Vegetarianism

Back in my formative years I ate a lot of meat. Being a Cameron, I had an absurd appetite and would eat multiple burgers in one sitting - four fastfood burgers or two big homemade burgers. For a while there Mom had to keep a bread bag full of salami sandwiches with ketchup in the fridge for me, I got hungry so often. I never got fat, all the food just went vertical and I finally stopped at 5'10". Around that time I read Gandhi's autobiography, as well as a book called Diet for a New America by John Robbins, and along with a general inclination toward hippie-ness I started thinking about vegetarianism. I went veggie and felt better for it, more energy, and I was pretty passionate for a number of years.

When I was 21, I was dating this one fellow whose father is a large Moravian man with very traditional tastes. A decent man for sure, but he did his best to taunt me into consuming beer and pork at family dinners. I don't like beer (sorry, it's just never worked for me), and didn't eat pork. At this point I was feeling like I didn't have as much energy as I hoped and thought perhaps I needed a bit more protein. The turning point was in Prague when I had a cup of soup made with beef broth. It was fine, I suppose, but after that I couldn't claim vegetarianism as an excuse not to accept lovingly prepared meaty food. Since that point I ate meat on occasion - sometimes for peer pressure reasons and once in a while because I was in the mood.

But to be entirely truthful, I don't really like meat. My body doesn't crave it, and I do well without. I do love pepperoni, but that hardly counts, because that is all spices and grease and doesn't taste like meat. Even as a kid I'd drown my steak in ketchup to make it palatable, and mostly tried to like it because Dad liked it so much and I wanted to be cool like him. Clearly it comes more naturally to some than others.

So I'd been thinking about the question again. The clincher for me was something I read in a Vogue magazine, of all places, and it was a thought that my conscience couldn't shake. The thought was: we don't need to eat meat to live or even to thrive, which means that something dies just to suit our tastebuds. If it's a matter of life and death, like it has been in times past, I understand killing to live. Mother nature is cruel and creatures kill to live every day. But in this day and age, it is completely unnecessary for us humans. I think it's hypocritical not to be willing to face up to the reality of how things get to us for our consumption. If a cow were standing there and someone handed me a gun and said "you want a burger? Shoot the cow," I'd say "that's okay, I'll have a salad," and name the cow and take him home.

I accepted my feelings about all this, as a getting back to my roots sort of thing, and went vegetarian again. One of the benefits of saying "I'm a vegetarian" is that then people won't be offended when you say you decline their duck pate or plate of pork. Just "cutting back" on meat is harder than being vegetarian because of the social pressure.

Also - when I said that I didn't have as much energy as I wanted after years of vegetarianism - I didn't find that eating meat helped with that. What helped was eating well in general, cutting back on sugar and having more direction and focus in my life - feeling excited about what I was doing. Some energy is physical and some is mental, and I feel quite energized these days as a vegetarian.

Another thing is that the first time I went veggie, I got very negative responses to the declaration: bewildered stares, taunts about eating squirrel and assorted animals and "why would you do that?" as though I had lost my faculties.

Now I get "good for you" and "I should do that." Weird, huh?