I've got a confession to make. This may come as a surprise, seeing as I have not eaten it in over two years, but I love meat.
There was a time in my life when nothing made me happier than a big, juicy steak (covered in A-1 steak sauce of course). I adored going to restaurants like Fuddrucker's and Carl's Jr, indulging in a meaty burger. One of the best dates I have ever been on was at Marcello's, which is a chophouse in Albuquerque, NM. My date and I had porterhouse steak, truffled mac and cheese, and listened to live jazz. One of my favourite recipes was bacon-wrapped pigs in a blanket. (Pretty sure I have pics floating around somewhere.) So,yeah, clearly a meat aficionado here. So, what changed?
Well, like many people, I only liked meat a certain way. I could not stand seeing bones, cartilage, fat, gristle... Anything that reminded me that it was once a living being. Once, Mum ordered chicken wings from Domino's, I bit into a big fat vein, and went straight away into the bathroom where I threw up. Another time I got a steak which had been undercooked. When blood started running onto the plate I could not finish my meal because I was so disgusted. I also could only eat meat if I had been either heavily processed (like deli slices or bacon) or covered in sauce, gravy, or condiments of some kind. I knew a guy who was into bodybuilding who ate plain chicken breasts and spinach for dinner; I used to always tease him and say, "Put some barbecue sauce on that shit, bro!"
Over time I started becoming more disgusted with myself because I could not seem to keep up the same kind of cognitive dissonance like others around me. Why could everyone else eat sausage and eggs for breakfast and feel nothing, and I couldn't? I remembered the project I did on factory farming back in high school, and the revulsion I felt after learning about the horrors chickens go through for our chicken sandwiches and eggs. I decided to revisit that, but not after getting into a lot of debates with vegans and vegetarians on the Internet. One day someone sent me a message saying, "Watch Earthlings" with a link to the movie. Narrated by Joaquin Phoenix, the movie details the different ways animals are killed and exploited for human consumption. I forced myself to watch the entire thing (even though I was in tears ten minutes in).
I decided then and there that if I couldn't look my food in the face, I didn't deserve to eat it. I also could not, in good conscience, support the cruelty and horror involved in factory farming. Then and there I became a vegetarian. A few weeks later, I went even further and became vegan. Though I'm nowhere near perfect and I have the occasional slip-up, I feel like this lifestyle is the best thing that ever happened to me, and my only regret is that I didn't do it sooner.
Do I still crave meat? Yes, on occasion. Same way I crave cigarettes. (There was another time in my life when I was rarely seen without a cigarette poking out of my mouth). I know cigarettes are bad for me , make me smell awful, burn a hole in my pocketbook, change the way food tastes... But that doesn't mean I don't crave the comfort a cigarette used to bring. Meat, too, was a comfort food for me. No longer. All it takes it a little willpower and I am stronger than my tastebuds, cultural conditioning and societal pressure.
--M. Dos Santos
