i never thought i would do it.
i suppose it's the same for everyone - there are some things that you just know you would never do...until you find yourself doing them. and then you must suffer the consequences.
luckily for me, this time it's a good thing, and the consequences are rewards rather than suffering.
i guess i didn't picture myself as a 'vegetarian' type of person. i wasn't against it, but i wasn't running out to the market to stock up on tofu and sprouts either. maybe what i'm trying to say is that i simply never thought much about it. a life-long animal lover, in my eyes there was no contradiction between adoring living creatures and gorging myself on their flesh. no, i didn't eat any household pets, but i was a happy (one might say 'blissfully ignorant') carnivore. PETA was something that celebrities posed nude for. veganism was an inconvenient, incomprehensible setback to dinner parties. meat wasn't murder, just a normal part of life. pepperoni was a naturally-occurring, delicious topping for pizza and nothing else, certainly not the ground up parts of a pig. chicken wings were yummy pub food, not the wings of an actual chicken. i was living in a dream world.
in the past few years, there have been more and more voices speaking out about the horrors of factory farming, and the subsequent threats that this method poses to public health and the environment. i listened, a little bit. i decided to try to buy organic meat whenever possible, and eggs from free-run hens. as painful as it was, i paid the extra money...sometimes. the problem was two-fold: money, and eating out. in an age of cheap meat, the cost of organic meat seems outrageous. i wanted cheap chicken breasts! what was i, made of money?! so i would occasionally splurge on "good" meat, but mostly i would skulk around in the bulk meat section at the grocery store, feeling guilty as i picked up the packages of soft, pink flesh. the other problem, eating out, was even worse. we didn't cook very much meat at home, but we certainly weren't asking whether the meat was organic when we went to east side mario's. and you know, you just know, that the meat they serve in restaurants is the worst of the worst. unless you happen to be at a restaurant that buys meat from small, local producers, there is no doubt that your steak came from the feedlot. this is not to mention the fact that chris and i would occasionally succumb to the achilles' heel from our childhoods: mcdonald's. we didn't go often, but inevitably when we did i would be left with a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. yeah, that's probably because the burgers are ground-up 'who knows?' parts of cows.
i did have one 'aha!' moment in st. stephen when, after graduating, i worked for precisely one day at the chocolate factory before running home and vowing never to return. said moment came during my orientation tour, when we were shown huge buckets of misshapen candies that had to be discarded. "where do they go?" someone asked. "we sell them to local farmers to feed to their cows" was the reply. yep. even though cows' stomachs can't process the candies, which leads to agonizing gastrointestinal problems, these refined-sugar, processed pieces of shit are fed to cows to fatten them up for slaughter. i couldn't believe it.
but things take time to process. sometimes shamefully long. i avoided reading anything on the subject because i was afraid that i would have to change. this seems to be a sad human tactic, avoidance. we don't want to know because then we have to live with the responsibility of a guilty conscience. it was the same for chris and i in fort mac - we avoided reading things about how environmentally devastating it was because we were there, trying to get out of debt. as much as we wanted to leave, we felt like we 'couldn't.'
we should have, though. we should have run away screaming.
chris had been gently suggesting the possibility of vegetarianism for about a year before we actually took the plunge. i just couldn't imagine it. the embarrassment of telling people. especially when invited over for dinner, Lord help me. but then, i don't remember why, i bought the book 'eating animals' by jonathan safran foer. and that was that. i read it on our vacation at the beginning of february, made chris read it, and we have been vegetarians since the moment our plane landed back in northern alberta.
once i read what he had to say, i knew that we needed to go meat-free. the meat industry is out of control, particularly in north america, where the demand for cheap meat and the successful lobbying of industrial farms has led to the disintegration of even remotely ethical behavior.
why does this happen? i have met many people who truly believe that animals do not feel pain, or that their brains don't process pain the same way as humans so it is simply a physical response. the fact that this is wildly untrue, that animals are emotional and intelligent creatures capable of forming societies of hierarchies, communicating with each other, protecting their young even at the risk of personal injury or death, and even occasionally forming monogamous, lifelong relationships with a mate...these things are not taking into account. scientific evidence that fish do, in fact, feel pain is flippantly dismissed. the fact that pigs are far more intelligent than our pet dogs, and can sometimes have heart attacks on their way to slaughter due to the emotional trauma of intense fear......ignored.
i could go on and on, but i'll stick with these reasons for now. maybe in the future i can touch on the human rights violations that take place in the meat industry, the insanely unsanitary conditions of many slaughterhouses, and the bruised, frostbitten, cut and abused hides of freshly-slaughtered pigs that my friend sean has handled in alberta.
i am ranting. but what i want to say is this: not everyone 'needs' to be a vegetarian. however, a vegetarian diet is known to reduce the chances of heart disease and pretty much every other 'western' illness. lowering meat consumption can help - try going a couple days a week meat-free to test it out. the 'protein myth' (that vegetarians don't get enough protein) is just that, a myth. sure, there are plenty of unhealthy vegetarians out there, who exist mainly on french fries and grilled cheese sandwiches, but there are a lot of really quality sources of protein out there that are animal-free. for example, quinoa - a grain that just needs to be cooked like rice and that has all of the necessary amino acids. yes, protein! in a grain! it's technically a seed, actually, but it looks like a grain. anyway, chris and i eat tofu, tempeh, quinoa, beans, nuts, seeds, nut butters, and more to get our protein. it's really not as difficult as people imagine it to be, unless of course you are forced to frequent chain restaurants on a regular basis (as was our sad fate for part of this summer).
since being in new york, chris and i have been about 85% vegan - yet another thing i thought i could 'never' do. we realized after gaining weight this summer that we were consuming an exorbitant amount of cheese (chain restaurants!!), and so we have been trying to eat more healthfully. for breakfast we usually have oatmeal (with almond milk, blueberries, raw almonds, raw pumpkin seeds, and a bit of raw agave nectar) or whole-grain toast with natural peanut butter and sprouts. we have been relying a bit on granola bars, since we are on the go in the city, so while we are here we have been having one a day (but i don't plan on making these a staple in our diet...too processed). we like the new builder's bars by clif - 20 grams of protein, no refined sugar at all. for lunch and dinner, we will usually try to have some kind of mix of veggies and protein like quinoa or beans. what's awesome about this city is that there are about a million vegetarian/vegan restaurants (actually, 42, but it feels like a million), so we have been trying them out too.
we have also been exercising a LOT more. after two sedentary years sitting for 15+ hours a day, i cannot tell you how good it feels to be moving again.
all of this isn't to pat myself on the back, but just to say (as a record for myself and maybe as an encouragement for anyone who reads this) that we feel AMAZING! especially since we have started eating mostly vegan. this is probably too much information, but i have to say it anyway: we are pooping (floaters!) every single day, sometimes twice a day. things just feel like they are legitimately moving through us well, and it is such a relief to know that we don't have rotting flesh clogging up our intestines.
if you have never tried eating a mostly plant-based diet, it can take some planning but it is so worth it. i would recommend this way of eating to anyone, even if just for the health benefits.
more to come.
