Meat. Meat has fucking freaked me out my whole life. As a child I don’t think you give much thought to the fact that what you’re eating used to be a living, breathing animal. It’s hard enough for kids to understand the concepts of human life and death, yet alone the life and death of your nugget’s chicken. I, like most children in this country, loved me some chicken nuggets. My “picky eating” habits were a subject of conversation and teasing at family gatherings (“What do you want? CHICKEN NUGGETS?”). But there was one particular chicken nugget experience that scarred me for life. I couldn’t have been older than 7 or 8 when my Nana and I were doing our usual post-shopping Burger King routine. I picked up a chicken strip, split it in half and found a big, thick bone sticking right out of the center. I FREAKED. I don’t really remember how my Nana responded, but I assume she must have been too preoccupied with trying to console me to go tell a manager or something (I COULD HAVE SUED AND BEEN RICH?!). I remember my meat eating habits changed drastically after that. I would literally tear every piece to shreds to make sure there was nothing strange going on up in that meat. To this day I still look at meat with apprehension. I feel like you never know exactly what’s going to be inside a burger or even the nicest quality of chicken breasts.
I became a vegetarian in September of 2007. I had given a lot of thought to it previously but always felt too lazy to go through with it. I was at John’s apartment in Miami, watching Andrew Zimmern in some middle eastern country on the show Bizarre Foods. He ate a goat’s head. Yeah, OK, so no one ever told me I had to eat a goat’s head and I probably shouldn’t have been watching Bizarre Foods anyway but there was something about watching flesh peeled off a goat’s skull that made me really realize MEAT IS A DEAD ANIMAL. And more then anything that’s just…gross. Meat lovers try to deny it but I know that if you laid a dead cow in their living room and told them to carve it up….they’d think it was gross. It’s just gross.
So, there was my first motivation for becoming a vegetarian: meat = gross. My second reason, and the one everyone assumes you have when you tell them you’re a vegetarian, is that I really disagree with the food industry’s morals when it comes to slaughtering animals. I grew up in an animal loving home. I had dogs, fish, a lizard, two rats and knew every cat on the block by name. My mom worked as a receptionist at an animal hospital for many years and we spent some holidays at the hospital giving attention to the animals who were either sick or left behind to board while their families went on vacation. Whenever we were in the car and happened to see a dog running down the road, my mom would hit the breaks and we’d do everything we possibly could to keep it out of harm and return it to it’s owner. When my best friend’s dad found an injured bird and temporarily placed it in a box so he could train his dog for hunting later, he came home to find that my friend and I had found the bird and, not knowing it’s purpose, attempted to nurse it back to health in a barbie bed. So you get the picture. I really fucking love animals. I always knew that eating meat felt wrong but I avoided ANY and ALL information involving the slaughter process because my sensitive, animal loving heart just couldn’t take it. If by chance any of that information happened to slip through the cracks, I would lie awake in bed for hours unable to get the gruesome images out of my head. So on the animal-loving front, vegetarianism just made sense for me. “Whew, glad that guilt is off of MY back.“
The third motivation was definitely the deciding factor. What taste good fried and can often be filled with fat? Meat. Because this was during the time were I was starting to become “serious” about really giving this eating disorder thing my all, I thought there couldn’t be a better excuse to not eat things than vegetarianism. Also, a lot of my guilty pleasures came in the form of crispy spicy chicken sandwiches at Wendy’s or cheese burgers at In-N-Out. “What do vegetarians eat at restaurants? Salad.” I assumed. Now I would have no choice but to pass up the burger and fries for a healthy (and by healthy I was thinking “low fat”) salad. I’m definitely not the first eating disordered girl to think this way. In fact, there was an article in Teen Vogue last year about how vegetarianism is all the rage amongst young girls trying to hide their eating disorders (linked). Not a girl I know who has problems with body image is a meat eater. I’m not trying to say that all vegetarians are anorexic or bulimic, but I think most anorexics/bulimics are vegetarians.
Of course there’s a huge flaw in the way anorexics and bulimics think about vegetarianism (well, there’s a huge flaw in the way they think in general but you know). You can’t fucking avoid hunger and you can’t avoid cravings. You just can’t. And the more you sit with hunger, the more shit you’re going to crave and it’s not going to be lettuce. You sit at a restaurant with your friends and you look at the vegetarian options. You see a whole array of salads….and then you see french fries and grilled cheese. You haven’t eaten in days and you told yourself you were going to get a salad but you want carbs SO FUCKING BAD….you’re going to go for those french fries and grilled cheese. Then you go to the grocery store and you can buy ALLLLLL sorts of veggies but you’re so fucking malnourished that veggies seem unappealing. Of course, you’re a vegetarian. So once at your boiling point of hunger and malnourishment, not wanting veggies and not being able to eat meat, you’re going to go for the empty carbs.
