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My History with Vegetarianism and Veganism

As long as I can remember, I’ve had a strained relationship with food.  I don’t have many food memories stored up, but I remember loving pizza, fruit, cereal, and burgers.  I started gaining weight in 3rd or 4th grade.  It wasn’t so much that I craved food, but that I was eating junk.  I had no idea how to eat properly, and enjoyed chips and candy frequently. By 7th grade, I had repeated stomach problems so severe that I was taken to a doctor who told me to not eat red meat or fried foods.  Ever.  My stomach issues cleared up.  I was able to mostly eliminate red meat and no longer ate fried foods.  My diet was not actually improved; I was only doing the minimum required to not be in pain.  The candies, sodas, and other foods continued.

When I was in middle school I became friends with a kid from a family that was vegan.  He also didn’t eat wheat, salt, or sugar.  Eating at his house felt like being in a different country, and my parents certainly didn’t know how to feed him at our house.  Things were always awkward between him and most other people.  A lot of ridicule was thrown his way, and behind his back he was referred to pejoratively as “veggie boy.”   I defended him, but in my mind the family’s vegan lifestyle was akin to a minority religion.  He was always thin and short, traits that were attributed to his diet.  Vegetarianism and veganism were seem as extreme in Oklahoma culture.  The official state meal, adopted in 1988, consists of fried okra, cornbread, barbecue pork, squash, biscuits, sausage and gravy, grits, corn, strawberries, chicked fried steak, pecan pie, and black-eyed peas.  While one could make a strong argument for at least part of this being designated “Oklahoma Historical State Meal,”  as a current meal it definitely marginalizes plant-based lifestyles.

I started to form my own opinions on eating meat when I was in high school.  Veganism didn’t seem right, or healthy.  My friend seemed to be malnourished, so I made the assumptions everyone else had made.  Still, the idea of eating animals seemed increasingly in conflict with my love of animals.  Love of animals is a misunderstood term, and one that has been a part of who I am for most of my life.  I liked to read about animal behavior in encyclopedias, National Geographic magazines, and in my subscriptions to National and International Wildlife magazines.  I was hooked on natural history and plastered the walls of my bedroom with images from magazines of the animals I liked the most — cats, insects, giraffes, gorillas, dolphins, peacocks, dinosaurs, and many others.  I was starting to see them as fellow inhabitants of the same planet and that belief made it harder and harder to want to see parts of animals cooked up for me to consume.  I wasn’t making a full connection.  It’s easy to forget what the thin round brown disc on a burger actually is.  It’s almost designed to prevent knowing.  I would go back and forth on my willingness to eat animals for a few years.  I found it easier in college; the student union offered a veggie patty that I could have with my Josta soda and I could get a bean burrito or veggie sub for dinner.  Feeding myself allowed me to eschew the animal foods that were generally consumed by other family members.  I still wasn’t terribly strict with myself, allowing myself to enjoy the McDonald’s where my roommate worked.

I drifted away from these values after college.  I have always been an eager people pleaser, and when I started spending time with a group of new friends, I didn’t want to seem odd.  Enjoying the meats they cooked allowed me to fit in better.  I would still try to be mostly plant-based, but did not turn down animal meals either.  I still had issues with eating the animals, but I was more than willing to trade in my personal beliefs to make sure my friends were comfortable.  It’s the only way in which I feel Southern.

Honoring My Values

In 2005, I took an opportunity from my dad to visit Alaska.  He had grown up there and I was eager to see it.  I was working on a novel based on his life at the time, so it seemed logical that I should go see where it all began.  A friend went with me for the first week and I would stay a full month.  My dad had found two places for me to stay, both at the homes of high school friends of his.  At the end of the first week, I had decided I was moving, and my friend was eager to join me.  She returned and orchestrated the move while I continued to stay and look for a job.  The second two weeks of my vacation were spent housesitting for a couple who are vagan.  Even with my history, I found it off-putting.  I would go through their pantry and cabinets looking at all the unusual foods.  It was not what I was used to.  And I didn’t fully embrace the experience, as I should have.  I took pleasure in buying fried chicken and eating it in the living room, a secret act of defiance.  I’m still sad about that situation.Continue Reading

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As promised, this should explain my feelings on my recent switch to a vegetarian diet. I would like to preface this briefly. This is my personal belief and I am not preaching this way of life as right for everyone. Each person brings their own set of beliefs with them through life, and they are just as valid as mine. I offer this as explanation for my own actions. I do not judge others for making different choices with their lives.

I feel obligated to explain myself. Let me try to make sense of what is going on in my head, but don’t be surprised if contradictions arise, as my brain is rarely at peace with itself. This will also be a bit longwinded.

In January, I made the decision to stop eating meat. So, I stopped. I failed to take into account that so few people make this life choice. I forgot that there would be plenty who would not understand and who would forget that I no longer consume animals. I had not planned out what I would say to those who questioned me. I had no speech prepared. What’s worse, I didn’t even have a clear sense of purpose.

It actually all started about twelve years ago. I had become interested in adopting a vegetarian diet back when I was in high school, but had great fears of alienation from my friends. A minor medical problem helped prompt me to follow through with my plans, since I was not supposed to eat fried foods or red meat. I slowly phased poultry, pork, & red meat out, opting for fish or non-meat choices. Slowly, I changed my diet, but never officially (or fully) eliminated meat from my diet. I simply repressed my reasons for cutting back and found that not thinking about it was easier than dealing with the moral dilemma.

Several years later, my convictions gone, I was once again eating beef. And I didn’t give any more thought to it. So much was happening in my life, and I was not the center of my existence for many years. This made it easy to not focus on what I felt or believed, worrying too often about how my decisions would affect my friends and family.

As long as two years ago, I was reevaluating my life and again considering cutting meat out of my diet. I think I needed to grow up to understand how right I believed that decision would be. Over the past year, I have tried varying degrees of not eating meat, trying to stop, but failing.

I was eating lamb when it dawned on me. I had an overwhelming need to purge the animal from my body — to remove it’s masticated carcass from within me. It made me cry. I couldn’t believe how barbaric it now seemed to have actually ordered slabs of an animal with thoughts and feelings. It just seemed so simple a solution too — don’t eat anything possessing intelligence.

I really was unsure of what I meant by this and how this would play out. I honestly expected to revert back to not giving my burgers a second thought. I considered eating fish, but couldn’t justify that until I had sorted out what my feelings were. I knew what I wasn’t willing to eat any longer: cattle, pigs, chickens, moose, sheep, turkeys, deer, cephalopods, etc. If it was having thoughts about something, it was off my menu.

So, that is the reason. I believe that it is wrong to continue eating meat when you believe that the animals you are eating can think and feel. I also feel that it is wrong to keep animals in buildings, feeding them genetically manipulated “food,” just for the convenience of having prey when we want it. I believe that we have evolved as a species to a point that renders the eating of meat archaic, barbaric, & unnecessary.

I welcome comments or messages on this subject. It is still a loose mass of barely solid concepts for me. It is coming together slowly and it just feels right. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Here are a few quotes from others who got it:

One farmer says to me, “You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with;” and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle. ~Henry David Thoreau

I did not become a vegetarian for my health; I did it for the health of the chickens. ~Isaac Bashevis Singer, quoted in You Said a Mouthful edited by Ronald D. Fuchs

I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other…. ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses. ~George Bernard Shaw

I have always eaten animal flesh with a somewhat guilty conscience. ~Albert Einstein

My refusing to eat meat occasioned inconveniency, and I have been frequently chided for my singularity. But my light repast allows for greater progress, for greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension. ~Benjamin FranklinContinue Reading