More With Less Part 3: Why I Don't Eat Meat

Thinking about writing this post has been giving me the cold sweats all week, so let's just go with the blunt opener, shall we? Rip off the bandaid and get to it.

My decision to keep a meat-free diet (both times I have made it) has been, in my opinion, the most significant lifestyle change I have made to live closer to my spiritual convictions.

There. I said it.

Can we still be friends? I've intentionally avoided talking much about vegetarianism on the blog because I know this is a touchy subject. How do I know? Because I've been rehearsing my "Please don't think I'm a self-righteous far-left Neo Pagan. Please know that I am not judging you for savoring your burger. Please believe me that this is a personal decision and I am not going to hand you a PETA pamphlet when you ask me to have lunch" answer to the oft-asked question of "So, why don't you eat meat?" It feels, at least to me, like there is often an assumption that vegetarians judge omnivores, and/or feel sorry for them and their slowly-clogging arteries. I eat a lot of cheese. My arteries are clogging if anyone's are (Oh, I'm not even going to tiptoe towards my vegan daydreams in this post). And I don't judge you for eating meat. If it looks like I am turning my nose up at your plate, it's because I'm trying to get a good whiff of your steak.

As my wise co-conspirator Jackie reminded me a few month ago (about a totally different subject, but her comment rings true in this discussion), we are not all convicted about the same things, and that's OK. Not everyone is going to feel compelled to give up meat. But I have been, and the thing about convictions is that once they settle in and grab hold of you, your heart makes it really uncomfortable for you if you continue to pull against them.

The simplest answer I can give to the "Why don't you eat meat?" question is this:

I am convinced that the meat industry is bad for people and terrible for the environment and I don't want to support it. It exploits animals and exploits people and causes intense suffering. I believe that God cares about  all of His creation, and that the inhumane treatment and death of millions of animals each year grieves Him, and it certainly grieves me. I am fortunate enough to live in a time and place where there are plenty of healthy ways to eat a balanced meat-free diet, and I'm thankful that I can opt out of an industry that I do not want to support. Plus, my mom died of cancer, and I'd just as soon hedge my bets against a diet that puts me at higher-risk for serious illness. Doctors know that high meat consumption (aka: the typical American diet) increases your risk of cancer and heart disease, and I'd really rather do what I can to avoid those.

But that's not how I put it if someone asks me face to face. Especially here in the South, the land of pig-pickin's and intensely devoted adherents to tradition, southern food, and family recipes. Even in Chicago, though, I hedged a bit. Diet and food are deeply personal, intimate topics of conversation, and people (including me) tend to be very protective of their food choices. I get it. I respect your choices! My diet is not exactly a pillar of virtue. I eat lots of sweets and other things I know to be bad for me and bad for the environment. But giving up meat, for me, was a simple and obvious step towards living in a More With Less attitude towards my food.

Yum! Totally tasty, filling, and meatless.

The More With Less cookbook (at least the older version that I got from the library) only had a half page devoted to considering the role meat should play in a simple diet, and while it used that space to encourage readers that a balanced meat-free diet is healthy and provides adequate nutrition, it acknowledged that most North Americans were probably not going to give up meat entirely. It pointed out that meat production requires a lot of resources (water, grain, land) and produces a lot of pollution, and encouraged readers to limit their meat consumption to 1/4 pound per person per day, and flatly calls anything more that that "waste".

I haven't always been convicted about meat. In fact, after eating meat-free for 5 years, I gave up on it and starting eating chicken and fish. Eating vegetarian is an omnivorous world can be a lot of work. Especially if you don't know a lot of other veg people. Chicken noodle soup and sushi and grilled salmon are their own sort of comfort-food, and I was in a place in my life where I was strongly inclined to turn to food for comfort. But then, I met Les. Les had been eating a vegan diet for 5 years, and also happens to be an excellent cook (I'm a lucky girl!). So, when we got married, one of our first major joint decisions was to meet in the middle and keep a vegetarian diet together. He added eggs and some cheese back in, and I said good bye to meat. Being a team about it is incredibly helpful, but even when I was single, eating veg was doable. I've learned a lot since that first foray into meatless menus, and I can honestly say that my diet is a lot more varied and interesting now than it ever was. Beans, lentils, quinoa (a complete protein!), some soy/tofu, (though I'm not a huge fan), and lovely armloads of vegetables that I never thought I could learn to love are now the mainstay of our diet. I still eat eggs and cheese, and Les has them once in a while. When we get up the motivation to go to the big Farmer's Market here in Raleigh, we can even get small-farm raised eggs and Animal Welfare Certified goat's cheese, which is awesome, but honestly, we don't drive out there as often as I'd like. We acknowledge the inconsistencies, and do the best we can.

