I'm reminded that the Lent season is ending; not that I really practice any such thing myself. It just brought me to thinking about voluntary dietary restrictions in general and the (mostly superstitious) reasons that people do such things. I was also prompted to think about the subject of meatless eating because I realize that I absent-mindedly forgot to pack up some steaks that someone gifted to me before I came home, and I'm in the middle of kicking myself about it. I began contemplating about my own eating habits, and how unwittingly they have become quite erratic for me as of late. I have no meat left now, and I'm down to my last few containers of frozen homemade soups, homemade pickles and other canned preserves, plus another few options of what I have stored in my pantry. My intentional restriction to eating just this stuff to the point where it's running out is sort of a pseudo-Lent: it's a purposeful reduction and elimination of my stores to make it easier in having less things to muddle through once I progress to the arduous task of taking my spring cleaning into the kitchen, and for the ease of re-organizing and re-stocking with healthier stuff later. I'll be resuming a high protein-slow-carb diet for my training season.
Overall, I try not to be a fussy eater, and I get adventurous enough to try something new out at least once. However, the thing that I know that I could never get into is total vegetarianism; more specifically veganism. I actually do eat less meat than I used to, but the reason is stemmed more out of economy. I really do seem to need some form of animal protein each day, at the very least in the form of eggs or milk. I did go through a fasting spell once where I gave up eating all forms of animal protein (meat, fish, eggs and dairy) along with refined flours and sugar for a week for the sake of following a strict body cleanse regimen I was performing at the time. During that week of this special diet, the only thing that I lost was seven days of energy and sanity. I was very miserable and lethargic throughout that ordeal. Sure, it could be argued that it was the result of going through some sort of detox process, but given the way I felt through it all, and the very unnoticable 'improvement' I sensed afterward, I doubt if it was giving me any benefits. The only time I felt better after it was from eating a chicken dinner when it came time to finish the damn thing.
Being an occasional quasi-vegetarian isn't an entirely repulsive thought to me, or at least I'm not completely opposed to the idea. I do find myself enjoying more varieties of veggies and salads than I ever have, and I know and respect that there would be some significant benefit ecologically for this planet if we halved our intake of meat, or else just excluded animal flesh even for just one meal each day, or exclude it for one entire day of a week. The vegan meme though to me is a whole other issue of mindless extremism. Of all the real life people I've encountered who professed to me to be practicing vegans, very few of them struck me as ideal specimens of health (or sanity for that matter). They sure as hell didn't look like any of the models that PETA exploits for their campaign billboards. They either looked quite sickly, weak, and anemic; or else they fell on the other end of the spectrum of being (surprisingly) grossly obese. These latter people seemed to have over-compensated for the lack of protein by boosting and bulking up their intake of sugar, highly-processed hydrogenated plant oils/trans-fats, and excessive salt for flavouring. They looked like even more abnormally misshapen blobs possibly due to water-retention, probably suffering liver** and pancreatic issues or God knows only what other metabolic problems because of insufficient enzymes, or perhaps they were becoming hormonally screwed up from the onslaught of phytoestrogens from an excess of soybean products.
Some aspects of a strictly all vegetable diet are no better for you than having a high meat protein diet. There are lots of unhealthy fast/snack food around that would comply with a "vegan" diet, e.g. french fries fried in soy/corn oil, potato chips, and palm oil based dessert whip. There are no animal products at all in the beer I'm making, so technically it's vegan fare too. Even though a pint of beer and a plate of chips at the pub may qualify as vegan friendly, no one can say that it's the healthiest thing for you.
It's the personalities of these vegan-folk that bother me the most. I haven't yet met one of these vegans who didn't have a sanctimonious attitude about their chosen lifestyle, and felt some need to preach about it, while belittling others who do eat meat and are content with just being their natural omnivore selves. I have to laugh at the ones who endeavour to be so particular, and take such a hard core stand about having no "disgusting meat" enter their bodies, but have no such restrictions or concerns about smoking***. I saw an all-vegan recipe book in a book store, with the woman author on the front cover who had both her arms permanently covered and sleeved with a bunch of skank-ass tattoos. No "poisonous meat" for her, but it's evident that she never gave any second thought about how many toxic compounds were in that ink that she chose to inject and impregnate her skin with. Someone like that just strikes me as being just another annoyingly ditsy hypocritical shit-head. Just like the fashion dummies and celebrity spokespersons who gain publicity by admitting that they just can't bring themselves to eat those sweet little cows, but apparently have no problem with buying, wearing, and hoarding shoes and purses made from the their cute little hides, or tucking their asses into the seat of a Mercedes or Bentley made with the same leather.
