I am excited about this new venture. I was raised as a vegetarian and I started eating meat regularly when my mother started eating meat because she had become extremely sick and needed to do something to get her health back in order. Eating meat did seem to help a lot. I'm not going to go into that, I'm basically saying I have a foundation for vegetarianism. When I became a vegetarian later in life I was very strict, I did not eat gelatin or anything with animal products in it except for cheese and eggs which I did eat (just not animal parts.) Nothing you would kill an animal for, shall we say. Then of course I started eating meat again. It was a reaction partially to the environment in which I grew up in where there were these militant vegans everywhere being incredibly pushy and horrible to anyone who didn't see the way that they did. So internally I suppose it pissed me off to the point of not wanting to listen to any vegans. They had always been assholes to me and by christ they were irritating little fuckers!
So here we are today. I am going to become a vegan. Guess what pushy asshole vegans, I would have done this years ago if you hadn't alienated me as a child/adult!
So now that I'm able to think for myself and look at how I want to live my life and change my life and how to live my life with morals and priorities that I have, I do believe that being a vegan fits all of those things. I am an environmentalist and meat farming is an ecological disaster. Morally I don't believe in killing, harming or torturing animals and meat goes into all of those categories. And I would like to just feel healthier and I don't think I need dairy to be healthy so the last thing would be eggs. Eggs are from chickens who are so often just treated terribly, plus even egg farms that don't produce meat, are huge polluters. Just look at the Chesapeake Bay. (http://www.thebaynet.com/news/index.cfm/fa/viewstory/story_ID/12976, http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2011/07/chesapeake-dead-zone-agriculture)
I will say I have never in my life, knowingly, bought non-free range eggs. However when you go out to eat, or if you eat things with egg in the ingredients, then you are most likely getting the eggs from the horribly treated chickens who have been de-beaked and stuffed into tiny cages where they suffer for the entirety of their lives. So, I say, if I can eat healthy and be healthy as a vegan, why the fuck not?!
I will say a big reason that I've decided now I can do this, is that there are a lot more options and a lot more sources for information than when I was younger as well. I always wished to go back to being a vegetarian but didn't know how to eat healthy and get all the proper nutrients that I needed because I've never really had a normal eating schedule or been taught what I need to live on. It's always been, you need protein, and of course the idea in this country is that the only way to get protein is to eat animals.
My parents are all for the idea but they don't believe that I can do it without losing out on some essential vitamins because I don't know how. This is a valid concern I think, especially when you are told that the best sources of protein are meat and the best source of calcium is dairy, but I actually do know about food. I know this is an issue though because a lot of the vegan's when I was younger really were horribly unhealthy people. I think they did it because it was a trend and not because it meant something to them, which is probably why they were so fucking annoying! But now it's so easy to be a vegan if you live most places in the U.S. and even in the U.K. Of course there are some serious strongholds for the 'meat for every meal' crowd who don't understand why anyone would give that up, but it is ok to also just not bring it up. I believe what I believe and even though I am going vegan I will still fight for better farming practices because I understand that it's not everyone's thing. I think at the very least, farms could be polluting as little as possible and treating their animals well. At the minimal very very least. We should have standards in this country. I think what makes the best society is having extremely high standards especially when they are so easily obtainable.
No comments:
Post a Comment