I, like many of my fellow millennials, have considered becoming a vegetarian several times. It started when I was 11 years old and the idea of animals suffering or dying on my behalf was unbearable. It lasted a few weeks. My parents weren’t against me being a vegetarian, but they weren’t going to go out of their way to buy vegetarian groceries or cook vegetarian meals. I also had the discipline of an 11 year old. I tried again in college when my roommate was a vegetarian and I realized it was cheaper to eat that way. Again, I didn’t have the discipline, especially drunk, and it didn’t last.
In recent years I’ve started eating much healthier and doing my own independent research on the relationship between the food you eat and your overall health. This has opened my eyes to the correlation of processed foods and meat products to several diseases, including cancer. Due to this, I’ve begun eating more whole foods, and having a diet that consists mostly of fruits and vegetables. Now that I’m older and have the time and energy to cook, it’s become a lot easier to do. I’ve cut my meat intake down to 1/4th of what I used to eat and realized how many delicious, filling meals can be made with whole foods and no meat.
With that in mind, of course it has crossed my mind to become a vegetarian. I’m almost there already and sparing such cruelty to animals would do a world of good. It would be better for the environment, since 441 gallons of water are needed to create just one pound of beef. Also, being a selfish person, I know that cutting out meat entirely would leave me less susceptible to many diseases. But, I’ve decided to continue to eat meat.
My first reason for not cutting meat out entirely is that I believe a lot of veganism and vegetarianism is the direct cause of our own narcissism and cultural fear of death. Since humans grow emotional attachments to each other, death seems like the most horrible thing that could happen. Losing a loved one is hard and can leave an aching feeling inside of you that may never go away. For all living things, death is as necessary to the earth as life. I’ve seen comments on national geographic videos of how the cameraman should have stopped a pack of lions from killing and eating an elephant calf. But, these actions are absolutely necessary to life. If those lions didn’t eat cute or furry animals that we love, then they would become extinct. That would throw off the entire ecosystem in the Sahara and could eventually cause those baby elephants to starve or not be born at all.
We think death is the worst thing that could possibly happen, when it is literally one of the most important things for maintaining a healthy ecosystem. We instill our own values of love, fear, hope and need to live on animals that have entirely different lives from us. Our own selfish feelings of wanting to live until old age are being reflected in the animals that we love having on our earth. Animals starve in the wild, they suffer in the wild and they lose their parents to predators. This has been happening since long before humans were on earth and will continue to happen after we are gone.
I know the animals that we eat aren’t living in the wild, and aren’t free to roam like the lions and elephant calves that I mentioned are. The point I’m making isn’t that we shouldn’t prevent unnecessary suffering from the animals we eat, but that I am not against animals dying. We likely wouldn’t have survived as a species, and some scientists argue we would have never had enough protein to evolve into humans had we not eaten meat.
This brings me to my second point, I am not against animals dying, but I am against unnecessary suffering and a very unnatural life for animals we produce for meat. The solution for this is sustainably produced meat. This is meat that is produced in a more natural environment with many of the same conditions they would have in the wild. There is fish produced for food that is, intentionally, given an environment with a predator to sustain a natural ecosystem. Meaning that sustainability farmers have realized that death is as important to the lives of their fish as general production is. They have found this food is better for the environment, and it produces more for us to consume. This meat is also healthier and doesn’t require the same hormone treatments. In my area there are a lot of options for buying pasture-raised, grass-fed meat for relatively cheap.
The third reason I haven’t cut out meat entirely is that if everyone ate meat like I do, sustainably raised meat could be the norm for everyone. Just think if all meat eaters ate 1/4th the amount of meat and we all paid a little more money for it, then it would be entirely possible to raise all animals in an environment where they could thrive. I think one thing that stops people from becoming vegetarian is the commitment, they see it as an all-or-nothing deal. It doesn’t have to be that way. You can have a healthier diet, eat meat that is better tasting and better for you while still improving the treatment of animals.
I am not against vegetarianism or veganism in the slightest bit, and believe that these people are doing a lot of good in the world. My point is that you don’t have to subscribe to that belief system. You can make changes that are better for your health, better for the world and not have to cut out your favorite foods.