So honestly, I've never been much of a meat-eater and I just never really craved meat, however, the first day I decided to go vegetarian, I almost ate some fish that my parents had cooked. I decided to quit cold turkey and so far it's been working out great. The most important part of quitting cold turkey is self-control :) As an Asian, I can say that Asian cuisine is not very vegetarian friendly. There's either meat and sea food in every Dim Sum Dish, some sort of meat or seafood used in every kind of soup, the same goes for hot pot, Korean BBQs, Pho, everything basically.
So far, I'm the only vegetarian in my family. One of the major problems of being vegetarian is trying to keep up with the daily intake of protein. I find myself having to make omelets and tofu soup a lot to try to get all the protein I need.
I think that one of the reasons why it's been pretty easy for me to become vegetarian is because my mom can't cook at all so my vegetarian meals are not underwhelming or anything. I think I get the same satisfaction out of eating a vegetarian diet than a omnivore diet.
One of the reasons I decided to become vegetarian is because I wanted to be healthier. Red meat causes a build up of plaque in the bloodstream, heart disease, obesity, etc. Studies also show that people who don't eat meat live longer, not that I necessarily want to live longer lol The Industrial food industry is also making me question the kind of food that I am buying. It's all about quantity and not quality. I mean it's common knowledge that cows eat grass, their digestive systems are made for it with their four stomachs and all. The Industrial food system feeds them corn which then lead to the cows developing E.Coli. Why do all the huge industries feed the cows corn? Because it's cheaper. If they took the cows off of corn for 20 days, they could get rid of all the E. Coli in the stomachs. But they won't.
Now I could just go organic, but even so, animals raised organically also need to be killed in order for us to consume them. I feel wrong eating fellow animals and therefore I decided to just not eat meat at all. I'm kind of traumatized after watching a video of people hunting and cooking rabbits.
Another reason why I decided to make this life altering decision is because I started to question my diet. Humans have smaller canine than most carnivores, the kind that can only tear up chicken and seafood. Most meat has to be cooked before eaten or else it's inedible, whereas vegetables don't (salads). Most vegans and vegetarians lose their taste for meat after a while and the smell becomes nauseating. I've also heard a lot of horror stories about vegans and vegetarians throwing up and having diarrhea after accidentally eating meat. What I'm trying to say is that maybe eating red meat is not natural. I mean you can live a decent life while eating red meat but why is it that meat seems to be more of an acquired taste more than anything else?
Many people choose to be pescatarian or vegan. I chose to be smack dab in the middle (dat phrase doe). Pescatarians eat fish and seafood and their rational is that seafood have such low IQs that they are unable to feel pain because their brains have not developed enough. Well I heard that lobsters scream when you boil them. I don't know if that's true, and I don't intend to find out. Vegans preach a raw diet that consist mainly of uncooked foods. I think I might want to slowly transition into being vegan. I mean, I had to give up Rice Crispy Treats and marshmallows, I want to wait a while before I give up whipped cream and pizza.
While vegans and vegetarians are both fighting for the same causes (animal rights, the stopping of deforestation) they're always at each other's throats. Vegans claim that the only real vegetarians are vegans, which I sort of agree with. I mean how many people do you know who are lactose intolerant? Humans just weren't made to drink cow's milk (I have always preferred soy milk and almond milk anyway). However, vegans are also very keen on the rights of honey bees. Honey bees are exploited for their honey, but they are also used to pollinate crops, so even if I stop consuming honey, the bees will continue to be exploited which is a very sad reality but it's true. Even though it is wrong, I think kind of a useless battle.
Vegetarians drink milk and eat eggs because they believe that these things can be extracted from the animals painlessly and without harming them, hence the reason why vegetarians usually buy organically, they know that the animals are treated better. Humans domesticated cows and now the cows rely on humans to milk them every morning. It's actually very painful for the cows to go too long without milking and chicken eggs are almost never fertilized so you're not really killing any lives. Buying these products is also indirectly keeping the animals alive. You can't really get milk out of a dead cow.
So I just realized that this is a very long blog post. I hope that you guys found this helpful and if you guys have any questions comment them and I'll adress them nest time:)
