Not Proud

[poliphilo]

I've started eating meat. It's France that's to blame. You scour the menu for the vegetarian option and all they've got is crudites- you know, raw carrot and zucchini and stuff- so I made a decision before we went-  for the next five days I'm a carnivore.

What I hadn't been prepared for was how my energy levels went up. 

But I'm going to insist we buy meat that's been raised ethically. That's my quarrel with meat-eating- not that I'm sentimental about animals, because I'm not- but that industrial farming is disgusting. 

Last night we had lamb steaks- in a mushroom sauce- with mashed potato. 

I'd forgotten food could be such fun.

Comments

[dadi.livejournal.com]

I have started to eat meat last year again, after 15 years of vegetarianism, when I discovered about my gluten allergy. You simply CANT live healthily without cereal AND meat/fish. Not to talk about the impossibility to find anything to eat at all while traveling.
And I have made the same experience you write about, regarding the energy levels.

[white_hart]

I was a vegetarian for several years in my late teens and early twenties, but gave it up ten and a half years ago, mostly because I was craving meat so badly I thought my body must need it somehow.

However, I'll only buy ethically reared meat. The meat we eat at home comes either from the local organic butcher or from farmers' markets, where I can buy it direct from the people who raised the animals. If I'm eating out I will generally have the vegetarian option, unless it's a really good restaurant where I know the meat will have been ethically sourced (ethical meat really does taste better).

Occasionally I think about becoming vegetarian again, but although I still wouldn't be supporting factory farms I'd also not be supporting the ethical meat producers, and I think that by doing that I'm actually making more of a statement.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

All of these things are ethical trade-offs. If we make a decision to eat one kind of food over another, we're privileging one form of life over another, aren't we? What about all those embryonic wheat and soy plants that will never be born because we've converted them to pasta and tofu?

Some food producers blur the ethically-raised label pretty badly, too. I hardly think that a chicken who's been allowed out of his coop once qualifies as a "free range chicken," but some marketers do.

My grandparents had a farm, so I've taken a chicken or two to the chop.

[zephyrcrow.livejournal.com]

Coincidentally, I have also become a meat-eater temporarily. I have little money right now so I eat whatever people will spare me.

If you want to make your food more interesting, I suggest trying kinds of ethnic cuisine you are unfamiliar with! Or simply grabbing things from the spice aisle of the grocery store and trying them out.

[oakmouse]

Like many of the others here, I was a vegetarian for a time (although in my case due to poverty --- we had two people and a cat to feed on a budget of $10/week, equivalent to about $25 or $30/week now). I ended up going back to eating meat when I could afford to do so, but made the same choice about ethically raised meat. Neither my husband nor I can properly assimilate certain nutrients from vegetable sources, he because of an inherited digestive defect, me because I have malabsorption syndrome plus allergies to dairy and the entire wheat family of grains. When we were vegetarians, I used to get "cheeseburger dreams" in which I ate one hamburger or cheeseburger after another. I learned from experience that it was my body asking for iron, which I can only assimilate properly from red meat.

Now we eat meat about four or five meals a week, but we eat ethically raised meat when we have any choice. We also try to eat organic where possible, although the budget has the last word there more often than I would like. Counsels of perfection aside, we figure that since all life feeds on other lives, the best we can do ethically is to eat plants and animals who had a good quality of life and received decent treatment. As a pagan, I don't differentiate qualitatively between the animal and the vegetable; they're all alive and all deserve respect and gratitude for feeding us.

I agree with Ailz about chickens --- nasty little brutes! I feel no compunction about eating them, so long as they were decently treated in life. Which is more than they do to one another!

[oakmouse]

Incidentally, we're both healthier as omnivores. We both had all kinds of minor health problems go away or drop down to barely visible levels when we returned to meat eating. Energy better, fewer colds, better overall vitality, etc. Of course, adequate nutrition has a lot to do with that in our case, which leads back to the issue of assimilation.

[solar-diablo.livejournal.com]

Like so much else, meat-eating is about moderation, and making good choices. If people truly understood what a portion size looks like (same size as a deck of playing cards for a piece of beef) they'd be able to incorporate meat into their diets without adversely affecting their heart or waistline. we just eat too damn much of it for our own good. Make the decision to buy organic/steroid-free meat and the health risks go down even further.

[currawong.livejournal.com]

We could never give up meat, but we buy only organic meat wherever possible, knowing it's been raised in a field instead of a cage or tiny pen ... same with eggs. Our local produce is to die for.

[rosamicula.livejournal.com]

I try to eat ethoically raised meat because it is, erm ethical, bit also because it tastes better.

I once went vegetarian for six weeks for a bet, but by the end of it I was really craving meat and constantly tired. Cereals make me sleepy, bloated and slow-witted. I was almost convinced by the 'eat right for your blood type diet' which claims that Abs like me are desecened form nomads with no agrarian tradition so I should avoid wheat and live on venison and goat and lots of dairy.