The Accidental Vegetarian

Meat is overrated. After several weeks since I ate meat as part of my diet, I’m not really missing it. So I guess I am coming out as a vegetarian. It’s no big deal. But it wasn’t something I decided, planned, or forced myself to do. It just happened.

My family started thinking more critically about food after reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. For a time, the image of filthy cows crowded into feedlots knee-deep in their own excrement and doped up with antibiotics to counter their sickness to the unnatural corn diet we force upon them–did give me momentary pause as I ordered the occasional Double Whopper with Cheese. But I got over it and did it anyway. For awhile. But at some point, it actually did stop tasting good. One day I looked at my half-eaten Whopper–and threw it in the trash.

I am not going to say meat is evil–and I do still love a great steak or a bunch of fresh roasted pulled pork barbeque. But most of the time, what we eat for meat is not special. It’s bulky and poor quality with little or no taste other than salt. I started to notice how I kept adding more and more spices to my spaghetti sauce. I started to notice how the chicken cubes in the stir-fry were only distinguished from the tofu by their grisly, rubbery nature. We did try better quality meats–including grass-fed organic hamburger…but along the way, we just started to realize–this is optional. It’s not that much better.

We started cooking with vegetables. We already loved garlic and I discovered that more and more, what I enjoyed in a stir fry or melange of squash and peppers was the taste of vegetables and spices. We joined a Community Supported Agriculture farm and tried what they gave us. We found that grilling peppers and squash gave them a great char taste we liked. And ultimately, when we looked at the price per pound on the meat we were buying…the question became, why are we bothering with this junk?

It’s not about deprivation or fooling yourself. We tried many of the mimic products along the way and I’m not going to recommend tofu dogs or most types of “meatless meatballs” to anyone. If you compare to what you imagine you are missing, you will always come up short in your expectations. But take a critical look at what you are really missing. When you do find a great steak, by all means, go for it. But those chicken nuggets…you might was well be eating tree bark–as long as you can dip it in some high fructose corn syrup, you won’t know the difference. So why not just say no?

Say yes to more creative ways of cooking and eating. Nobody is going to pick up a brick of tofu and take a bite, but you can marinate it in sesame oil, soy sauce, and garlic, then bake it in the oven to create tasty flavorful cubes that go well in a mix of vegetables. You don’t need to put a slab of fat on those green beans–just steam them fresh and enjoy the flavor of what they naturally taste like. Have you had fresh beets? There is flavor to be found.

I came from a meat-lovers background so talk like this sounds pretty radical. But it is all about preference. I do believe my diet is healthier for me. The fact that I enjoy it allows me to avoid participating in the demand for meat products that results in all the food industrialization we hear about and ignore. But I don’t obsess on the details and conflicting studies or micro advice. I’m not going to publish a guidebook: The Meat-Lovers Guide to Going Vegetarian but simply suggest people eat more of the natural healthy things they like and see where it takes them.