Food Inc.

I finally watched Food Inc. and I have to admit, I’m a little traumatized.  It gave me flashbacks to my early days of living next door to a pig slaughter house.  The pig pen was literally in my back yard, although my family was not affiliated with it in any way.  My grandpa even built me a little clubhouse that my mom painted with happy, mud-wallowing pigs.  I think I liked having those pigs back there; I enjoyed hearing them snort and root around.  Once in a while one would escape and go tearing around our house, ruining my mom’s flower gardens.  However, several times a year the farmers would slaughter my piggy friends. 

I remember one incident as if it was yesterday.  I was innocently playing in my playhouse when all of a sudden I heard the pigs screaming in terror.  I don’t remember if I knew what exactly was happening, but I sure knew those pigs were suffering.  I sprinted from the back yard to my bedroom, crying hysterically.  My mom was obviously concerned with my level of upset, but I wouldn’t calm down.  I was so disturbed about those pigs, and I can still hear their screams.

From that point on I never liked to eat pork.  I did occasionally, but I especially did not care for ham or pork chops; for some reason, they seemed particularly connected to the pig.  I also could not eat veal (knowing it was baby cow), deer (thanks to Bambi) or lamb (because of that old cartoon “Lambert, The Sheepish Lion”).  Aside from that, I’ve always been a picky eater and squeamish.  Looking back on it, its kind of amazing that its taken me this long to become veg.     

The World's Most Unhealthy Vegetarian

Recently I started my journey as a vegetarian. I decided to become veg primarily because of health reasons, but as I've researched, I've found a plethora of motivation. However, its hard to be veg when you don't like vegetables! This is why I've dubbed myself "The World's Most Unhealthy Vegetarian". As it turns out, vegetables are the primary ingredient of a veg's diet. Wish I'd known this back in Janurary! Not only have I had to start actually eating vegetables, but I've decided to try to go vegan (for reasons that I'll someday, maybe in another 3 months, post on the blog) and so that eliminates the tasty food that helps veggies not taste like veggies: Cheese! And to top it all off, I recently discovered that the veggies I actually like (tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplants) are of the nightshade family, which are full of alkalines and not great for you in large quantities. So long, eggplant stiry fry recipes, tomatoes on everything, and french fries.




So what HAVE I been eating, you may ask? Still lots of TV dinners, of the veggie orientation, ramen noodles, and PB & J sandwhiches. Maybe I should eat some broccoli or two, there's not a lot of fiber in that diet.