Pace time: 11:20
Miles: 4.0
Temp: 78
And the dinner I made tonight was one that you have already seen. Remember this?
So I thought I'd take my friend Sonali's advice, and talk a little bit about how I came to be a vegetarian.
It was a very gradual process for me. I started eating less and less meat in 2009. There wasn’t one specific event, or book I read or video I watched that converted me. I just started to feel more and more guilty about it. After all, I had always loved animals. I loved taking care of animals, had always had pets, liked studying them, and going to zoos and aquariums to learn more about them.
Along with the guilt, I started feeling more and more repulsed by the handling of raw meat. In fact, I think my final straw was cooking a big turkey. That was when my brain finally went, 'My god. This is a dead body. I'm about to cook and eat a dead body.' It seems like kind of a 'duh' thing to say. But once my mind made and solidified that connection, I just didn't want to be complicit in the deaths of animals anymore.
I felt better, physically and emotionally. I never wanted to make a big statement about it. I just bought a lot of vegetarian cookbooks and cut the meat out. My husband remains an omnivore, but eats mostly vegetarian since I do all the cooking. I told him I wouldn’t mind if he wanted to cook his own meat, but that I wasn’t going to do it. He shrugged and said ‘okay’.
It’s only been very recently that I’ve started to want to make the change from vegetarianism to veganism. After reading the China Study, and various other literature about how dairy cows suffer, and even ‘cage-free’ chickens meet a tragic end, I realized I didn’t want to contribute to that.
There are other benefits to vegetarianism too. I won't get into all of them in this one journal entry.
-There are great health benefits, including possibly reducing your chances for heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and cancer.
-Cattle Raising is disasterous for the environment. It's already creating a shortage of groundwater, topsoil, forests and energy. It is not sustainable.
-If we redistributed the grain that went into feeding cattle for slaughter to impoverished nations, we could literally feed the world.
And lastly, bragging rights. For example:
What do Albert Einstein, Pythagoras, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison, Mark Twain, Charles Darwin and I all have in common?
We are (were) all vegetarians! There are a lot more, too. Blew my mind!
what a great story- thanks for sharing! It really is inspirational. I have found myself not caring for meat and having ethical dilemmas when I have the choice: animal rights and treatment and the entire industry as a whole--the hardest is part is cooking for a Texan who loves meat, but aaron has a similar response to Nick, which does make it easier.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome! I know the feeling, and the most difficult part of becoming a vegetarian, for me, was telling people!
ReplyDeleteI didn't even tell Nick right away.. which is hilarious, because you know he's going to figure it out. LOL
I didn't want people to look at me differently, and I definitely didn't want to be some sort of intimidating, pain in the ass, house/dinner guest!
I remember when Nick told his Mom that I was a vegetarian, I was mortified! Not sure why, and I was worried about nothing. Turns out she was curious and responded positively. So that was a relief.
I was also holding my breath a little when I told my parents. They were fine with it, and even said that they were trying to eat more 'meatless meals'.
..And Nick has been really great about the vegetarian cooking. From the stories he tells me about work, it even sounds like he brags about it a little!
ReplyDeleteWe recently went to a coworker's birthday party, and she had a lot of veggie options, aside from grilled meat. Nick took a piece and commented that he felt 'weird' eating it. Possibly because he hasn't just had a piece of meat in awhile.
My point, though, is that even meat loving Texan guys can get used to liking different things! :)
I know!! you're completely right- the other guy, I was at trader joe's and brought home wasabi flavored seaweed chips and had aaron try some-- and he love it! even last night when we went grocery shopping, he actively sought them out! We have a great vegan restaurant close to us: my goal is to have him go there on a date night. I bet I can seduce him with vegan donuts!
ReplyDeletehttp://thevegandiner.tumblr.com/
I meant the other day I was at Trader Joe's :-)
ReplyDeleteReally interesting! I didn't know you'd become vegetarian originally--shows how out of touch I've been.
ReplyDeleteI had to reshuffle the way I eat and add fish and chicken back last year, because soy and synthetic hormones don't really get along. (Cutting soy out of your diet and shopping for prepared food is an adventure. Even stupid things like salad dressing are impossible to find outside of health food stores.) Now I'm trying to cut the meat back out and cut back on wheat and sugar (my dairy is pretty minimal as it is)
Actually, I was a little nervous to tell people that I'd become vegetarian and sort of kept it under wraps. Well, until now. So you're not that out of touch! :)
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that about soy and synthetic hormones. That sounds really tough. Especially cutting out the wheat, too.
I'm trying to cut back on simple carbs. I'm not doing very well - I mean, just before I wrote that comment, I was eating a plate of cheese ravioli. But I am trying, and I'm doing better than I was.
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