My brother-in-law first converted a few years ago; then I joined him this past spring; and now Ian is a vegetarian. Three immediate family members gone veg. Looks like Thanksgiving should be quite novel this year.
If Ian can last until Thanksgiving that is. He’s been unusually vocal about the omission of meat from his diet over the past few days, which has us both doubting his long-term prospects. You see, he’s tried vegetarianism once before. (What environmentally-conscious liberal hasn’t, really?) After watching Food, Inc. we both committed to meat-free diets for 30 days. It stuck for me, but Ian ate a bacon cheeseburger from Five Guys on Day 31.
So color me shocked a few weeks ago when he shouted “I want to be a vegetarian” in the middle of watching TV.
Okay, we were watching King Corn on Netflix. It’s another agribusiness documentary, but it’s not nearly as guilt-inducing as Food, Inc. And Ian’s reaction was quite disproportionate to the image he was seeing, which was merely a few brown and black cows standing indifferently in a stockyard. Very PG.
Then again, maybe his reaction wasn’t so disproportionate. As a recent convert to vegetarianism myself, I’ve become increasingly interested in animal rights organizations like the Gentle Barn and Farm Sanctuary, both of which both rescue farm animals from abusive situations, including factory farming. I love to coo over cute videos of baby cows and goats being bottle-fed and massaged like they’re Labrador Retrievers, and I always pull Ian over to coo with me. Bouncing calves are very memorable.
More than annoying Ian with adorable animal videos, I’m sure my food choices have influenced him as well. And that’s the thing I’m learning about being a vegetarian: even if you don’t say anything to the people you’re eating with, your food choices force the issue anyway. As much as those cheeseburgers tasted good, I’m sure the presence of my Boca Burger kinda made Ian feel bad about his food choice. Especially after I play the cute animal videos. Oops.
So maybe I’ve inadvertently made Ian feel guilty about eating meat, but an unexpected chicken sighting really sealed the deal. Driving down a local road, we saw two metal crated semi-trucks that were bleeding white poofey feathers. We passed them on the left and saw alive-but-motionless chickens on their way to slaughter. They were stuffed into the crates like pillow fluff. Ugh. Chalk it up to our mutual love of Teddy, but that image is going to stick with us for awhile.
I know it’s easy and more enjoyable to replace that unpleasant image with a tasty image of chicken marsala, so how can I know that Ian is really committed? When I wrote about my own decision to become vegetarian a few months ago, I mentioned knowing that it was the real thing this time rather than just another experimentation. How do I know Ian’s in it for the long-haul?
I guess I can’t be sure how long he (or I) will stick with our new vegetarian diets. But I feel renewed optimism because his decision to go veg was all his own. You see, our month-long trial with vegetarianism earlier this year was more like a bet: we declared that if either of us partook of any meat, we had to buy the other person anything they wanted valued up to $100. Our mutual cheapness assured our dual successes. But this time, the only bet he made was with himself, and his conscience seems to be a better task-master than his wallet.
In all honestly, though, I don’t really care if he’s a vegetarian forever. I just appreciate that he’s trying it out now. Even if he has turkey at Thanksgiving or partakes in the celebration of Red Lobster’s Endless Shrimp, I think / I hope that the long-term effect of this dietary experiment will be an increased awareness of his meat consumption. Then again, maybe he’ll stick with it as long as I keep letting him know how sexy it is whenever he asks the waiter “Can the lasagna be made with marinara instead of bolognese sauce?”
If Ian can last until Thanksgiving that is. He’s been unusually vocal about the omission of meat from his diet over the past few days, which has us both doubting his long-term prospects. You see, he’s tried vegetarianism once before. (What environmentally-conscious liberal hasn’t, really?) After watching Food, Inc. we both committed to meat-free diets for 30 days. It stuck for me, but Ian ate a bacon cheeseburger from Five Guys on Day 31.
So color me shocked a few weeks ago when he shouted “I want to be a vegetarian” in the middle of watching TV.
Okay, we were watching King Corn on Netflix. It’s another agribusiness documentary, but it’s not nearly as guilt-inducing as Food, Inc. And Ian’s reaction was quite disproportionate to the image he was seeing, which was merely a few brown and black cows standing indifferently in a stockyard. Very PG.
Then again, maybe his reaction wasn’t so disproportionate. As a recent convert to vegetarianism myself, I’ve become increasingly interested in animal rights organizations like the Gentle Barn and Farm Sanctuary, both of which both rescue farm animals from abusive situations, including factory farming. I love to coo over cute videos of baby cows and goats being bottle-fed and massaged like they’re Labrador Retrievers, and I always pull Ian over to coo with me. Bouncing calves are very memorable.
More than annoying Ian with adorable animal videos, I’m sure my food choices have influenced him as well. And that’s the thing I’m learning about being a vegetarian: even if you don’t say anything to the people you’re eating with, your food choices force the issue anyway. As much as those cheeseburgers tasted good, I’m sure the presence of my Boca Burger kinda made Ian feel bad about his food choice. Especially after I play the cute animal videos. Oops.
So maybe I’ve inadvertently made Ian feel guilty about eating meat, but an unexpected chicken sighting really sealed the deal. Driving down a local road, we saw two metal crated semi-trucks that were bleeding white poofey feathers. We passed them on the left and saw alive-but-motionless chickens on their way to slaughter. They were stuffed into the crates like pillow fluff. Ugh. Chalk it up to our mutual love of Teddy, but that image is going to stick with us for awhile.
I know it’s easy and more enjoyable to replace that unpleasant image with a tasty image of chicken marsala, so how can I know that Ian is really committed? When I wrote about my own decision to become vegetarian a few months ago, I mentioned knowing that it was the real thing this time rather than just another experimentation. How do I know Ian’s in it for the long-haul?
I guess I can’t be sure how long he (or I) will stick with our new vegetarian diets. But I feel renewed optimism because his decision to go veg was all his own. You see, our month-long trial with vegetarianism earlier this year was more like a bet: we declared that if either of us partook of any meat, we had to buy the other person anything they wanted valued up to $100. Our mutual cheapness assured our dual successes. But this time, the only bet he made was with himself, and his conscience seems to be a better task-master than his wallet.
In all honestly, though, I don’t really care if he’s a vegetarian forever. I just appreciate that he’s trying it out now. Even if he has turkey at Thanksgiving or partakes in the celebration of Red Lobster’s Endless Shrimp, I think / I hope that the long-term effect of this dietary experiment will be an increased awareness of his meat consumption. Then again, maybe he’ll stick with it as long as I keep letting him know how sexy it is whenever he asks the waiter “Can the lasagna be made with marinara instead of bolognese sauce?”
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