Man vs. Meat - The End?
We have come to the official end of the Man vs. Meat challenge. For the month of January I was completely meat-free (meaning no pig, swine, pork, oh those are the same, beef, chicken, turkey or spam).
Now that the official challenge is over and it is February 12, almost two weeks post challenge; I still haven’t eaten meat….and I don’t know why. I guess I realized that I CAN live without the meat and that over the course of 30 days I realized I don’t care as much as I thought I did. I could drum up some philosophical questions like: Has society trained us to focus on meat? Is it a government conspiracy to keep us eating meat? But that would be a little ridiculous. I have, however, come up with my own theory of why we continue to eat meat the way we do. This theory is not supported by any data, motivation or monetary backing. The Green-Lemonade corporate staff have not endorsed this, so come after me if you don’t like it.
Meet the Meat Theory
When was the last time you saw a cow, pig, chicken or turkey? For most of Americans the last time was not that recent, and driving by one on a highway doesn’t count. Not so many years ago that wasn’t true. Many Americans lived on farms or in communities where the meat they bought was raised locally and they may even have some investment in the raising of that animal. Today most people couldn’t even find their local chicken or beef farmer. In fact, those farmers might not be around you anymore. There has been a wave of consolidation of livestock farms into mega-farms that are operated often far away from most metro centers.
Why is this important? Have you ever noticed how hard it is be harm someone you know either physically or emotionally, even someone you may just barely know. Isolation has become a norm in our culture. We don’t know our neighbors, community leaders or colleagues with the same intimacy that used to exist. Well, we have become disassociated with our food chain. I walked into a pig farm the other day and stood there staring into the eyes of some pink beauties. I thought, “I probably couldn’t get myself to kill you guys.” We are thankfully not faced with that decision on a daily basis. Instead the pink guys show up in pretty packages on our shelves and we don’t think about the animal that it came from. What if every time you picked up a package of ground beef it mooed at you? You might think twice about that package. It made we wonder if we were really meant to eat these things. I theorize that because we have become so disassociated with our food source, we really don’t even know what we are eating.
I don’t want to be a person who is against meat eaters, I definitely have eaten my share of meat and may eat it again. The only message here is this: Let’s get back to basics. Find a local farmer, talk to them, find out about what you eat. Invest in a cow and go help the farmer out for an hour on a weekend. The farmer will let you, they love sharing their profession with others. At least you will have met your meat, and you might think twice about eating it.
Veggie days for BZ? How did your body take it?
Long back you mentioned about vegetarian soup. Is there a pointer on this site?
Thanks
Comment by Manoj — February 14, 2009