Where’s the beef?

Zoe has been telling me for ages about the Minnesota State Fair, or as Minnesotans call it, “The Great Minnesota Get Together”. I finally got to go last summer, and it was indeed, everything she had described it to be and more: every type of food on a stick imaginable (corn, porkchops, hotdogs, etc.) was present, as well as an assortment of deep-fried artery busters like twinkies and snickers bars (I definitely stayed away from those). In addition, there were the animal barns, which housed the different animals for competition. So I got to see a variety of hens, roosters, goats, horses, pigs and other typical farm animals that were up for prizes.

However, surprisingly, seeing all these animals “at the source” did have some unanticipated consequences. For one thing, I realized that for whatever reason, I recognized the bond I have with animals and that I consider them my friends. Furthermore, I knew that if I didn’t have to eat them (i.e. I could do so with no health problems), I would prefer not to. I guess for all these years that I’ve been eating meat, I’ve been rather far removed from the origin of the meat and never really connected with what I was eating – I mean it gets all neatly packaged up and I just pick it up off of a shelf or order it off of a menu right? Mass produced meat (besides imposing a huge cost on the environment and our resources) has an implicit cruelty that I never really took responsibility for as a consumer.

So, anyway, from this karma perspective, I decided to stop eating meat to see how my body would handle it. And turns out, about 5 months later, things seem just fine. In fact, my body seems to actually be doing better without it! I’ve lost that extra 10-15 pounds that I’ve carried around for most of my life and feel pretty good, both physically and mentally. So it’s a choice I’m glad to have made.

This does remind me of a story that I heard of a friend from mind who is also a vegetarian, but because he has carnophobia (fear of meat). When he was 7, he witnessed a goat being slaughtered for a meal. Unfortunately, after it was beheaded, the headless body continued to dance around him in circles, the neck spewing him with blood all the while. He didn’t eat meat after that. So horrible yet delightfully gruesome at the same time, isn’t it?

Related posts:

1. Food allergies update