Veg-Curious
Having moved out earlier this year and now being fully responsible for the food going into my mouth, I’ve stuck pretty much with a pretty basic formula: rice + vegetables + meat/tofu. For variety, I might go out for lunch or have soup. For breakfast, it has been danish pastries. I have developed more of an awareness of this “food” thing. (I guess this is part of living consciously, for those of you who follow Steve Pavlina.)
In the past, I have just considered food to be fuel and/or entertainment. However, if you think about it, there is a whole lot of things going on behind the scenes that we don’t even get to see. For example, organic foods have really become mainstream in the last while as people are more concerned about the use of pesticides. And then there is the talk about treatment of cows, pigs and chickens before they turn into consumables.
I have been more interested about vegetarianism as of late. When I was a kid, I used to think that vegetarians are weirdos. These days, being vegetarian is relatively mainstream; just ask Pamela Anderson. Generally, I think that society’s tolerance of weird has improved so neither being Pam or being a vegetarian is as strange as it used to be.
Other people’s reasons for becoming vegetarians are pretty straightforward: kindness to animals, religion, health, etc. For myself, a efficiency obsessed technie, I like the idea that vegetarians has a smaller ecological footprint than meat eaters; the beef that you are eating has to be grain-fed with a pretty large amounts of grain. Also, I like the idea that my food preparation would be simplified if I don’t have to deal with meat.
I would say that I am veg-curious these days. When I eat out, I sometimes order the veggie burger (and sure, pile on the bacon and cheese please). I think that it is a matter of finding some basic recipes to try out and then going from there.
December 31st, 2008 at 12:24 pm
I’ve been a “social meat-eater” for almost two years now and I noticed that I’m a lot faster on my bike. There is definitely a increased interest in vegetarian diets these days — there’s even a new term call flexitarian for people like me who are not vegetarian but close to it! Check out this link
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4541605/
December 31st, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Looks like even being half-way vegetarian is starting to become mainstream. It’s cool that being mostly vegetarian is performance enhancing.