Saturday, December 19, 2009

morality of meat

last night, over tea with coconut milk, my sister, her girlfriend, and i talked about our bodies and body image. i have had health problems for over ten years that i can't seem to shake, except of course for the few months when i was totally primal.

"you know being a vegan totally messed you up, right?"  my sis said.

in a flash, i realized that my weight issues, my health issues, and my mental health issues dramatically worsened when i gave up meat.  i was a vegetarian for years.  i felt so very righteous.

i've always been an extremely sensitive person.  so sensitive, that as part of my survival, i know tend to avoid crowds, too much noise, and the news.  i just feel too much.  so, the plight of our fellow creatures on this earth (i lost sleep after imagining chickens in cages too tight to move around) as they are farmed for our sustenance made me sick (in so many ways).

as a little girl, i saw chickens with their heads cut off running around a small enclosed yard.  a couple of hours later, they were quite delicious.  i've eaten the meat of a ram that i used to pet.

and, then, the health issues.  bloating, all sorts of digestive distress, fatigue, joint pain, headaches, scattered memory....but at least i wasn't contributing to an animal's suffering.

hold the phone.  I'M an animal.  and i'm suffering.

part of the rage that i feel towards factory farming are the deplorable conditions in which our meat is raised.  the pens are too small.  the diets are all wrong for the animals.  (cows eat GRASS not GRAINS) the animals aren't given room to play.  they are fed hormones to control their weight.  a cow isn't given place to develop its "cowness".  a chicken can't be a chicken and pigs have no mud in which to be piggy.

wait a second.  people are crowded into cubicles.  our diets are completely wrong for us. (people eat VEGETABLES and MEATS not GRAINS)  people aren't given the incentive to go out and play.  people take pills or are fed hormones in their food that control their weight.

people aren't given place to develop their "peopleness".

the animals that suffer the most with vegetarianism are people.

not eating meat is not a morally righteous move.  we need it to be healthy.

insisting that all creatures have the right to live as they were meant is beyond moral.  it's just correct.

i wonder how long it will take to undo the damage to my body that vegetarianism has caused.

4 comments:

  1. I love this post! This could have been MY story! I can't believe I came across your blog today of all days. I have been vegetarian, vegan, raw vegan...ahhh. I will be adding you to my RSS feed :) Thank you for your writing

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ok it's me again, I was thinking she has GOT to be an Aries, like me. So I go check out you profile and what do you know, you are!! What month/day were you born, if you don't mind me asking?

    ReplyDelete
  3. If you still have any bad feelings about eating animals, I recommend learning what you can about the traditional indigenous peoples of the world and their outlook on such questions. Also, the more you eat good quality meats (like grass-fed beef), the better and more confident you'll feel, which will tell you that you're doing the right thing.

    If you're in Haiti, I hope you and yours survived the earthquake OK.

    ReplyDelete
  4. have you read "vegetarian myth" by lierre keith??? oh man!! you have to and pronto! you are not alone in this struggle of meat and animals and animal rights and life and death and your life and death.

    i am not vegetarian. the book still changed my life.

    just do me a favor and read the book. and eat some bacon.

    happy wednesday!!!

    ReplyDelete