Vegetarian Vs. Vegan or Gasp…Neither?

In the past year and a half I have gone from heavy meat eater to light meat eater to vegetarian to vegan (tried for three days) to pescatarian ( no meat, just fish). Yes, I have tried it all this past year and learned a lot. It gets pretty confusing with all the information out there about eating vegan and getting my emotions involved about not wanting to kill animals…ughhh…but you know, I’ve been thinking about it and here are my final thoughts.

The main reason I don’t eat meat is because there’s just so much evidence out there linking meat with diseases like cancer and heart disease. We all know Americans are huge meat eaters. Most people have it at least everyday, if not in all three meals. I used to eat meat in almost every lunch and dinner up to about a year ago. Then I educated myself on eating healthy not just trying to lose weight. Every book I read said to limit your meat intake, not necessarily exclude it all together.

I also became sort of obsessed with adopting the same diet as those communities that have a high number of active, healthy older generations and centenarians (those over one hundred years old). In these communities it is normal for people to live up into their 90s doing what they’ve always done like gardening, cooking, cleaning, being active outside, etc. Then I compared that to what is normal for people here in the U.S. which is by the time they get into their late 70s, early 80s, most Americans start to develop major health problems and many cannot care for themselves.

So after reading many books on these subjects it became evident to me that your diet affects the quality of life you will have when you get old. The Standard American Diet in mainly protein from meat, little carbohydrates and little veggies and fruit. If you want to take it even further, The Standard American Diet is full of processed foods with chemicals and preservatives. Compare that to the long living cultures I read about who ate a diet mainly of veggies, fruits, whole grain, little fish, little diary and very little meat. You see, these cultures pretty much grew everything themselves, fished themselves, and slaughtered the meat they ate. They truly had to work for what they ate, here we have everything in abundance available to us. But just because it’s there, doesn’t mean you should eat in abundance…

So here’s my dilemma. I read about all of this and my decision was to eat mainly whole grains and veggies, cut the meat intake down to about once a week and no junk food! So I did that, lost 10 lbs within a month that I didn’t even know I had to lose and I felt great. I’m cooking all the time and I’m loving it. Then, I see the movie Fast Food Nation. Have you seen it? Needless to say, it’s about the f***** up meat industry. Great movie, very interesting and I’m glued to the T.V. watching it. Then the last scene comes and it’s real footage of a cow getting slaughtered and they show everything. Everything you don’t want to think about when you bite into a hamburger.

After seeing that, I decided I just couldn’t eat meat. You see, before when I ate meat I would just look at it for what it was, a piece of meat. It didn’t even cross my mind that what I was eating used to be a living, breathing cow. Now when I look at meat, all I see is the animal it used to be. So after seeing the movie, I went to the PETA site and watched Meet Your Meat, a short documentary on the meat industry. This introduced me to all the abuse towards the animals before they’re even killed. Not to mention, how the dairy industry totally supports the veal industry. I felt so bad for the animals that I went from being a vegetarian for about a day to being a vegan.

Well that didn’t last long. Being a vegan is definitely difficult. Pretty much forget going out to eat. And on top of that, all that soy vegan food that supposed to taste like meat is full of chemicals and preservatives. So I think I was a vegan for about 3 days. I decided to stick with just being vegetarian at that time, but I still felt like my body was missing some key nutrients. I was getting my protein from combining foods, but I was easily getting sick and didn’t feel that full of energy.

The thing is, the healthiest my body felt throughout this whole process was when I was eating a MAINLY vegetarian diet, but with a little fish and meat every once in awhile. So lately I’ve been reevaluating my reasons for not eating meat. Number one is that I don’t think our bodies were meant to eat a lot of meat. First of all we are not made to attack an animal like others do in the wild, but we are smart enough to hunt and slaughter an animal. I do believe that for most people it’s okay to eat meat once in a while meaning no more than twice a week. For me, I eat it about once a month or so just because I’ve pretty much lost my taste for it. The only time I truly eat it is if someone I know has worked hard on a meal that includes meat like on Easter or Christmas. Then I’ll eat it, but only if it’s organic.

I’m not totally against eating meat, but I am totally against factory farming and the amount of meat that most Americans eat. If I’m going to eat it, it has to be from a organic free range farm. I don’t believe animals should live their lives in cages only to be slaughtered so people can have their bacon and hamburgers. I’m all about the natural circle of life. Some animals are meant to eat only meat, others only grains and veggies. Us humans are naturally meant to eat mainly grains and veggies with a LITTLE protein from fish and animals. There is so much written evidence of this…check out the books The China Study, The Okinawa Program, 50 Secrets of the Longest Living People…they all have real studies on real thriving communities that have eaten like this for centuries. Now think about all your grandparents or great grandparents…how many of them have lived well into their 90s or longer with no major health problems and have died peacefully because of old age. I can tell you none of mine have. We are taught that living into our 80s is old. These books beg to differ saying the maximum human life expectancy could be up to 120 years if we treat our bodies right with balance diet.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that eating a little bit of meat is okay as long as you know where it comes from. Therefore, if you don’t know where your meat is from, I wouldn’t recommend eating it. I’m still very passionate about animal cruelty and it might sound like I’m contradicting myself, but I’m trying to give my body what it needs as a human. I think instead of giving up meat altogether, that if most people limited their meat intake, it would make a major difference in the meat industry, the environment and our health.

Tags: 80s, American Diet, carbohydrates, Centenarians, Chemicals, Cultures, Eat Meat, Emotions, Final Thoughts, Generations, health, Health Problems, healthy diet, Heart Disease, Major Health, Meat Eaters, Meat Intake, nutrition, One Hundred Years, Processed Foods, Quality Of Life, Vegan, Veggies