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The Month of Meat.
Aug. 31st, 2006 09:37 amI just remembered something I've been meaning to post about for quite a while. My younger sister, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sytharin, has been a vegetarian for almost as long as I have (I'm coming up on 9 years as a vegetarian, barring one or two "meat incidences" that I will not go into at the moment), but has recently been considering going back to eating meat for about a month. The Month of Meat, she calls it. She has decided to do this because there are a lot of meat products that she has never eaten as a result of being vegetarian for so long. Sushi, for example. I find it to be quite an interesting concept. The point is clearly not to gorge herself on meat, just to try what's out there so she can make a better informed decision about when to eat meat and when to not eat meat.
This is all rather interesting because it goes back to the philosophical bases for being vegetarian. I believe that many non-vegetarians misperceive the decision to not eat meat and tend to think that all vegetarians are pretty radical about their beliefs. And I have to admit that I have had some extremist vegetarian friends, the people who don't like to eat food that has been cooked on a grill that was used to prepare meat. My family has had a much looser view of vegetarianism, seeing it more as a lifestyle and not as an extremist Thou Shalt Not Eat Dead Animal Products cult.
I've been considering all of this quite a bit because I decided to eat salmon when I was home in Seattle. Salmon is a big part of the food culture of the Northwest, and I would NEVER consider eating it anywhere else in this country, but the salmon that my family ate is the one pictured below:
My mother bought it at the University Farmer's Market from a local fish distributor, and it was served as part of a family celebration.
I tend to be the most militant about my decision to not eat seafood, which is contrary to many other people who call themselves vegetarian. I think that a recent NPR story on a book about the Chilean Sea Bass is a good illustrative example of why I don't eat sea food: land-dwellers have a perception of the world's oceans as a vast, infinite space teeming with life. When it comes to commercial fishing, this couldn't be further from the truth. Sadly, farmed fish are not a good alternative, either. On the other hand, the Monterey Bay Aquarium keeps a Seafood Watch List to help seafood lovers determine which seafoods are sustainably harvested. But I still choose to not eat fish because I prefer to leave fish to those who incorporate it as an important part of their culture or those who LURV it. I live in Arizona; we have no ocean. So this is no place for seafood.
I could write more--returning to the subject of The Omnivore's Dilemma, for example, but I think that is all for now.
/vegetarian soapbox
sytharin, has been a vegetarian for almost as long as I have (I'm coming up on 9 years as a vegetarian, barring one or two "meat incidences" that I will not go into at the moment), but has recently been considering going back to eating meat for about a month. The Month of Meat, she calls it. She has decided to do this because there are a lot of meat products that she has never eaten as a result of being vegetarian for so long. Sushi, for example. I find it to be quite an interesting concept. The point is clearly not to gorge herself on meat, just to try what's out there so she can make a better informed decision about when to eat meat and when to not eat meat.This is all rather interesting because it goes back to the philosophical bases for being vegetarian. I believe that many non-vegetarians misperceive the decision to not eat meat and tend to think that all vegetarians are pretty radical about their beliefs. And I have to admit that I have had some extremist vegetarian friends, the people who don't like to eat food that has been cooked on a grill that was used to prepare meat. My family has had a much looser view of vegetarianism, seeing it more as a lifestyle and not as an extremist Thou Shalt Not Eat Dead Animal Products cult.
I've been considering all of this quite a bit because I decided to eat salmon when I was home in Seattle. Salmon is a big part of the food culture of the Northwest, and I would NEVER consider eating it anywhere else in this country, but the salmon that my family ate is the one pictured below:
My mother bought it at the University Farmer's Market from a local fish distributor, and it was served as part of a family celebration.
I tend to be the most militant about my decision to not eat seafood, which is contrary to many other people who call themselves vegetarian. I think that a recent NPR story on a book about the Chilean Sea Bass is a good illustrative example of why I don't eat sea food: land-dwellers have a perception of the world's oceans as a vast, infinite space teeming with life. When it comes to commercial fishing, this couldn't be further from the truth. Sadly, farmed fish are not a good alternative, either. On the other hand, the Monterey Bay Aquarium keeps a Seafood Watch List to help seafood lovers determine which seafoods are sustainably harvested. But I still choose to not eat fish because I prefer to leave fish to those who incorporate it as an important part of their culture or those who LURV it. I live in Arizona; we have no ocean. So this is no place for seafood.
I could write more--returning to the subject of The Omnivore's Dilemma, for example, but I think that is all for now.
/vegetarian soapbox
