I've flirted with being a veggie since I was 8 when I gave up meat for the first time (purely based on taste considerations; I made special exceptions for hot dogs.) Again in middle school, I abstained for a while, and once I got to college I fruit-and-veggie packed my diet so much that most people assumed I was a vegetarian. I've never had a steak, but I haven't flat-out restricted myself from one in a few years. I had no reason to. Humans are natural omnivores and I'm already pretty selective about the foods I feel good about eating.
Finally this June, I became an accidental pseudo-vegan. On my Catalina Island alternative break, I borrowed "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer. From here:
My wife and I have chosen to bring up our children as vegetarians. In another time or place, we might have made a different decision. But the realities of our present moment compelled us to make that choice. According to an analysis of U.S.D.A. data by the advocacy group Farm Forward, factory farms now produce more than 99 percent of the animals eaten in this country. And despite labels that suggest otherwise, genuine alternatives — which do exist, and make many of the ethical questions about meat moot — are very difficult for even an educated eater to find. I don’t have the ability to do so with regularity and confidence. (“Free range,” “cage free,” “natural” and “organic” are nearly meaningless when it comes to animal welfare.)
According to reports by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. and others, factory farming has made animal agriculture the No. 1 contributor to global warming (it is significantly more destructive than transportation alone), and one of the Top 2 or 3 causes of all of the most serious environmental problems, both global and local: air and water pollution, deforestation, loss of biodiversity. . . . Eating factory-farmed animals — which is to say virtually every piece of meat sold in supermarkets and prepared in restaurants — is almost certainly the single worst thing that humans do to the environment.
Every factory-farmed animal is, as a practice, treated in ways that would be illegal if it were a dog or a cat. Turkeys have been so genetically modified they are incapable of natural reproduction. To acknowledge that these things matter is not sentimental. It is a confrontation with the facts about animals and ourselves. We know these things matter.
Meat and seafood are in no way necessary for my family — unlike some in the world, we have easy access to a wide variety of other foods. And we are healthier without it. So our choices aren’t constrained.
While the cultural uses of meat can be replaced — my mother and I now eat Italian, my father grills veggie burgers, my grandmother invented her own “vegetarian chopped liver” — there is still the question of pleasure. A vegetarian diet can be rich and fully enjoyable, but I couldn’t honestly argue, as many vegetarians try to, that it is as rich as a diet that includes meat. (Those who eat chimpanzee look at the Western diet as sadly deficient of a great pleasure.) I love calamari, I love roasted chicken, I love a good steak. But I don’t love them without limit.
This isn’t animal experimentation, where you can imagine some proportionate good at the other end of the suffering. This is what we feel like eating. Yet taste, the crudest of our senses, has been exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other senses. Why? Why doesn’t a horny person have as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to confining, killing and eating it? It’s easy to dismiss that question but hard to respond to it. Try to imagine any end other than taste for which it would be justifiable to do what we do to farmed animals.
I know that was long, I apologize. I just found Foer's argument convincing. If I wasn't making these choices based on taste, then how could I continue ignoring the realities of eating animals? I've felt strongly for a long time that it is a luxury we take for granted that we are not involved in the processing of our food at the point that it was alive. I think that if Americans were required to confront that reality daily, that our food was at one point alive, then we would have a different respect for the life of an animal. As it is, we spend thousands of dollars a year on our dogs but demand our chicken cost 99 cents at McDonalds.
Off of the soapbox, I have loved my vegetarian lifestyle. I know it's not for everyone and I'm not trying to convince you to do the same. I just think it's a lot easier to respect a decision when you know where it's coming from. It's super easy to be vegetarian here: my host mom is wonderful about making me all kinds of fruits, veggies and eggs and beans for protein. A typical day for me might be mango, banana, toast and jam for breakfast. Coffee. Beans, mashed yuca, plantains and some veggies for lunch. Mid-afternoon coffee treat, served with tortilla or bread. A soup with rice for dinner, with more coffee. I don't even think I'd have tummy room for meat if I wanted it.
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