Everyone has different yet personal reasons for choosing to eat different than they were brought up. Some do it for dietary reasons, others ethical reasons. I would have to say I am a little bit of both.
Source: Thomas Hawk
When I was in middle school, I believe 6th or 7th grade, I lived in a apartment complex that was next to a small house that had chickens. They ran all around and you could see them through the fence. We had to be careful, because the cobras would often gravitate to that area. Oh, did I forget to mention I was living in Singapore at the time?
In Singapore, the meat industry was not nearly as industrialized as it is here and it was influenced by the Asian culture's preference for meat being as fresh as possible. Eggs were all brown, and if you wanted you could go to the meat market and peruse the whole skinless cows hanging from hooks. You could buy pigs feet, or even chicken feet. Waxed duck commonly hangs in the windows of food shops. You could even pick the live chicken you wanted and they would kill it in front of you. For freshness.
Source: Choo Yut Shing
I visited a few meat markets, and it is all very graphic. I was going to say that it is graphic for someone so young, but it is very graphic for any one.
So back to those chickens. I never particularly liked them or even really cared about them, but one night when chicken showed up on my dinner plate, I decided that I was becoming a vegetarian. I don't exactly remember the premises surrounding that decision, but I do remember images of the meat markets and the chickens running around played in heavily.
My mom absolutely refused and proceed to force me to eat the chicken parm. I sat at the table with tears streaming down my face and chicken in my mouth, and that was the end of that discussion.
Source: Evil Midori
I pushed any thoughts of animals suffering to the back of my mind and I didn't really think about it again for a long time.
Last year in July, after years and years of trying to find some kind of balance with eating, health, and my happiness, it finally clicked that I should just eat good, healthy foods until I was satisfied. After a weekend in Las Vegas of eating huge filets from Delmonico's every night and feeling absolutely sick, for my health, I decided to lay off the meat for a while.
I didn't really think about animal welfare. I just thought, "I'll try this out for like a month and see how it goes. I won't be crazy. It should be easy." I was definitely influenced by the many health blogs I read, many of which were vegetarian or even vegan. I have never enjoyed preparing meat at home. The smell bothers me and I thought that said something - if I wouldn't prepare it or kill it myself, maybe I shouldn't eat it.
A few months passed and I had not had any problems with being vegetarian. The only real difficulties were eating out and explaining it to others. It's difficult to tell someone that you just enjoyed a steak with last month that you are now a vegetarian.
Source: Evil Midori
I went out to a steakhouse for my boyfriend's birthday dinner and I decided to have the filet. After-all, I wasn't a crazy vegetarian and I could enjoy meat from time to time.
It was terrible. Not terrible tasting, but terrible feeling. I was in so much pain I couldn't sleep all night long and I felt miserable. It wasn't worth it!
Since then I have thought a lot more about my choice not to eat meat. It has become much more to me than something I did to feel healthier and better. I have also remembered those original reasons that I wanted to become a vegetarian so long ago. I have always known about factory farming practices, but I had just not acknowledged them. Now I recognize that factory farming is real, terrible, and used on almost all meat that is available.
Source: Merely Mel
I wouldn't be able to kill most animals myself, so I shouldn't have someone else do it for me - just as I wouldn't ask someone to do something at work that I wouldn't do myself.
No one should be eating animals that have been treated so awfully and people need to recognize what they are putting into their bodies and how this type of production affects our environment. I do believe that eating meat is a personal choice that we are free to make. We are omnivores and there are nutrients in meat that we need to survive (although they can be derived from other sources). However, eating meat doesn't have to be synonymous with animal suffering and environmental damage. I would like to see more free range, grass fed, and humanely raised animals available as well as a decrease in American reliance on meat as a primary meal and protein source.
Source: xamad
I read a yoga mantra that I love that is something along the lines of: The whole universe is your body, it doesn't end at your finger tips and toes.
I like to think of that: Everything in the universe is something you should care for because it is part of you and it affects you, just as you affect it.
I know that is a little bit hippy and silly, but it is something interesting to think about.
Do you eat meat? If so, how do you feel about it? If not, why?
6 comments:
I eat meat and fish but only occasionally. I have struggled with the decision to vegetarian and even vegan throughout my adult life and have finally come to a place that I feel comfortable with. I base my diet around plants with the occasional free range chicken and fish though I don't place any rules on it. If I am craving beef, I will eat it but with the awareness of how my body is going to react.
Have you read Eating Animals? I have only just started it but it is very good so far, although a bit...strange because the first chapters basically start off making you uncomfortable by talking about eating dogs, and talking about how eating meat varies from culture to culture with different degrees of acceptability. There is a really great quote in it, but I'm not home at the moment, I'll come back to this later...hahah...comment to be continued!
I do and I don't- haha! I've been moving into a more vegetarian/vegan lifestyle, but after my history, restricting myself to one diet or another isn't really good. When I'm at my apartment, I really don't eat meat, but when I'm home, it's hard for me to refuse meat. I don't think my mom would force me at this age, but they just don't get that lifestyle :(
Christie and Jacquie - I still feel like I do and I don't, even though I pretty much don't. I think if I was ever really craving it I would have it, but that hasn't happened yet. It's like my taste totally disappeared. Ironically, my mom is now a vegetarian so I don't have a problem when I go home :)
Kelly - I have not read it but I will add it to my list! I have seen in person some of the really strange things - like soup with a gestated egg broken into it - I'm looking forward to the quote!
OK I found it.
So Jonathan Safran Foer (wrote Eating Animals) of course was raised in a Jewish family. And he talks in the book about how he is having a conversation with his grandmother and she is talking about how she survived WWII and escaping the Germans, and she was so starving she would literally eat whatever she could to survive. She ate out of trash cans and stole potatoes, traded one good for another until she was able to get her hands on something of sustenance. Then she mentions this moment near the end of it all, when most people were ultimately dying of starvation, when she meets a Russian farmer who offers her a piece of meat to eat. And Jonathan says, "He saved you life."
She responds, "I didn't eat it."
"You didn't eat it?"
"It was pork. I wouldn't eat pork."
"Why?"
"What do you mean why?"
"What, because it wasn't kosher?"
"Of course."
"But not even to save your life?"
"If nothing matters, there's nothing to save."
Which gave me chills when I read it because I think that is something we are desperately missing today, priorities that are actually in check. We aren't in sync with the food that we eat, we have no principles. We just follow what marketing tells us and what the social norms tell us and ask no questions as we dig into food that becomes a part of us. We are more scrupulous about the clothes that we put on our body than the food we put into it. And it's comforting that there are more people that are becoming more aware, but terrifying that so many people are not.
Anyhow, your quote about the universe really brought that passage to my mind.
Loved this post by the way, I think everyone has a vegetarian story but ultimately what it comes down to, veg or vegan or just only grass-fed beef or whatever, is that we have to be more aware of and principled about what we eat, because it affects us more than any other action we take.
I'm so glad you posted the quote - very meaningful.
I agree with you about people not caring about what they eat - they simply don't want to know where it came from or what has been done to it. I always give my boyfriend a hard time about it because he is germaphobic and gives me trouble for not washing my hands a lot, not being clean enough in the kitchen, etc - but he loves to eat out at restaurants and fast food places. It's like if he doesn't see something gross happen to the food he's eating, he doesn't care.
Post a Comment
Sometimes the comments area is uncooperative. If your comment doesn't go through right away, try again :) Silly Blogger.