Recently, a bet was made with my housemate dylpyl to eat no meat for one month. That’s right, from February 7 to March 9 (add ten days as collateral for carnivorous aspects of Valentine’s Day festivities), we are lacto-ovo vegetarian. I suppose it’s more of a lifestyle experiment than a real bet, since both people involved are foregoing meat and we’ve set a time-span for the bet that’s only too easy to complete. But I wanted to show him that despite all his statements about how it would be a piece of cake to restrict meat from his diet, he would be surprised to learn how much meat he actually consumed on a normal basis. You know, the whole realize-how-big-a-role-something is-in-your-life-the-minute-it’s-gone thing. For me, I wanted to see how I would feel on a meatless diet, and pledged to investigate the various factors that might influence someone to become a vegetarian.
I started by buying Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer. I’ve wanted to read this book for quite some time, but the impetus to read nonfiction wasn’t as strong as it is now. Eating Animals is about Foer’s personal decision to stop eating animals, and critics often say that he is not pointedly advocating against eating meat, and instead giving an overview of the system that provides our meat along with society’s various conceptions of what eating animals means. I personally don’t think Foer presents as objective a view as the reviewers say (of course, these are the reviews printed on the book’s cover). Safran Foer argues that in order to be an environmentalist, one cannot eat meat. If you eat meat, then by definition you can’t call yourself an environmentalist. That seems like a rather extreme view in my opinion. Is a vegetarian who leaves the lights on twenty-four hours a day and drives a hummer still an environmentalist?
Maybe that’s not what he means, but that’s how it could be taken. As for me, after two weeks of not eating meat, I have concluded that the hardest part is not being able to enjoy eating at restaurants. I can make delicious vegetarian meals at home, but when it comes to going out to a nice place, I feel like the dietary constraints are an obstacle to the basic enjoyment of dining out. I can’t look at the menu and order what I feel like, but instead I have to hunt around for something I can eat. The other day I went to lunch at a restaurant billing itself as an “American Grill” and the only item I could order was a spinach salad without bacon (amounting to a bunch of spinach leaves for nine dollars), and some biscuits. I was hungry again an hour later. And I felt sad because the crab melt looked and smelled damn delicious.
And now I’m sick. I have always prided myself on my robust immune system, but this time around I felt weak and tired. The result of vegetarianism? It’s hard not to blame it. Perhaps I am wasting away, becoming a body full of plants but lacking vigor! There is no rational basis for this conclusion, but there it is anyway.
I can say that my ethical self is feeling pretty good. Now when I look at packaged meat I am conscious of what it was before, instead of ignoring the fact that it has been cleaned up beyond recognition in order to make the public think of it the same way they think of a neat package of cookies.
My old acquaintance, my new best friend.
