Don't Hate Me, Meat Eaters

Hi all,
An "interesting" article from the latest issue of Men's Health Magazine.

Don't Hate Me, Meat Eaters

Enjoy!

I found it a little 'weird' that he spent over half the article explaining why it's harder to be a selective meat-eater, as the article seemed to be about being veggie at the start, then slipped into meat-eating. It seemed to me he was equating "ethical" meat eating with being a vegetarian. That's what it looked like to me anyway, it was like he thought how hard is was to do equated to some ethical, ecological or health based stance, which is kind of nonsense because I could be a 'Russianarian' that is I only eat things imported from Russia (no foods from a nearby ex USSR states is NOT acceptable!), man that's hard to do, but has no ethical, ecological or health reasons for doing it. I think there probably is a slight advantage ethically in buying meat off of animals reared in non-factory farm conditions, but I still think that rearing animals at all for food is the main ethical objection, not how they are reared. It's the whole 'animals as products' that I find hard to understand.

Yep,..here is an article from the New Yorker that provides more insight on the psyche of the author. It seems like he wants to be a vegan driven by ethical reasons. The article also presents an interesting perspective on how people spend billions taking-care of pets yet have no second thoughts about eating flesh from animals that have been previously tortured.

Flesh of your flesh

He seems a bit confused about what he wants to do (that is he seems to want to eat meat) & what he appears to know he should be doing (that is not eating them). Before I first became a veggie I was basically a meat & milk kid (I could have been a poster boy for 'atkins for children' I reckon ), I really wasn't sure I could make the transition myself (& that was only giving the meat bit up, at the time I still had the milk, cheese, eggs etc). My nan an ex-farmers wife (who had killed by hand virtually every type of domestic beast) helped a great deal because as I was wavering (being the only veggie I knew I was having a tough time), she laughed her head off & said "ha haa haaaaaa! You'll NEVER do that!", for a boy just on the verge of puberty the 'NEVER' really helped me stick with it (not the reaction she was hoping for I think). My mum actually dragged me to the doctors as she thought I was sick not wanting to eat meat &, to his credit (for a doctor in the 1970's) he told her she was being stupid & take me to the health food store & buy some stuff in there for me to eat & I'll be fine. I've often wondered if the guy was a veggie himself as he knew where the health food store was & suggested some stuff as I remember (maybe sosmix or some similar dried 'fake meat' type stuff).
So I do understand how ethics can be hard to live up to when you're out there in the real world, I found it tough as hell being the only veggie I knew in my school (or anywhere else). It was so much easier going vegan as I had a partner also wanting to change, a vegan shop, run by vegans just round the corner, an AR & hunt sab group full of vegans I'd met through the shop - talk about an easy transition! Compared to my lone veggie experience it was a cake walk
I speak to some people in cattle areas etc & they often suffer the same issues as I did during my initial veggie experience. Going vegan in that type of area must be pretty hard, sticking with it even harder as you never get to interact with anyone who shares your beliefs, or find a partner who shares your ethical stance etc...man that's got to be tough!

Man you had it tough! Thanks for sharing it will keep on the good road. Wishing you and your loved ones a healthy, happy, joyful, and succesful 2010!

porco_espinho wrote:

Hi all,
An "interesting" article from the latest issue of Men's Health Magazine.

Don't Hate Me, Meat Eaters

Enjoy!

"What am I supposed to do at a dinner party? Lie?"

Heh. This is a lot like my post about Veganism and relatives. Effectively my brother-in-law tried to tell me that I'm expected to lie, which if the goal is to spark my anger, that's definitely the way to do it.

I've read Foer's recent book: Eating Animals. Also have read Michael Pollan's book which was mentioned: The Omnivore's Dilemma. Neither writer is a traditional ethical vegan, (Pollan isn't even a vegetarian) yet both make a pretty convincing case to stop eating meat. Pollan's book was better in my opinion but I'm happy to see lots of articles in the mainstream by Foer about this issue.

Pete, "Never" is also the best motivation anyone has ever given me.

Did you see the Jan/Feb cover of Men's health magazine "Are you still a man if you don't eat meat?"....few things annoy me but this header did. Luckily the article has nothing to do with the header, just a marketing gimmick I guess.

Before I was even vegetarian, I had a very hard time explaining to people what I did and didn't eat. Basically I didn't eat any animal products that had been factory farmed. So I think it confused people when I would eat a kangaroo or beef steak but felt that eating KFC or shop bought cakes (which contained cage eggs) was cruel.

I also grew up on a farm. We had beef cattle, but also chickens, pigs, sheep, the last three of which I basically single-handedly slaughtered and "processed" as a teenager. It feels strange to think about it now. But at the time I also felt that people shouldn't be eating animals if they didn't have the courage to kill the animals themselves. I developed a respect for animals and for the "sacrifice" I felt they made for us. My understanding of where animal products came from and my understanding of the nature of animals - having emotions, individuality and complex needs etc., was the start of my path to veganism.

It took me longer to realise that free-range didn't mean the same as how I treated our animals. I'm not sure if I'm an ethical vegan, I guess I'm a vegan due to the sum of lots of different reasons.

Very shortly after my transition to veganism I had a blood test which told me I was allergic to lots of different foods, I considered adding some animal products to my diet. My health was poor (which I later realised was almost entirely due to the allergies) and felt that maybe my diet had become so restricted I couldn't be healthy as a vegan. I considered eating some kangaroo because I thought it was the most ethical meat because they are wild until they are killed. My partner, who I guess you could call an "ethical" omnivore (who eats only free range and has a low animal product diet and has even more allergies than me) thought the flavour might be too strong since I had been a vegetarian for some time (I remember myself, kangaroo having a bit of a gamey taste). So he suggested I try a hamburger which had lots of different things to break up the flavour. After maybe 2 mouthfuls it occurred to me that I was eating part of an animal's body and suddenly got very emotional. I felt personally responsible for a unnecessary death and possibly unnecessarily cruel life of another animal. I was shocked at my own response since I thought my main reason for my vegan lifestyle was not because I thought killing animals was wrong. Since then I realised that, personally, I couldn't emotionally deal with eating animal products anymore. Its interesting how my mind had subconsciously changed the way I thought about things without my noticing.

Luckily I am studying nutrition otherwise, without help, I think it would be easy for me to become malnourished. I highly recommend any vegans out there with multiple food allergies to seek help from a nutritionist/dietician/naturopath.

I think you're right about people having to looking into their diets. I'm actually in the process of writing a blog post based (kind of loosely) on my final essay for my nutrition course. If you think that in the UK a quarter of the people who eat meat cannot do so correctly (nearly a quarter of all adults in the UK suffer from obesity according to the latest Government figures!) - we are not including other eating disorders here, just being over-fat. If you put that as an opening statement then it's not surprising if you found that at least that many vegans have no idea how to eat healthily. A quarter of meat-eaters fail at eating what's considered healthy, why should vegans be any different? Sure we have different issues, but it's all the same thing - a lack of nutritional knowledge.
I won't into it too much as I'm going to put together a better piece on the blog once I've finished up this 'fitness therapist' course & I have time to update everything, but there's a lot of things that I've been considering about diets, failing at being vegan & why stuff like that happens on occasion.