Monday, March 19, 2007

Meet Your Meat

WARNING! Do not, I repeat, DO NOT watch this video if you eat meat, love eating meat, and want to continue to enjoy your lifestyle.

Many of you who've discussed the topic of food choices with me know that I am not a militant vegetarian who despises people who choose to eat meat. Nor am I interested in trying to convert the world or convince everyone to make the same choices that I have. So why post something like this? The answer is simple: to allow people to make choices actively and from an informed position versus passively, from habit, and as determined for them by others.

Some of you don't want anything to do with this kind of thing and that is perfectly fine. Everything in its own time. But some of you have had a lot of questions about my choice. Was it ethical? Health conscious? Spiritual? And my response is invariably "a bit of each". In my opinion, this video touches on each though in quite a harrowing way. Additionally, many of the people that frequent this page care a great deal about limiting the amount of suffering in the world that they personally perpetuate. I know that there has been a bit of vacillation out there about eating or not eating meat. For those of you who have reached the point where they no longer want to eat meat but are having trouble finding the motivation to take the plunge, this video's for you (though do check out the book recommendation below!).

If I was going to wave something around on a flag (or on a blog!) it would not be Become Vegetarian! It would be Become Informed! I think that many if not most people would at least switch to a largely organic (meats and otherwise) diet if they knew half of the facts regarding the foods they eat.

On that note, if you want a great resource on what you put into your body on a daily basis and how it relates to health/disease, ethics, genetic engineering, pollution, and the like I highly recommend John Robbins' book Food Revolution. It is really well written and keeps you interested while still being extremely factual. It does a great job of relaying a great deal of legitimate information (from medical and science journals) and exposing fallacies in advertising. There is an unfortunate truth to the infamous quip, "we take better care of our cars than we do our own bodies." Read Robbins' book and you'll find out how tragically on-target that statement is.

OK. Without further ado, it is time to Meet Your Meat. . .