I attended a wedding this year. Actually I attended more than 1, which is good because if my friends happen to read this (they better) then they won’t know of which wedding I talk of.
So, I was at a wedding and a family friend (of the bride) came up to me and drunkenly attacked me and my choices in life. My vegetarian choices.
I am used to it, of course, I have been a vegetarian for 11 years this month (March 2012) and I have always been the awkward one, the one who is putting everyone else ‘out!’
I remember visiting family in Newcastle and being taken to lunch. After living in Korea for 3 years, at that time, coming back to the U.K is pretty much the single most exciting thing I do for my taste buds. I drool as the plane slides into the terminal parking spot and I run the length of the arrival lounge to grab a bowl and a spoon and chow down on something that I know will be both amazing and ecologically harmless!
Therefore, when I got to Newcastle I was settled in the belief that as long as there is at least ONE thing on the menu that I can eat :
Vegetarian curry, burger, lasagna, mince...
then I am happy with ANYWHERE!
I sat in the car with my grandmother, cousin and her boyfriend and we drove around like headless chickens (GAH, how much do I hate that expression?) looking for something suitable. The first place was a quaint bar that smelled like the sea and looked like every bar in every British T.V show. I was satisfied.
I pulled out a chair, got well acquainted with the menu “ah, Vegetable curry..done”
and much to my disappointed was told that this place was not “going to do.”
We left.
This actually went on for another 2 places in which I was perfectly content. In Korea I suffer in silence with white rice and kimchi, please give me a fork and a curry! The third time I got into the car my stomach stirred louder than the engine and my grandmother shook her head in disappointment and remarked,
“We have to think of Ruth and her being a vegetarian, see?” As if I was the fussy one!
I should have reacted boldly and fought my corner but my head hung in hunger and I just looked out of the window as we left my delicious food behind.
Anyway, returning to the wedding. I had just helped myself to the buffet spread and was happily eating away at the veggie options provided for; me (there were not many other vegetarians in the room that night) and as I mentioned earlier a drunken family friend shuffled his way towards me. I was (as I always have been) easy prey for hungry carnivores and as I sat chewing on my red pepper he began to slur,
“Don’t you just want a steak? a big juicy steak?”
I probably rolled my eyes a few hundred times through this whole (mostly) one sided conversation. As the non sensical speech went on and included the cruelty that I am bestowing on plants!
I hate when meat eaters use that ‘argument!’ It is probably the single most unintelligent joke/comment I have heard and will continue to hear. I have thousands of reasons why my diet is healthier, more natural and less harmful to the world and the argument I always get back is, that I am causing pain to plants! *sigh*
The speech, at the wedding, then went on to ask me if I was planning to feed my children a vegetarian diet.
Here is my response, I like to keep my replies short and exact so that, hopefully, the discussion can finish rapidly.
“Well actually I plan not to have children but if I did, yes I would heavily consider a pure vegetarian diet for them”
“That’s child abuse that is!”
With that I agreed in a hugely sarcastic tone and the subject, thankfully, began to subside.
But now this is my blog so I get to reply in the way I really should have.
When it comes to meat eaters I have spent 10.5 years of my 11 year vegetarian ‘career’ never once telling them to become a vegetarian. I do not attack, judge, or bombard meat eaters on the subject of their diet, but for 11 years of my vegetarian ‘career’ I have been attacked, judged and bombarded about my diet and how it is tasteless, wrong and weird.
Now, it’s my turn!
If I were to have a child, which I have decided against and will address this issue in a later blog post, then I 100% stand by the idea that feeding a child a plant based diet is not abuse, but rather the opposite.
"When we Indians kill meat, we eat it all up. When we dig roots, we make little holes. When we build houses, we make little holes. When we burn grass for grasshoppers, we don't ruin things. We shake down acorns and pine nuts. We don't chop down the trees. We only use dead wood. But the white people plow up the ground, pull down the trees, kill everything. ... the White people pay no attention. ...How can the spirit of the earth like the White man? ... everywhere the White man has touched it, it is sore."
It is clear to me, but hazy to others, that we have destroyed our planet, and will continue to do so. If you drive along the country side you will notice a huge difference from driving along the country side years ago. There are much fewer cows and sheep on the hills grazing. They are not allowed this simple pleasure anymore, we have taken it away and put them in a shed. We have encased them within dark concrete walls, TURNING ON the sunlight when we want to trick the animals into growing and producing. Beating useless runts to death by bashing their heads against the concrete floor.
*This is a practice called thumping, I do not make anything up, I do not NEED to make anything up* I have not done enough research (yet) to argue about the topic of humans being carnivores, omnivores or herbivores but I do know that the Indians hunted down the wild animals. The animals that were free to roam until the great battle, it was not like hunting today where a man goes into the woods with a beer, a gun and a grin and shoots, from a long distance, a completely defenseless animal, just to hold up its antlers in a picture. The Indians take what they need, they thank nature for the great gift and they use all the beast. They appreciate the animal, we abuse the animal. We simply don’t deserve their life.
I will now plug the book ‘Eating animals’ I cannot praise this book enough, I adore it and am on my second reading. The author, Jonathon Safran foer, decided that having a child and deciding what he feeds the child is the single most important thing a parent does.
After a huge amount of research and even ‘breaking into’ (you cannot freely go into a factory farm as you can freely walk into a chocolate factory) a factory farm, he realizes that meat today is not something we should be eating as often as we do. It is not the fact that it is an animal with feelings that I make this judgement it is the fact that the meat is not good, it is not 'real', and it is most certainly not as healthy as some would say. Luckily for me i taught in Korea for 5 years and that put me off ever having my own children, but with 5 babies born every second it is worth having a thought and a read and a sober appreciation for those that decide to liberate their bodies.
I do no harm to anyone by munching on a pork-less sausage so that should be that...
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