The vegans and vegetarians who are so because of their religious beliefs have equally annoyed me as well; just the ones who claim that they have a "better religion and society" because they are vegetarian, with a "respect for all life". One woman, a new immigrant from India I met, was trying to explain all that very same bullshit to me some while ago. I held my tongue, but I could have been really tough and cruel on her, by bluntly and unrelentingly lambasting and pointing out that their largely Hindu vegetarian society hasn't prompted enough of a "respect for all life" to stop all the gang rapes that have been reported there in the last while, nor does it seem to be doing anything to curb the alarming number of female infanticides that regularly occur there (so poor families won't be forced later to pay some ridiculous customary dowry to get a daughter married), nor does it do anything to fully extinguish the segregating caste system that they still have, where such incidents have occurred where the impoverished Dalits (the so-called "untouchables") are sometimes beaten to death for doing something as minor using the "wrong" well for fetching the life essential of water. If I did get around to saying all that, without even mentioning the grinding poverty there and the lower life expectancy, I would have ended by asking her that if her "society and religion" were so much "better" there, then why in the hell did she bother to move here? Oh goodie for you if you were born and raised in an ancient culture living on a tropical subcontinent with a convenient year round growing season for fruits and vegetables. In a climate where dead flesh would spoil and go rancid in minutes without proper refrigeration, and where there is no clean enough water to process it, vegetarianism was/is a sensible and practical lifestyle there. This person didn't think at all, before she made her ethno-centric judgement, that hers was not a cultural paradigm that jibes well with living in a region where early settlement needed to account for only a four month growing season, extreme winters, and a need to can, dry, freeze and preserve food; which degrades the nutrient content significantly. Having fresh meat, poultry, or fish available was necessary for society to establish itself here. People must be cognisant and appreciative of that before they criticize. I'd like to see her and the other ignorant vegan dummies go up north and try to argue with the Inuit about meatless eating and social betterment with that kind of stupid self-righteous attitude.
The evolution of hominids into Homo Sapiens wouldn't have happened at all if our brain growth wasn't accelerated and fostered out of the necessity of trying to survive through an Ice Age by eating meat from hunting. Otherwise, we would have turned out to be not much different than pot-bellied ruminating gorillas who need to use most of their time foraging and eating to acquire their protein. Even within the perspective of modernity, if everyone was to spontaneously become a vegan here (as the more radical ones wish would happen) in this region of Canada, that means extra taxing and exploiting of the land and water resources in some other temperate/tropical agriculture zones somewhere else to grow more, and use more fuel for importing and shipping of this perishable nutritious living produce that we couldn't up grow here to sustain us for eight months of the year. We weren't made to live strictly on grain, which is the plant based thing we could do for a local homegrown vegetarian option throughout the winter months if we were to actively limit energy and costs for shipping. Furthermore, the grain-based diet itself has undergone lots of negative press in the past decade.
The other ignorant criticism at the global level that bothers me is the blaming of Western nations for not doing enough agriculturally to promote conditions more conducive to freeing the world from eating so much animal protein, and growing more protein rich crops. There is a real failure to note the interdependence. Canada (specifically here in Saskatchewan) is already the largest producer of lentils, a protein rich pulse crop, in the world; it's the Middle East, and other regions of Africa and South Asia where they are most frequently exported to, with India being the largest consumer. Ironically, our lentils are being shipped to places where climatically they are even better suited for growing such crops if their resources were managed better. I heard it speculated that if the entire pulse crop production in Saskatchewan alone were to totally fail in a year, there would be a real possibility of widespread famine and/or violent unrest due to hikes in food prices in those regions populated by those on strictly vegetarian diets. The real points of shame are that these nations and regions are not committing themselves to enough of an effort for a peaceful and stable political climate to enable themselves to establish their own sustainable agriculture systems, infrastructure, and practices to allow them to produce enough of their own food locally. The other great shame is ultimately the higher cost and fuel waste for us to be transporting this stuff half way around the world for them, as fuel prices go up due to terrorism threats from some of these very regions who demand this stuff, and there is added inefficiency due to skirting around and avoiding dangerous shipping lanes, like around the horn of Africa, where piracy is a real threat.
I don't have all the answers on how to live rightly, but I do know that being a vegetarian/vegan doesn't automatically make you a better person, although those who are would like us to believe it does. A lot of people have forgotten, or don't realize, that Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian.
* - Hydrometer reading: 1.043 for the original gravity. I speculate a 5.2% alcohol by volume end result, barring stalls and accidents.
** - The Dalai Lama even eats meat on occasion, more so to settle and remedy a pre-existing liver condition he has. Being a Buddhist monk, he is a vegetarian at heart, and not tuned into making other beings suffer, but he's also not so foolish about it as to compromise his own health.
***- Tobacco and "other-than"
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