About a year ago, I decided to not eat beef, pork, or chicken anymore, and I have been pretty good at doing so. Most of the credit of making this even a possibility has to be given to my wife who is an awesome cook. She’s been able to make lots of great veggie and seafood dishes for me. She and the kids still eat meat, but not as much as before.
The reason I wanted to quit red meat was because of the environmental impacts of the livestock industry. The U.N. report ”Livestock’s Long Shadow–Environmental Issues and Options” is pretty shocking. Read this article at the U.N.’s news site for a summary. I’m not going to list out statistics, since those can be found pretty easily through a search on the Internet, but I’ll just say that when you consider the pollution (air and water) that is produced, the amount of food needed to be grown to feed the livestock (70% of US grain production, most of which could be fed to people instead of animals), the amount of water needed for livestock (2,640 gallons of water to produce one pound of edible beef), the amount of the world’s land that is dedicated to livestock (30%!), the amount of energy required to sustain the industry, and the deforestation of rainforests in order to build cattle ranches, it’s really not too hard to make the decision to eat less meat. (ok, there were a few statistics, and they fluctuate depending on the source, but I am being conservative on those)
The thing about eating meat is that to make a positive impact, you don’t have to quit meat altogether, but just eat less of it. I read this article by Kevin Purdy on Lifehacker about a “Flexitarian” diet, which is basically restricting your meat intake to just dinner. (obviously there’s more to it than that, so read the article) That’s actually pretty easy if you think about it! You get your meat fix, and still reduce your environmental impact.
I have read that after you stop eating meat, you might have an aversion to seeing meat in the market or on people’s dinner plates. For the most part it never really bothered me, but lately I’ve started to get an uneasy feeling about seeing meat. It doesn’t really look like food, but just animal muscle and severed body parts. This surprised me, because I used to love meat. A good, thick, juicy burger couldn’t be beat! But now, it’s hard to even think about eating it. And when I see all these mentions of bacon on the Internet, it sickens me somewhat. Maybe sickens is not the right work, but it still baffles me. Do these meat-eaters know about the impacts of that kind of diet on the world, and if they have, do they not feel the least bit of guilt? Is the pleasure of eating meat so great that you care about it more than you care about a sustainable world or even world hunger? I’d like to give people the benefit of the doubt and just think that they haven’t read or heard about the U.N. report. But when I see that photo of the giant piece of grilled meat wrapped up in bacon, I can’t help but be a little put-off by such wastefulness. Like, this chunk of flesh might seem like a “cool” novelty to some people, but the resources that went into that thing probably could have fed a family of vegetarians for a month.
Now I have to admit to being a hypocrite of sorts. I have cheated several times this past year, and each time I felt a little sick. Not physically sick afterwards, but guilty and also, the taste was kind of gross. Just too much intense fat-flavor I think. When I cheated, sometimes it was because of habit. For instance, when I was at Dodger Stadium, I had to have a Dodger Dog. (But is that really meat?) Then there’s our Jamaican feast at Xmas time where I had a bit of jerk pork, and our Hawaiian Xmas feast, where I had a taste of Kalua pig, and at Thanksgiving a taste of dark meat. The other times were also special occasions, like our omakase at Takao where I had a little piece of beef, a mini-sausage with Valentine’s cheese fondue, or a tiny quail leg at a friend’s restaurant. But apart from that, it’s been seafood and veggies. I guess you could say I am a ”Pecsetarian”. Someday I’d like to quit eating fish too, but at least getting red-meat out of my diet is a start. And by the way, there are some guides to seafood which recommend which types of fish are better to eat where the ecosystem is concerned. I actually saw the sushi-guide at the Cameron Park Zoo in Waco, of all places!
After a year I’m pretty sure that I won’t be going back to red-meat. If there is some miracle in which humans can produce livestock without the severe global impact, of course I’d have to reconsider. But these days, even without thinking about the environmental impact, eating mammals and birds doesn’t hold any appeal to me.