On Eating Meat

It's been over a week since I last ate any meat.

I'll be honest I never thought that I would become a vegetarian and even now I can't see myself as one. I'm more like a person who is not eating meat from factory farms. Yes even the organic, natural, hormone free stuff comes from factory farms (about 99% of poultry in grocery stores is from factory farms) and really isn't so nice and pleasant when you get down to the facts. That leaves me a whole whopping 1% of chicken to eat that isn't factory farmed that I haven't found yet...so that makes me vegetarian.

I love to cook, and I honestly could, would, eat chicken for every meal, every day. I still miss it sometimes and crave it but reading Eating Animals has really changed what I choose to put in my body. The entire time I was reading I just kept thinking to myself "I never knew" and now that I know I can't go on putting that unnatural and unhealthy stuff into my body anymore. I'm getting flack for it from my parents though and that makes things a little difficult..It's very much that scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding where they find out that "he don't eat no meat??" and instead invite the soon to be husband over for lamb because he is vegetarian. They don't understand why I'm not eating meat anymore, so while they keep pushing roasted chicken, chicken tenders, and chicken breast at me I just want to try give them the facts on what is in all this meat so they can know and decide.

I'm still a firm believer in the Lion King "circle of life" logic. The part where Mufasa is telling Simba that they eat the gazelles but one day they will die and become grass and then the gazelles will eat them. I'm still true to that logic but no where in that circle is there a huge farm that is mistreating animals, or injection hormones and antibiotics into them to get them big and keep em alive until they slaughter them.

This interview with the author of the book, Jonathon Safron Foer, on the Ellen show does a really good job of opening the conversation of where our meat really comes from and what changes we can make to be more conscious consumers and eaters.

In trying to spread awareness and give some support to those who maybe want to switch up their dietary habits a bit. I will be utilizing this here blog on Wednesday's to post some meat-free recipes, vegetarian friendly sites and alternatives as well as document my change from a total meat eater and lover to a vegetarian/factory farmed meat-free girl.

If anything please look into the issue of factory farmed meat and decide for yourself. I was a very curious child growing up and wanted to know all the facts and opinions about any given topic before deciding where I stood and I still feel the same today and after learning all this new information I want to share the resources with all of you so you can go out and get informed and decide for yourself.

My goal is to live a long and healthy life and I'd love for you all to do that too.

Happy Wednesday Folks!

Baby Chicks

A couple weeks back I was sitting at home one day watching The Colbert Report when he had on Jonathan Safran Foer on to talk about his book Eating Animals.

The clips can be viewed here.

It's most memorable soundclip is when Foer talks about how genetically altered turkys are now that they can't naturally reproduce.

That got my attention...but school rolled in and I forgot about it until I saw this article in The Huffington Post by Natalie Portman.

This is from the inside cover of the book

Like many others, Jonathan Safran Foer spent hienage and college years oscillating between omnivore and vegetarian. But on the brink of fatherhood—facing the prospect of having to make dietary choices on a child’s behalf—his casual questioning took on an urgency. This quest ultimately required him to visit factory farms in the middle of the night, dissect the emotional ingredients of meals from his childhood, and probe some of his most primal instincts about right and wrong.

This book is what he found. Brilliantly synthesizing philosophy, literature, science, memoir, and his own detective work, Eating Animals explores the many stories we use to justify our eating habits—folklore and pop culture, family traditions and national myth, apparent facts and inherent fictions—and how such tales can lull us into a brutal forgetting.

Marked by Foer’s moral ferocity and unvarying generosity, as well as the humor and style that made his previous books, Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, widely loved, Foer’s latest tour de force informs and delights, challenging us to explore what is too often conveniently brushed aside. A celebration and a reckoning, Eating Animals is a story about the stories we’ve told—and the stories we now need to tell.

After reading all this I couldn't not think about it anymore and I had to get the book and figure

out for myself what I though about eating animals...

I got to page 49 when Foer started talking about male baby chicks who were born from "layer" chickens, or chickens who have been genetically engineered to lay eggs. Since these are the boy chicks, they can't lay eggs so what happens to them since they aren't made for meat? They are destroyed. Destroyed? How?

"Most male layers are destroyed by being sucked through a series of pipes onto an electrified plate. Other layer chicks are destroyed in other ways, and it's impossible to call those animals more or less fortunate. Some are tossed into large plastic containers. The weak are trampled to the bottom, where they suffocate slowly. The strong suffocate slowly at the top. Other are sent fully conscious through macerators (picture a wood chipper filled with chicks)"

Needless to say I don't think I'll be able to bring myself to eat any meat that isn't produced from a family farm... what I'm reading has just showed me how not natural even "natural" meat is.