The Vegetarian Factor

[This is a piece in progress -5/8]

As a vegetarian, or a “vegan”, I’m often confronted with the question – Why? I feel like I want to counter why do you eat meat? Though it’s more than choosing not eating eat tomatoes or mushrooms, it’s still a matter of taste. Yet, there’s more to it – if you look beyond just the choice, and the consequences of your choice of food, vegetarianism triumphs. I will highlight my reasoning with two major points: The Heaviness and The Moderation.

The Heaviness: Meat makes me feel heavy, a sort of unbearable and unhealthy heaviness in more than just my stomach. Maybe it has to do with the slaughterhouse imagery, or even the trips to Chinatown. In a word – I feel disgusted. Just because meat is readily available and prevalent does not mean I should ingest it. Why should I, unless it’s out of pure convenience? To me, passing up meat does not seem like I’m ‘giving up’ anything, except it’s nutritional value, which may just as well be substituted.

The Moderation: Consider how much of our resources are allotted for food, and how personal choices would impact the source of it all – the animals and the crops. It’s not just about animal rights, but also about a host of human ethics including environmental ethics. For example, for the sake of eating meat, the natural environment is dissipating. Meat produce requires an incredible amount of land & energy resources, more so than pure vegetation. Although we have always been responsible for this deprecation, we can neutralize or control our consumption. It’s about Moderation. This is similar to the carbon-emission energy movement: if you cannot better the environment or eliminate waste, at least moderate your usage. Similarly, food could be moderated. I’m probably not saving the world, or even so many animals. But if we’re a little more moderate in our consumption, we’re being just that much more pleasant to our world and ourselves.