Reasons for being a vegetarian August 30, 2010
Who knew that what you feed your face with could be such a big deal? I have been eating vegetarian-ish over the last few years and also seem to be enthralled by dramatic food and animal rights books. Even celebrities are going vegan.
Everywhere I turn people are chatting about their eating philosophies and sharing their stories and thoughts. It got me to thinking about my reasons for going veggie and here I shall share them with the ether.
I don’t really like cooking meat. It’s slimy and takes planning to prepare and can be expensive. I would always thaw it out and forget about it and have to throw it away. I actually really like vegetables. I know, I know, that’s freakish in and of itself. But, seriously, after years of being afraid of tofu and any vegetable that wasn’t coated in cheese sauce, I now know you can prepare veggies to have great flavor and to be satisfying with just a little effort, and not more effort than it takes to cook a meal with meat. Legumes are such efficient, nutritious morsels. I really don’t like the way that “Corporate America” influences what we eat. From the overly processed, infinite shelf life, boxed flour and salt concoctions to terrible factory farming practices, why should some company’s profit influence what I nourish myself with? I’m not saying it doesn’t taste good, a lot of it tastes pretty fantastic. I’m also not saying I never eat it. Have you ever found yourself doing something only because that’s the way you’ve always done it and you never thought to consider it could be different? That’s how I think many of us are about food.
Have you ever noticed how your appetite expands after Thanksgiving dinner? When I started to give up “cheeseburgers” I realized that I didn’t really need them. Occasionally I craved them, especially if I was hungover, but I didn’t really need them. Then I went to a yoga training where the food was mostly vegan. The first few days I ate two huge plates of food per meal and by the end of the week, my appetite did something miraculous, it shrank. It did so even while I was exercising insane amounts each day. And so I started questioning my relationship with the bounty of our earth.
All that being said, I realize it does take initiative to learn how to nourish yourself well and that many people might not ever find the time or the spark to question it or change it. Many will probably go their whole lives doing a variation of what their parents did, or what their friends do, and won’t mind it, and won’t suffer terribly bad for doing so. I also realize that some people seem to need more protien and some have such an emotional attachment to meat, to them I say more power to ya. I only know that I don’t want to support corporate b.s., I don’t want to support treating animals like crap, I don’t want to create more negative karma in the world, and I want to live a long healthful life, and for me, eating more veggies than animal products seems like an easy way to start.
Happy Monday. May your food nourish your body and mind today. In case your curious, some books that have influenced my diet include Diet for a New America
