Chepooka

I’m not saying I’m going to become a vegetarian, but.

I’ve all but given up so many of the foods that used to be staples - fast food, mexican, chinese take out, pizza delivery, frozen meals; in a word: junk. I don’t really miss much of that stuff anymore (I do get cravings for carne asada or beer & pizza, I mean I’m only human).

I’ve noticed that in learning how to make better choices, I don’t eat nearly as much meat anymore. Just too many calories and too much saturated fat to account for, easier to just skip it. I go out of my way to eat fish for the omega-3s (*sushi=yum*) and chicken is a staple.

Somewhere along the way, having switched to eating a whole lot more fruit, veggies, nuts, grains and so forth—I started *thinking* about where meat comes from. I love me some chicken burgers, but the thought of a CHICKEN makes me heave. So I start thinking about chickens and then I don’t want a chicken burger. Seriously, it’s new, this feeling. Not sure what the hell is going on with me, is this how vegetarians start out? Perfectly normal Taco-Bell regulars and then one day bam! thoughts of chickens stepping in pig poo havin’ their heads chopped off.

My new neighbors are vegetarians. So one night we got to chatting about global warming and the topic of cow farts came up. I had no idea. Do you know that cow farts contribute to more greenhouse gasses than the AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY?

Yeah and then I was reading this today on Huffington Post:

To quote some statistics from the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, the international meat industry generates roughly 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions—that’s more than transportation.

So all morning I’ve been thinking about ... you guessed it, COW FARTS. Big juicy old stanky cow farts. *hurl* *gag*

Are my days of eating a nice, juicy, medium-rare cowboy ribeye steak with creamed spinach, mashed potatoes, and a slightly dirty stoli martini with three blue-cheese stuffed olives while listening to live jazz music days OVER?

I’m just not sure I can go *that far*. But I’ll definitely be cutting back.

Posted by chepooka on 06/07 at 11:48 AM

Comments

I have a similar problem with seafood. I think about how polluted and disgusting the oceans are… how ships dump their poop and garbage out there… and how the fish are basically just saturating in filth and it makes me want to hurl. When I lived in Spain, we had to tour a fish market as part of a mandatory Intercultural Relations Course and I just about threw up right there in the market. It was vile. Then, hearing from my husband who had to swim in the bay those fish were pulled from about dodging human waste, ugh, makes me soo sick. Oh, and not to mention the dead Moroccan bodies that washed up in the summers. It’s hard to want to put something in my mouth that has been saturating and possibly feeding off of that.

Thinking about chicken makes me gag too but since I don’t eat seafood and beef is too fatty, it’s basically all I have so I just try really hard not to think about it.

Posted by Betty on 06/07 at 12:27 PM

*tiny tear* maybe it would be easier to just eat nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. You could live on that, right?

Posted by chepooka on 06/07 at 07:01 PM

I once gave up red meat for 6 years, and I didn’t really “miss” it all that much (except for the occasional craving for roast beef or sirloin tips… yum). It was easy enough to ignore those when thinking about the “mad cow” scares and the health problems you can get from eating too much red meat.

I can’t stand seafood. This puzzles just about everyone I have ever shared a meal with, but all too often seafood is served looking an awful lot like it did when it was still alive. If a meal shows up with the face still on it, I can’t watch!

Chicken is another story. I can’t begin to fathom how many chickens I have consumed in my lifetime. If there was a Chicken Hell, I am sure that all chickens alive today would be hoping that I would end up there.

I have thought about vegetarianism for lots of reasons, but I don’t think that I could pull it off. I could probably give up everything but chicken (chicken wings, chicken quesidillas, chicken alfredo, chicken caesar salad… *drool*). Of course I have to try not to think about where it came from, but the chicken you pick up at the grocery store doesn’t really resemble the chickens you see running around on the farm, so it’s much easier to delude myself that way.

At least you can rely on fruits and vegetables to provide a guilt-free meal, so long as you don’t dwell on the fact that the potatoes have eyes and the corn has ears…

now that I think about it, maybe your peanut butter and jelly diet is the way to go!