Sunday, September 2, 2018

The Reluctant Vegan - Becoming Woke

The Reluctant Vegan
I miss being naïve. “Ignorance is bliss” goes the saying. I wish I could go back to the days of laying in the sun with baby oil smeared all over my scrawny legs. 

What I wouldn’t give to come home to my dad grilling burgers medium-rare after skating (without a helmet or kneepads) on the broken sidewalks of my little hometown.

A child of the seventies, I ate cold pepperoni pizza that had sat on the counter overnight. Sugary Kool-Aid flowed like wine, and a healthy breakfast included both toast and sweetened cereal along with hefty servings of orange juice and milk.

I was the girl who loved a bloody steak, the bloodier, the better. My favorite food as a child was fried chicken. Not once did I connect these meats with an actual living, breathing creature.

I hate that I know how the animals we eat for food are really treated. I hate that I know humanely slaughtered animals aren’t treated humanely at all.
They don’t exactly step up and volunteer to be killed.

We fool ourselves into thinking the things we do aren’t impacting the planet, our bodies, in a negative way. The information is there. We just choose to turn our heads.

For example, did you know that meat production causes more greenhouse gases than all vehicles combined? And that the Amazon Rainforest is being destroyed at a crazy rate of an acre per second, not for the wood, as I believed, but for animal production?

Can you imagine if an alien race descended upon our planet and began to farm humans for food? Can you picture the agony as our newborn babies are yanked out of our arms and butchered as a delicacy, while we are left behind, caged, for the sole purpose of being milked?

Think of the packaging – pictures of happy mothers and babies plastered on neatly displayed bottles of human milk. Visualize the photos of peaceful human men on banners hung above plastic wrapped Styrofoam trays of beautifully trimmed human roasts. It’s horrifying, isn’t it?

What makes us better, different, than other creatures on our planet? Why must we farm on such a large scale, in such a way that prevents us from being in touch with our food sources? What gives us the right to exploit other beings, to cause them pain, all for an easy and inexpensive meal. We’ve been fed lies.

And I hate that I know this. I hate that I care. Ignorance was easier.

More often than not, I find myself at my local health food stores, looking for foods that meet my criteria. Whole, organic, plant-based, locally grown. Foods that haven’t harmed our environment, foods that haven’t been grown on a large enough scale to take away some obscure bird habitat.

Yeah, I’m becoming that person, and I’m annoyed as hell at myself. God help me, I might actually stop wearing deodorant and lipstick.
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5 comments:

  1. You know that plants feel pain, too, right?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Disagree with this whole post. I am a farmer and this is not true.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lisa,

      Of course you are entitled to disagree. I'm interested to hear more about your perspective. I honestly welcome information that could make me feel like consuming animal products, thereby encouraging the mass production of animals, won't harm our planet, or cause incredible pain to animals. Like I said, I really LOVE the taste of a good bloody steak!

      Delete
  3. Ridiculous story there. What happened after? Take care!

    ReplyDelete

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