Chew On This

Its been a year that I turned vegetarian.  As bad as this sounds and as much as I love animals, the slaughtering never affected me before mainly because it was never in front of my face and I had conformed to the notion that we all need to eat meat to survive (my dad's a southerner so that's where that came from). 

Once I saw what these factory farms were doing it completely changed me.  If you've seen Future of Food, Food Inc, or Meet Your Meat you know what I'm talking about.  At that moment I decided I would stop eating meat with the exception of fish/seafood, not just because of the suffering these animals are put through everday, but because of the impact it has on our environment.  Do you really want to put flesh from some animal that has been tormented into your body?  An animal that has been through that much stress has produced so many toxins in its body.

It was actually pretty easy for me to not eat meat, but not so easy to stay away from cheese...something I am still trying to remove from my diet. I find milk to be disgusting so that wasn't a problem at all.  Did you know we are the only mammal that drinks milk from a different mammal?  Its really gross to think of it that way.

Being vegetarian forces me to look for new recipes and its not always easy to find recipes you actually love.  I had seen a couple people tweet about Alicia Silverstone's new book The Kind Diet.  I noticed it the last time I was at Whole Foods and realized it was a NY Times Bestseller.  I checked it out from the library and within the first chapter I was pretty surprised.  Its not about some trendy Hollywood crash diet.  Its about a way of life and to be aware of your consequences in terms of your selection of food.  Here are some facts I found to be quite interesting:

Eggs contain 250 milligrams of cholesterol and 64 percent of an egg's calories come from fat. Chicken contains as much cholesterol as beef.

A 2007 study of more than 35,000 women published in the British Journal of Cancer found that women who ate the most mea were more likely to develop breast cancer than those who consumed the least.

Researchers at the University of California at San Diego have isolated a sugar molecule Neu5Gc (found in red meat) that shows up in many cancerous human tumors.  Humans do not produce Neu5Gc.

Dioxin is the most toxic chemical known to science and is recognized as a human carcinogen.  It is estimated that 93% of our exposure to dioxin comes through eating animal products...especially fish!

Grilled chicken has more than 17 times the number of heterocyclic amines (cancer causing compounds) than grilled steak. 

Meat contributes to osteoporosis.

I think a lot of people don't want to think about not eating meat because of how difficult they think it would be.  Most people don't like change.  We know this.  But ignorance is NOT bliss.