US (if my memory does not fail me, about twenty percent of the population are vegetarians), I had a chance to experience Middle Eastern cooking and to overcome some Euro-centric (copied by the Russians from France and Germany) prejudices about food.
To be continued...