Changes

It wasn't a tough decision to make, and looking back, it seems as if I was headed there all along. About a month and a half ago, I became a vegetarian.

How is this a pre-ordained path? I'll re-examine for you some of the steps that led me here. Keep in mind that I'm a picky eater to begin with. There have been a long list of things that I don't eat. I don't like eggs, and will only ate them when they disappeared into a baked good. Most times, I don't like ground beef. Chicken is often prepared in very boring, tasteless ways. I hate fish. I don't like sausage, and refused to try things that have sausage in it.

Additionally, I knew that animal products are generally high in fat, lower in nutrient density, and combine that with the poverty I experienced in my twenties, I am not as experienced in cooking meat, and tried to add to my anorexic cooking skills and repertoire with vegetables more than with meat. I did this by venturing into vegetarian, and even vegan cooking. I owned no fewer than 4 or 5 vegetarian/vegan cookbooks when I went veggie, and already was experienced enough to have favorites out of each book. My CSA membership this summer took me a bit further into these experiments as well, forcing me to cook more with veggies.

Finally, I love animals. I love my dogs. One of my hobbies is reading books about dog behavior and psych, and a lot of these books also add info about the intelligence, emotions, etcetera, concerning other animals including the kinds of animals that we eat in the standard American diet. This has slowly added to my knowledge of those animals, simmering away at my conscience. I read a couple books about pigs in particular. But when I read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safron Foer this fall, I finally could not take it any more. The explicit passages about the common practices in slaughterhouses and the factory farming industry pushed me the rest of the way. As I sat crying about how live pigs are tortured by slaughterhouse workers, it was time. I became a vegetarian.

I have been experimenting with more new recipes, getting more new books, and learning a lot about nutrition as well as cooking in general. I've dropped another couple of pounds. I've learned about the American food supply system things that I wish I didn't know. But as I look back on the last few weeks, I don't miss meat. I've cut eggs out of my diet as well, and am still eating cheese and sour cream, but I'm trying to eat less of them, and attempting to find alternatives as much as I can. I'm not ready to be vegan yet, but I'm doing something now rather than nothing at all. I'm glad to have a kinder diet, a healthier diet, a greener diet.