The Conversion
"My Year of Meats convinced me to do something I never
thought I would do: become a vegetarian."
By Christina Appleberry
 I haven't eaten pork in a long time. And no, I'm not
Jewish or Muslim. About six years ago I just decided to stop eating
it. Not for health reasons especially, although it was a factor,
but mostly because I didn't like the taste of it. After a while
it just became a thing, "I don't eat pork." I still ate
beef and chicken because they tasted so good.
But then I read this book called My Year of Meats by Ruth
L. Ozeki that convinced me to do something I never thought I would
do: become a vegetarian. The book is fiction, but there's also all
of this fact-based, shady stuff about the beef industry that the
main character uncovers. It was disturbing to find out that some
cattle ranchers pump the cows full of hormones — including
certain estrogens which are causing girls to hit puberty at an earlier
age and thereby increasing their risk of breast cancer — to
increase weight gain. Or how some cattle ranchers feed their cows
manure and meat from dead cows. I know this isn't big news or anything,
but up until a couple of weeks ago I was able to just kind of ignore
it or kind of pretend I didn't really know how bad it was. But after
I read a part in the book about a visit to a slaughterhouse with
all kinds of gory details, I had these images in my brain that I
couldn't get rid of, images that were really hard not to think about
when someone was offering me a burger.
I try to be careful about what I ingest; I don't drink or smoke
or do drugs and I'll even let bad headaches run their course instead
of taking aspirin. So it seemed very inconsistent to keep eating
beef even though I knew how unhealthy it was. I'd actually been
thinking about not eating beef for a long time but I could never
do it because, oh my god, steak and hamburgers are so good. But
now I'm just totally grossed out and disturbed by it all.
And then I figured, chicken is just as bad so I'm going to have
to give that up too. But it's not fair. Meat isn't inherently unhealthy,
it's just that profits have become more important than the health
of the consumers and the quality of the products. As a result, the
meat industry has caused me to become vegetarian. It upsets me that
my decision to eat healthy automatically means I have to cut meat
out of my diet.
But there is hope. I read an article in the June 19, 2002 edition
of the San Francisco Chronicle a couple of days after I read
My Year of Meats. It was about upscale Bay Area restaurants
that are making the switch from corn- and soy-fed beef from the
Midwest to locally raised grass-fed beef that's healthier because
it's not injected with hormones and antibiotics. It's better for
the environment and your health, and according to top Bay Area chefs,
actually tastes better. The article likened this trend in grass-fed
beef to organic vegetables which used to be "expensive, hard
to find, of inconsistent quality and prized only by people outside
the mainstream" and are now pretty normal.
This was exciting for me because I didn't really want to stop eating
meat, I just wanted to eat healthier. I should be able to eat meat
and be healthy at the same time and if this whole "organic"
beef thing catches on, I'll be able to do just that. But for the
time being, I guess I'll just have to make do with veggie burgers
and all of those wonderful Morning Star Farms products.
— Christina Appleberry ate a veggie corn dog the other day.
Not bad.
|
