I was raised eating meat. Forced to eat it even though I mostly didn’t like it. Not because my mom was a bad cook, in fact, just the opposite. I just never liked meat, even as a small child.
OK, bacon is tasty, but honestly, who doesn’t like bacon? And my mom’s Italian Beef was awesome, but mostly because of the loaf bread it lay on that was soaked with the savory gravy. When we had a roast, I only wanted the end piece; it was small and had all the seasoning on it. It’s the same reason I liked the skinny ribs. She tried to make things palatable so I’d eat them, like putting applesauce on pork chops. But other things, like ham, I just refused to eat. Poultry was more palatable for me but I never desired or craved it. I was a super picky eater and didn’t like eggs or most vegetables outside of corn and some raw vegetables so I understand my mother’s need to want to make me eat something. It was the 70’s. She was a single mom raising four kids. Vegetables came in a can (ewww) and vegetarianism was one of those things associated with hippies, along with drugs and free sex, or at least that was the perception, and my parents weren’t having any of that!
As an adult, I learned that I didn’t have to eat meat. WOW! How liberating that was, despite being so restricting. It was 1989 and I was in Austria, a very meat-centric country. When lived in California it was super easy to be vegetarian, but then I moved back to the East coast where people considered me a freak for not being a carnivore. Some people actually used that word, too. I’ll never understand why some people get so offended by what I choose to eat or not eat. It has zero bearing on them. I’ve come to realize that they’re probably the same people that feel the need to control who other people sleep with, pray to, or what women do with their bodies. Clearly, they have so little going in their own lives that they feel the need to opine and deride the lifestyles and choices of others.
If they weren’t negatively judging me, they made covert apologies for eating meat by explaining how little meat they actually ate. To be honest, I didn’t care. I wasn’t judging them. I didn’t eat meat because I didn’t like it. “I’m not a PETA freak,” I’d explain. I did care about the health effects of eating a lot of fatty foods like sausages and loads of red meat, but I tried to keep it in perspective. I’d say to folks that suddenly seemed to feel self-conscious about their eating habits upon learning I was a vegetarian, “I’m not sleeping with you so it doesn’t matter to me.”
When I first declared myself a vegetarian, I didn’t know anything about it and still didn’t like a lot of vegetables. My diet consisted of a lot of pasta and pb&j…and HoHos. I’d unwittingly become what my coworker dubbed as, “a carbotarian.” It was true, a revelation, and I vowed to start eating things that I didn’t like that were good for me. Like beans, mushrooms, and most vegetables. Now I love them and eat them willingly and often. I’ve always liked fish and crustaceans so I continued to eat them. Being pescatarian made things a little easier in states where vegetarianism was still considered one of those “left coast” things. Awareness about the overfishing of blue crabs, the horrible process of gathering shrimp (plus they’re high in cholesterol), the much lowered nutritional value of any farm-raised seafood, and the cruelty of cooking lobsters, caused me to pretty much quit eating seafood. I still eat finned fish, just not very often.
With that said, between my ever-increasing awareness of the negative factors and impact of raising and eating animals, and the fact that I’m now gluten-sensitive and lactose intolerant, I’m well on my way to being vegan. But, I’ll never be fully vegan, and here’s why.
6. I don’t like extremes or extremists of any sort.
5. Despite my lactose intolerance, I love cheese, butter and ice cream, and things made with them. Therefore, I want to preserve my right to suffer the consequences so I can enjoy their tastiness.
4. It’s incredibly difficult to be vegan 100% of the time. I just don’t have that much energy to put into figuring out what I am going to eat. Plus, I love sushi.
3. I see nothing wrong with consuming Kerry Gold butter, or other similar products procured from grass-fed, free-range animals.
2. While I do support a lot of the principles of vegans and PETA members, and am grateful for them raising awareness of their causes, I don’t agree when they try to alter the natural habits of animals because they don’t align with theirs. Chickens should not be only grain-fed. In nature, chickens will eat insects, which is part of the balance of life. In addition, I am 1000% against forcing dogs to be vegetarian. It’s not natural for them. If you don’t want to eat meat, fine, but don’t impose your views on your domestic pets. Get a parakeet or a hamster if you feel that strongly about it.
- Sugar vs. Honey. This is my #1 reason why I will never be vegan and cannot support them 100%. I will never understand why vegans think that it’s better to plow thousands of acres of land to grow fields of sugar cane, and build sugar mills that produce toxic fumes and waste that is then dumped into our air and oceans. Red tide in Florida is caused by this. It kills all forms of sea life by the thousands which can be found washed ashore on miles upon miles of beaches. It also makes the air difficult to breathe without choking. It has killed off 93% of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Not to mention that sugar causes cancer and all sorts of ailments. Big sugar denies this and has the money and resources to squash attempts to prove it. Yet another reason to boycott sugar. So a few bees are killed in the process of gathering honey, so what? They only live for 60 days anyhow. If it means that fields of flowers and flowering trees have to be planted so bees can pollinate and do their thing, I think it’s a much better option. Without bees the planet is dead anyhow.
I’ve been a pescatarian for more than half my life. Vegetarian and vegan options have become relatively mainstream and I’m grateful for that. No, I haven’t been 100% true to it all this time. I still eat bacon once in a blue moon, when the opportunity presents itself. And there were those times in the early 90s when I was living in London when, once the pubs closed, the only food options were a yummy gyro or an expensive, sit-down, Indian meal. Then there were those Spicy Chicken Sandwiches from Wendys that I craved when I was pregnant. When traveling I’ll taste unusual things, like a bite of a camel burger, as long as they aren’t at odds with my moral feelings about eating them (such as dog, horse, cephalopods, or whale). I have yet to try anything that will sway me away from my pescatarian diet. My point is, while it’s all very good to have an awareness that goes beyond yourself, to the welfare of animals and the planet as a whole, sometimes you have to think outside of the box created by extremism. The middle road is the most balanced.
The Raw Me 