There’s two things I want to clarify. 1: There aint nothing wrong with carbohydrates. Eat them proudly. Nothing pisses me off more than the bitch who won’t eat the dinner rolls or request a salad with no croutons. You’re eating a fucking salad, those 10 croutons are not going to cost you your figure. But obviously when it comes to subsistence, eating nothing BUT carbs is setting yourself up failure in terms of stopping cravings, staying full longer, ect.
The second thing I’d like to clarify: I believe that vegetarianism can be a healthy, sustainable way of life. Maybe not in the hands of a weight crazed college student, but with someone who already knows how to take care of themselves. I think true, healthy vegetarianism takes a lot of work (um, cooking) that a lot of people (me) just aren’t willing to do.
My years spent as a vegetarian were interesting. You’d be surprised how personally people take it when you tell them you don’t eat meat. Most of them immediately go on the defensive: “This cow is already dead, you know” “Oh well I just think it tastes good” “This chicken doesn’t care if you eat it or not” “You’re not going to be able to get everyone to stop eating meat” “You need meat to survive” “You’re not getting any protein” “Your hair is going to fall out” “Is it going to offended you if I eat this burger?”. Hmm, come to think of it, I think the defensive attitudes prove that most people have underlying guilt when it comes to the meat that they eat. Having someone around who doesn’t eat it makes them question their meat eating habits and because we are all so addicted to our shitty foods (especially here in America), everyone would rather just eat their big macs and not question it. So when your Uncle Bill informs you that, HAHA you silly vegetarian, you can not reverse the death of the steak he is about to devour! he is really trying to say “How dare you make me think about something I am feverishly trying to ignore!”
So you get shit from the meat eaters for not eating meat, but what about your fellow herbivores? The thing about vegetarianism is that it is not a religion. To my knowledge, there is no great vegetarian comity to consult on the doctrine of veggie-eating. There is no entry process, you do not get a membership card, and no official body keeps tabs on your behavior. In my opinion, it is an act of personal freedom. You know… it’s my body and I have control over what I put in it sort of thing. But in your time as a vegetarian, you are bound to meet a few people who fancy themselves some sort of Vegetarian Task Force. I have been accused of blasphemy more times then I can count. “You’re eating eggs?” “Is that real leather? I thought you were a vegetarian.” “If you eat fish then you’re not a real vegetarian” Or, GOD FORBID if I am drunk one night and can’t stop myself from stealing a pepperoni off of a friend’s pizza. “You’re not a vegetarian, you ate pepperoni!” Bitch, do not tell me what I am and what I’m not. Just because I ate a slice of pepperoni or a bite of bacon in a moment of drunken abandon, does not mean that I am going to suddenly to go out and slaughter a cow. Everyone has their own idea of what vegetarianism is and their own reasons for doing it. In my opinion, “vegetarian” is a term that describes someone who does not eat meat. What am I supposed to say when I go to a restaurant “What do you have for people who don’t eat meat but eat eggs and sometimes fatty pork products when intoxicated?” See what I mean? Don’t tell me I can’t call myself a vegetarian.
Anyway, I didn’t eat meat for 4 years (you know, except for the occasional pepperoni). I ate a LOT of potato products. Like, a lot. I was already having a hard enough time eating yet alone sitting there and planning out a well balanced, home cooked vegetarian meal. No, I think I’ll just put this potato in the microwave. My hair didn’t fall out and I didn’t drop dead of protein insufficiency….nor did my actions close down any slaughterhouses. When I started recovery from my eating disorder, I considered going back to meat but compromised and started eating fish instead. It opened up my choices while out to eat and helped teach me how to make choices that were healthy and balanced. The loosened grip on my eating habits did make it easier for meat to tempt me, though. Earlier this year, John made spaghetti and meatballs for everyone at Echo Base and I was unexpectedly overcome with the urge to eat a meatball. And I did. And it was good. A few months later I was eating dinner with John’s family and could absolutely not resist the urge to try the meatballs which John had modeled his own after (THEY WERE SO GOOD). That was when I decided that I was done with calling myself a vegetarian.
There’s been no major changes to my diet, really. I still eat tofu more often than I eat chicken. In fact, I only really eat meat once or twice a week, if that. A lot of people acted like I would suddenly eat any animal they put in front of me which just isn’t true. I still pick apart everything and get easily disgusted by inconsistencies in my chicken breast (you know what I’m talking about, right?). I still won’t eat steak. I will admit that I am once again subject to McDonalds and In-N-Out cravings and I’d be lying if I said I was able to resist it every time. The McDonalds thing is something I’d like to change because….ya know, just not comfortable giving them money. I still have problems with the meat industry and even though I only buy meat when I’m cooking for John, I’ll go out of my way (and pocket) to buy free-range. I know that the farmers market here sells local, free range meat which I’d like to try at some point.
I don’t know. I just feel like it’s all about balance. In a perfect world, everyone would eat less meat and the meat that they did eat would be local and free range. Who knows if that’ll ever happen though. (I’m having so much trouble wrapping up this post because I pretty much wrote it with absolutely no purpose XD)
“
