dietary consciousness: a lesson in awareness

I am a vegetarian.  Well, perhaps more of a lacto-ovo-pescatarian at this point in time.  Let me explain: 

 A couple years ago, while at BYU, I was spending all my time on campus--every day, all day.  For convenience, I ate at the Cougareat, and over time I realized that all of my meals contained meat in them, and I began to be sick of always eating meat.  This view was supported by what I knew of the Word of Wisdom, which counsels to eat meat sparingly.  That part of the principle always seemed under-emphasized to me.  In church we always talked about avoiding coffee, tea, tobacco, alcohol, and drugs, but somehow rationalized that eating several hamburgers at a ward BBQ was okay.  Somehow that became a less important part of the law, and carnivorous gluttony seemed a lesser evil than drinking a cup of green tea.

 Anyway, the story continues with me moving into a house with fantastic roommates who were all vegetarian.  That fall we made a dinner group along with the girls who lived across the street--a vegetarian dinner group.  This was my first exposure to a complete vegetarian diet, and I appreciated the delicious preparations my friends and I made for dinner.  Though I still ordered meat dishes in restaurants, my consumption of meat was greatly reduced, and I felt better.  

 From that time on, I became a self-described "meat minimalist," and the only time I would eat meat was when I ate out, and even then not all the time.  The greatest change took place when a friend recommended a website to me, called chooseveg.com.  When I explored the website, it showed how animals are sometimes treated in farms and slaughterhouses, and I was appalled.  Having always been sensitive to the treatment of animals, I was horrified to see how the animals we eat are often deprived of their dignity and are mercilessly abused, then brutally killed.  The site explains ethical, environmental, and health reasons for being vegetarian.  Of course it’s biased toward promoting vegetarianism, but the experience jolted me enough to make me commit being a vegetarian.  My initial reason being that I did not want to support an industry that promotes such a degradation of life and a mass-marketing of cruelty.

 Since then my philosophy behind my diet as well as the diet itself has morphed and expanded, as I seek a reasonable way of living that follows the greater principles behind the practice.  The central principle that guides my eating practices (as well as my way of seeing the world) is CONSCIOUSNESS.  Consciousness of what I put in my body, where it comes from, what it means, and the effect my consumption has on the world around me.  More than anything, I am disgusted by the lack of connection we have to our food in general, whether we eat meat or not.  Thus the principle, in my opinion, is not completely about what I eat, but about recognizing that the food I ingest comes from somewhere, takes resources to produce, and might have a certain dignity that should be respected.  For example, I feel that a cow should have the dignity of being a cow while it is alive, free to roam the pasture, socialize with its cow friends, and then when it is time to kill it, to do so quickly and humanely.  More than anything, I advocate dignified treatment of the life that sustains our life—there is nothing wrong with eating meat, I believe.  It’s just that I am uncomfortable with the amount of meat our society consumes and the methods it uses to produce such mass quantities of meat.  There is a sense of entitlement to eating meat in our society that disgusts me, made worse by the lack of consciousness that the meat we consume comes from actual living things. 

 When I pray over my food, I thank God for the living things that have given their life that I might live—whether they be plants or animals.  I don’t know that I will always avoid eating meat and poultry, but I hope that I can maintain a consciousness about what I eat throughout my life, coupled with a gratitude and appreciation for the sources that sustain me.