I became a vegetarian a few months into my first year at Eckerd. I met more vegetarians at Eckerd in those first few months than in the rest of my life combined, and after reading chapter seven I'm not surprised. Herzog mentions a study done by Time that found that 60% of vegetarians had seafood, poultry, or red meat within the last 24-hours. Now as embarrassing as this feels for vegetarians at first glance, it must be noted that many vegetarians still eat fish and so many may have just eaten fish recently. It also does not say how much meat was eaten or where it came from. OK so maybe I'm trying to give them the benefit of the doubt and make vegetarians seem more purist to their ideals than the poll makes it seem, perhaps they did all sneak a steak dinner in the night before.
But I want to go into why I became a vegetarian for a second and talk about why I feel a little hopeless about the situation and why giving up my omnivore tendencies nowhere near solved the problem that got me invested in vegetarianism.
I took Introduction to Environmental Studies freshman year and we talked about food and where it comes from. Mostly we talked about how far away it usually comes from and how meat is the worst instance of food traveling too far. Innumerable gallons of gas were transporting animals to plants to be inhumanely killed and then to supermarkets to sit on the shelves of Wal-Marts, Giants, Publixes, and many other stores nationwide. I had already heard, for years, about how poorly the animals we eat were treated, but now that I had also found out how detrimental all this processing and transporting was to the environment I was done. I decided from then on any meat I ate would be "happy" (sorry for the anthropomorphizing, I was younger and more naive then) until it died and was locally raised and slaughtered. I have had only a few opportunities to eat meat this way since I made this decision and to be honest, on the whole, I don't miss it much.
But I will tell you a secret, something I would never want to tell my family, I do miss meat sometimes and struggle with the decision even knowing the strong reasons I made it. Which makes me wonder, as I have seen many other fellow vegetarians falter, are there any real vegetarians? But now I know that most fruits and veggies go through the same journey meat does, too much transportation, too much artificial treatment. So what does that leave us to eat? I'm not comfortable considering only the things I could catch or forage for here on campus... squirrels.... birds... grass? I'll have to find a less drastic, but not Wal- Mart or Publix answer.
- Cassi Lyon
I as well was shocked that most vegetarians that participated in the poll had eaten meat. As I read that I paused and pondered about all the different reasons why people stop eating meat, as well as the numerous reasons they would have eaten meat with in the last 24 hours. The end result lead me to see that we should not judge those people who say they are vegetarians yet eat meat every now and then. I compared it to New Years resolutions, people always say they are going to eat better, exercise, or spend more time with family. Majority of people fall short of doing their resolution everyday and that is okay because we all stray from the goal sometimes.
ReplyDeleteI respect the reason you became a vegetarian, along with being able to commit. I am a huge meat eater and though I have cut out how much I eat meat, I do not think I would ever be able to stop eating it forever. After watching the film today and seeing the amount of oil needed to feed my meat addiction I feel eating locally should be my new goal. But then as you mentioned the food industry then turns into a vicious cycle of all foods use oil to be delivered, so then what?!
If anything this book is leading me to question the decisions I make in all aspects of my human-animal relationship.
-Kelsey Spaulding
I too went through the decision of being a vegetarian, and after seeing Food Inc the first time I went through a huge moral dilemma. I was appalled by everything I saw and wanted to make a change right then and there, but then I felt so useless. I started buying organic for my family, but I couldn't get them to make drastic changes like I wanted to. I could cut meat again, but I had already been down that road. So what could I do? I wrote letters to congress and tried to do research before I felt completely hopeless. How do you make change happen?
ReplyDeleteThen I realized the idea of small victories. Maybe I can't give up meat everyday of my life, but I can one or two days a week. I can have a meatless monday and wednesday, and that small little step can make a difference and is something everyone can do. I can buy local seasonal foods from a market and that is making an impact, and simply educating people. I can be smarter about where I get my food. Like the video states you can make a difference three times a day.
-Heather Gosnell