Letters from a Young Radical

This is a really informative and persuasive talk by a meat-eater (hehe, always sounds like yer talking about dinosaurs, right?) who thinks we REALLY should eat less meat. These are the practical and political arguments that I feel won me over, and are more powerful to some people than the "animals are our friends" argument. Don't get me wrong, I could never kill an animal, but I'm not against eating them. I just agree with Mark that we don't NEED to eat them, the animal abuse that goes into the process of mass meat production is hardly worth it, and the polution and health risks are even less so.

So I wanted to update on my vegetarian goal. I definitely have not achieved it. I've done better some months than others. What I have achieved is that I haven't bought meat for eating at home since I set the goal, and I've discovered a lot of REALLY tasty veggie products that I like quite a bit better than meat.

What's hard about "going vegetarian"?

1. Telling people you're visiting. Seems all this summer I got grumbles and teasing and "well I already made it so I guess we'll have to make something else for you" - general annoyance


2. Going out to eat. I love going out to eat, that's one problem. The other is that there are still so few "normal" (as in not vegan or veg specifically) restaurants & bars that only have a couple options for vegetarians - usually salads and sometimes soup. If you're ok with fish, sometimes fish. I think the place downstairs has an ok veggie burger. But still 95% of the menu items contain meat. I really hope to find a way to push for change in this area (this and smaller portions please!!). There are tons of awesome and hella tasty recipes, even ones you can grease and gravy up to your pleasure (though I'd prefer you didn't), so hopefully in the near future, restaurants will start getting a clue.


3. Someone else ordered it. This is definitely cheating but I figure if I didn't pay for it, I'm not being part of the problem. Yeah, I'm bad.

So I haven't done an AMAZING job, but I've definitely eaten less meat, noticed more about what I eat, discovered some hella tasty alternatives, and I think if everyone started thinking consciously about this, we'd be off to a good start. Poof.