What is it about a big juicy steak that provokes the drool gland like nothing else? I mean, when you think about what a steak actually is- a chunk of muscle- it’s not very appetizing. What we buy in the store is far removed (both literally and figuratively) from the animal it was once a part of. I bet if we had to kill an animal, slice the skin open, and carve out that section of thigh or butt ourselves, most of us would pass with a “no, thanks, changed my mind.” Of course, there are some rough folks (like several members of my family, for instance) who relish the dissection of a dead, decomposing animal. No telling how many deer parts have become jerky in my dad’s dehydrator. And I use to eat as much of that stuff as anyone. Now that I’ve gone herbivore, my philosophy of food has changed drastically. But it took a long time. The United States is a veritable cesspool when it comes to nutrition, with the Dirty South as the epicenter.
Up until two years ago, having grown up in a very carnivorous home and believing a meal couldn’t be complete without a large slab of meat somewhere on the plate, I had always considered vegetarian-type people as wimpy weirdos. I imagined them frolicking in fields with their little bunny rabbit friends, sharing lettuce and carrots, smoking doobies, and singing songs about loving everyone. Picky eaters have always ticked me off anyways, and vegetarians, in my opinion, were the worst of the pickys.
My first contact with real vegetarians was in Costa Rica in the summer of 2004. My Spanish teacher there gave our class a fun assignment to help us practice the command form of verbs: we were to form groups of four and find a recipe to prepare in front of the class. The fun was immediately sucked out of the project when I found my group to be composed of a vegetarian, a vegan, a girl who was allergic to soy, and me, a person who had always prided herself on the fact that she could and would eat anything. So we went with the only thing that everyone in our group would consume: simple fruit smoothies. Regardless of the fact that during our presentation our borrowed blender from the 1940s blew up and oozed our smoothie mix all over the floor, I will always remember that group project because it cemented my opinion of picky eaters as total wackadoodles.
I remember seeing protestors in front of McDonalds in Madrid, picketing with large glossy posters of cows hanging by their hooves whose throats had been slit and live chickens with almost all their feathers plucked out and their deformed feet grown into the wire floors of their cages. It was enough to put anyone off McNuggets for awhile. Anyone more squeamish than me, of course. I marched past the protestors and promptly purchased the largest cheeseburger that the fast food behemoth offered, and then I sat on the sidewalk and smugly ate it. I can really be a huge prick sometimes.
However, as my previous post described, when, seemingly overnight, I fell into the gastrointestinal hell that food would become for me, I started trying to think a little more out of the box. After making the connection between dairy products and explosive diarrhea, I began researching dairy alternatives. My research snowballed, with me discovering one thing after another about how wrong I had been concerning nutrition. It was very jarring to learn that the USDA didn’t really give a rip about my health, and were basically only concerned with lining their own pockets by helping the big meat and dairy companies sell as much as they could, no matter how many antibiotics, chemicals, and hormones wound up in my fried chicken. It made me friggin mad. And then the world of veganism sort of fell into my lap. I thought, if I was going to cut dairy out of my diet, I might as well go full out, balls to the wall, as they say.
Now I find myself almost two years into a strange sort of modified vegetarianism that has fluctuated and evolved according to my knowledge of nutrition, the funds available on my debit card, and truthfully, the amount that I cared at any given moment. Sometimes it’s easy to be a total vegan, scoffing at any product injected with animal matter and laughing into my cheese- and bacon bit-free salad at the fatties who wobble by with chicken fat still dribbling down their chins. And then sometimes I’m doing good if I’m able to turn down that third plateful of birthday cake and Doritos. It’s a daily battle of wills. The will of my brain versus the will of my mouth. Brain’s been winning more than mouth lately. As long as I stay away from the ice cream freezer in Wal-Mart.
As far as meat goes, I honestly don’t find it all that appetizing anymore. I’ve lost the taste for it. And I’m glad. I’m not really the PETA type of vegetarian, though I am sickened by needless animal cruelty. I would just prefer to keep my body as free of crap as possible and avoid obesity, diabetes, cancer, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, mental illness, and a slew of other unpleasant side effects that are common to hardcore meat eaters. You know, it’s true what they say: you are what you eat. And If I eat crap, then I become crap. I respect myself too much for that.
My current food philosophy is this: Eat what you want to eat and leave me alone to eat what I want to eat. I won’t judge you for the nastiness that you put into your own mouth as long as you return the courtesy. Ok, that’s a lie. I most certainly will judge you. But I’ll try my best not to say anything about it.
