Hello, my name is Vanessa and I’m a flexitarian. After watching “What the Health,” the Netflix documentary, I, like many others I know, jumped on the “pro-vegan” bandwagon. It inspired me to breathe vegan, live vegan and be vegan. In fact, I WAS vegan for two whole days. I COULDN’T do it. Now, I’m not saying that being vegan is hard to do or that it’s a horrible diet choice, but I definitely recommend that you do more research and make sure you are vegan for your own reasons and not because everyone is doing it; otherwise, you’ll probably be like me and quit after two days. Personally, I quit the vegan diet because I love meat too much and to just exclude it from my diet completely was torture. It’s been a part of my diet since as long as I can remember. To rid it from my diet meant no longer indulging in chicken salads, kalua pork tacos, a 6-ounce filet mignon with A1 sauce or beef tacos and sushi.
So, after another failed diet, I decided to research exactly where I fit in on the diet spectrum. I thought long and hard about my daily diet habits and I realized that, for the most part, I eat like a vegetarian, but about one to three times a month I indulge in some meat. Soon after I quit my vegan diet, I sat at my desk, opened up my laptop, clicked on Safari, and literally typed in “mostly eat vegetarian but sometimes eat meat” in the search bar. About 15,000,000 results came up after I hit enter, but the first word that caught my attention was “flexitarian.” I thought to myself, “WTF is a flexitarian?” I had never heard of that word, so I clicked on the first result that popped up.
According to the article, The Spruce, “Flexitarian is a term recently coined to describe those who eat a mostly vegetarian diet, but occasionally eat meat.” Another term that is often interchangeable with “flexitarian” is “semi-vegetarian.” After reading a couple of articles, I found out that the “flexitarian” term has been around for awhile now, but didn’t make it to the big leagues until 2008. It’s often a term that vegetarians don’t welcome because, well, it’s pretty confusing to tell someone, “I mostly eat vegetarian, but I sometimes eat meat,” and most will respond with, “vegetarians eat meat?” They don’t, and that’s where most vegetarians have a problem with “flexitarians/semi-vegetarians”, but that’s a topic for another day. Either way, if you’re like me – someone who eats vegetarian for the most part, but sometimes indulges in a little taco, burrito, steak, chicken, and sushi, well, then you just might be a “flexitarian.” So, welcome! The best part is you get to decide what your “occasional” meat consumption is. Whether it’s once a day, week, month, it’s all up to you! If you don’t know what diet you identify with, then don’t worry, there are plenty out there you can research, test out, mix-and-match, just make sure you’re choosing it for you! Happy eating!
If you’re curious, just want more information, or have any questions about being a “flexitarian,” then I definitely recommend doing some research and starting with the article mentioned! It sums up “Flexitarian” in a very easy way! (: