Eat less meat

Not only are meat and dairy pro­duc­tion & pro­cessing immensely energy-inefficient and pol­luting, the ani­mals we eat are sat­u­rated with hor­mones and genetic mod­i­fi­ca­tions.

My partner and I decided on my last birthday (August 2007) to go veggie . It’s been at times incon­ve­nient and at times very easy to keep it up, espe­cially because we chose to not go too mil­i­tant about it and so we keep our minds open for when prac­ti­cality must win out over our ideals (like when we’re stuck some­where and the only non-meat option out there is pizza with no meat but with cheese), it’s still very sat­is­fying. We are both more ener­getic, we feel calmer inside in gen­eral and we are saving loads of money. And the food options are enor­mous! We both love Indian food which has count­less veg­e­tarian options, and we have dis­cov­ered and redis­cov­ered so many deli­cious foods from spicy and filling falafel to Licks’ juicy veggie burgers, rich vegan brownies, hot and soothing soups, exotic veg­e­tarian pasta and so much more. The one thing I still love is eggs, and so we choose to buy only Free-Run (cru­elty free), organic eggs raised on local farms .

We also try and buy prod­ucts which are not tested on ani­mals, prod­ucts from rel­a­tively enlight­ened com­pa­nies like Revlon, The Body Shop, Jamieson, Estee Lauder, M.A.C. cos­metics, Whole Foods Markets, Victoria’s Secrets and many more.  And we try to avoid buying prod­ucts from com­pa­nies that still per­form unnec­es­sary and cruel animal testing, like Clairol, Arm & Hammer, Cover Girl, Johnson & Johnson, Pantene, Pfizer, L’Oreal, Suave, Sally Hansen and others like them.

For most of my life I thought I didn’t have it in me to give up eating meat. But it’s been easier than I had imag­ined. Yes there are some changes we’ve had to make, but it’s been a lot less of a hassle than I had thought. Now, the thought of eating meat the way I used to is actu­ally repul­sive to me. Knowing the kinds of cru­el­ties that fac­tory farms put their ani­mals through, and how„ at the grocer’s the meat is packed with arti­fi­cial hor­mones, has made me cringe at the thought of con­suming such poi­soned flesh .

Something to think about… the pow­erful meat and dairy indus­tries put a LOT of money in trying to con­vince you oth­er­wise, but the truth is cut­ting back on meat and dairy is good for both your body’s and your planet’s health.

If you’re reading this, I dare you to check out the sites linked here and others, and try to become more veggie-focused and be the cause/consumer of lesser and lesser cru­elty on other sen­tient beings in the world. Just try it for 1 month… I dare ya!

Related links:
Veg.ca
Vegetarian Resource Group
Caring Consumers
How to Avoid Genetically Modified (GM) Foods
Why is American Beef banned in Europe?