The genius who devised the plant-based diet I’ve been on since April (and he’s a double genius just for selling me on the idea) would be happy with how faithfully I’ve followed it for seven months. Mostly happy. I haven’t cheated in any way on the basic principles of meat, eggs or dairy. Once I accidentally ate part of a cracker before reading the label, but I unloaded the rest of those crackers before taking another bite.

There are a few areas where I haven’t been quite as diligent as I should have been. I’m supposed to calculate sodium percentages before buying anything, but I haven’t yet talked myself into doing math in the grocery aisle. It’s not just the percentage on the label that makes the difference in whether a food is allowed or not, but I use that percentage anyway.

You can see how little I consider the actual maximum sodium allowance from the fact that I don’t even know what the percentage is supposed to be, or how to figure it. But I do tend strongly toward low sodium foods, so I’m barely outside tolerable levels. Probably. That’d be my guess, anyway.

The other area where I fudge a little is oil. If any kind of oil is the first ingredient listed, I should leave that item on the shelf. And I do, most of the time, unless it’s something I really, really need. I failed miserably at trying to make my own salad dressing, so I occasionally use a balsamic vinaigrette that’s natural, but oily. Most of the dressings I use, though, have things like roasted peppers or papaya puree as the first ingredient. I’m not fooling myself that they don’t have oil in them, but then I don’t drown the salad in them, either.