Moo, Baa, LALALA

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants. - Michael Pollen, Fast Company


I have tried to think of a way to explain my strange eating habits, but I have failed for weeks. I have typed no less than six entries dedicated to my craziness, and they all fail to communicate where the crazy came from or why it exists at all. And although it probably isn’t even significant, I want to document why I am insane and where it all started… OK – so it is too late to document all of that, but I want to focus on the eating, which may be manageable.

I should have seen it coming. I am sure that my family could have predicted it. I have, in fact, been here before. Yet, it hit me from out of the blue.

Shortly after Cassie was born, I stopped eating meat. I had seen the movie Alive and had decided that the meat I was eating every day looked entirely too much like the human flesh consumed in that film. It didn’t take much to turn me off of beef, pork, chicken, and most fish. I couldn’t look at it, smell it or cook it, so it was fairly easy not to eat it. At the time I remember stating to several people that I didn’t mind the killing of the animals, I simply could not eat them. This lasted a year or two, and eventually I started eating meat again, although never with much gusto.

Maybe 7 or 8 years after the “Alive Incident” I had some tacos at a local place in Texas. The ground beef in the tacos was reddish and cool. It was enough to send me over the edge and stop the meat eating once again. I swore off of it for another year or so. And, eventually I came around to eating it again. It had nothing to do with the animals – just my inability to eat something that would have the audacity to bleed on my plate. It was more than I could handle.

Recently, one of the blog writers that I read regularly started writing about how she had made a decision not to eat meat. She was mortified by how the animals raised for food are treated, and was taking a stand. She had linked to some videos, a few articles, mentioned some books and studies. I read a few. It didn’t seem to affect me. And I, of course, thought she had lost her mind. Never mind that I lose mine all the time…that is different! I drafted several emails in my head (never intending to send any of them, of course) to her, telling her how crazy all of the animal-loving, no-meat-eating, change of lifestyle stuff was (in my ever-humble opinion). Thank GOD I never actually wrote any of them…

One day, either at a drive through or the grocery store…it is not clear anymore, I could not clear my mind of the things I had read and seen. And more importantly, I could not justify supporting the insanity that is our beef market. And that was the end of meat for me. I immediately sent the blog writer referenced above an email telling her 1) that she was crazy, and 2) that I had joined her. It started with beef, but escalated to pork, lamb, chicken and turkey quickly.

I don’t think any of this really goes back to me being an animal lover. I say this because when I was telling my husband about my hate for the meat (ha – that sounds so dirty…and sad, if you are him) I even said that if we could find a local farm that raised their animals humanely and killed them humanely that it might not bother me. But, I lied. I don’t want to be near any food that used to be walking around on four legs looking cute. It squigs me out.

Now, I don’t care if everyone else in the family eats meat. I don’t feel like they are doing something wrong. I simply cannot do it myself. I am not a member of PETA, I am not going to petition to save the animals. I am not on any crusade. I just don’t want my food to bleed.