I grew up eating meat. It is as simple as that.
Yet, my family never ate a lot of meat and when we did, my mom made sure it was high quality meat from animals that had been treated well throughout their lives. I had a phase as a child, where I did not want to have any meat. I then started eating meat again but could only stomach it if I did not know what kind of animal I was eating. As soon as someone mentioned that it was beef I was eating, I immediately had to put my fork and knife down, because I could not get the image of a cow out of my head. I moved on from that phase to then only eat meat from animals that were not too ugly or not too cute – what I mean by that is I would not eat animals like shrimp or lobster because I could not stand the sight of them and I would not eat lamb or calf because they were too cute.
Eventually, I just put a stop to it all-together and decided to become Vegetarian.
I have not had meat for five months now and I must say I do not really miss it.
I did not decide to become Vegetarian because I do not like the taste of meat – I actually do. I always enjoyed a good steak!
I simply believe that meat is not something we should mindelessy eat all the time. I believe it should be more of a “luxury”. I do not think we need to eat meat every single meal. I completely understand if you want to eat your steak or have some pepperoni on your pizza, but I think it is important to remember that you are eating an animal.
The fact that there is salami in stores that costs less than two dollars is sad to me. I do not even want to think about what kind of life that animal must have had. I would rather that animal had a good life and the salami would be more expensive. Of course that means some people could not afford to eat their salami every day, but I do not think that should be an issue. I cannot understand why people feel the need to shovel meat into themselves without thinking about it.
I think it would be better if meat were more expensive and we would have it less times a week than it being super cheap just so we can put salami on our pizza every single time. I do not want to judge anyone eating meat with this article. I just want you to consider if it really is necessary to eat all the meat you might be consuming or if it is possible to cut down here and there to then be able to afford a high-quality piece of meat just twice a week maybe. Instead of cheap meat every day
If you are someone that finds it difficult to cut down on your meat consumption, maybe try to start with a meat-free meal a day. Increase that to a meat-free day every week and then work your way up from there.
Being a Vegetarian, I always get asked why I do not eat meat and sometimes people also feel the need to add their own comments to my answer. Three things that actually makes me mad when people say it are:
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I do not trust people that do not eat meat!
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I do not understand how you do it – I need meat!
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You won’t make a difference
I just explained to you why I do not eat meat – because I do not believe the way many animals are treated today is correct and I think that is a very valid reason. Maybe just think about you can reduce your meat intake a little too. Saying you simply do not trust me because I am trying to be more conscious about the way my actions affect animals (and the environment as meat product is a big strain on it!) does not make sense to me. Lastly, saying that I will not make a difference by not eating meat is not a good thing to say in my opinion. Of course, I am just one person and I might not make the biggest difference, but there are a lot of Vegetarians and we all together do make a difference!
Lastly, I recommend this video to you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxvQPzrg2Wg It is not very long and very much worth checking out! (No gory images – I promise. Just an explanation of how meat consumption affects our environment).
There are so many good vegetarian meals out there – I promise.