My "conversion" from omnivore to herbivore, like many major life changes, is a plodding and circuitous story. The short version is that I was 23, living in Chicago, and starting to swim a bit deeper into the sea of social justice issues and realizing that following Jesus meant more than church and prayer and "trying to be good". I was reading about the growing movement of believers and "Creation Care" advocates who believe that the Bible teaches us to care for the Earth and to speak out about wastefulness and disposable culture. I read an excerpt from the classic "Diet for A Small Planet", and I can still picture the inverted pyramid diagram that showed the staggering amount of water and land it took to produce a pound of edible meat. And, I learned that the Tyson meat-packing plant in the Chicago suburbs is staffed almost entirely by low-wage, no-benefit workers, most of  whom are recent immigrants or refugees who can find no other work. Human suffering and environmental damage were the first pieces to fall into place for me. Even for me, the animal lover. I had grown up in farmland and watched cows roam lazily through the fields. They didn't look unhappy. My relatives were hog farmers on an mid-sized farm. The pigs looked more-or-less chill. I knew that meat was made from animals, but the brutality of Big Agriculture and factory farming hadn't really sunk in yet. But then I started reading. And, heaven help me, watching videos online. And that nearly pushed me over the edge to give up meat altogether. But not quite. It wasn't until I killed a couple of tree frogs that I decided "enough is enough".

My pet goldfish had died, and I went in search of an apartment-friendly pet. I brought home two adorable, zen-faced tree frogs and a little terrarium. I loved those little guys for the 4 days they survived in my care. I was eating a turkey sandwich at work when my roommate called me and told me that my tree frogs were dead. Really dead. "WHY?!?" I begged her. And she, a vet tech and zoo keeper, convincingly informed me that they had starved to death. I hadn't gotten them the right food, and they hadn't eaten in 4 days. A dry sob chugged in my bread-and-lunchmeat-choked throat, and I decided right then that if I could cry for those frogs then I should cry for the turkey in my hand. And for five years I didn't eat meat again.

And now, it has been over 2 years on this second go-round. I will confess that I have had a nibble here or there. Sometimes accidentally, sometimes not. When I did my grain-free elimination diet this winter, I ate some chicken. I was so hungry and anxious and I thought I was going to go bonkers. And I may or may not have taken a sample of grilled shrimp at Whole Foods one day and devoured it with slightly guilty glee. But 99% of the time, I'm veg and happy. And if I ever feel myself waffling in the direction of a fish taco, I look at AugDog and remember that I do not want to be part of any animal's death. I also think of a line from the poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay that one of my friends posted on Facebook several months ago:

"I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death."

I wish I could soften it a bit, because meat = death sounds harsh, even to me. But it's true, and I'm goin' with true over nice on this one. The Bible paints a beautiful picture of a New Heaven and a New Earth, when the world will be renewed, and not even the animals will eat one another. Of lions and lambs lying down together, and the end of all death. Woot! I'm all for that. Death sucks. I prefer to have no part in it.

There are a lot of great resources out there if you'd like to give Meatless Mondays a try, or do want to learn more about the meat industry in America. Even cutting back on meat will help your health and the planet. Check out any of these from your local library:

The Kind Diet - yep, its by Alicia Silverstone of "Clueless" fame. But it's a readable, engaging book about transitioning to a meatless (or vegan) diet. I've linked to her Kind Life website.

Becoming Vegetarian - slim book that I read many years ago when first trying out veg.

1,001 Low-Fat Vegetarian Recipes - simple, cheap, and tasty. Helpful when trying to avoid the pitfalls of gaining weight from all the fries and bagels you may or may not lunge towards when first leaning into a veg diet.

Whole Foods Vegetarian Eating page of their website. Yeah, they're a big company. Yeah, they can be really spendy. But it's a helpful resource.

Eating Animals - I haven't read this because I don't need to be convinced, but I've read enough commentary on the book to know that if you are looking for an in-your-face 360-degree look at the meat industry, this is the book for you. I've included 2 articles about the book below, if you prefer the "light" version.

10 Good Things Vegetarianism Can Do For You (And the World) from Sojourners
Eating Animals: 10 Reasons to Avoid Factory Farmed Flesh, also from Sojourners (somewhat graphic!)

There are not a lot of faith-based vegetarian books/websites out there - If you know of some, please let me know! Most that I've found are pretty low-tech and home-made and, well, dorky.

And, not for the faint of heart (be advised that there are graphic animal photos on the main page): www.chooseveg.com

Last but not least, a delightful YouTube video called Vegan Myths Debunked. LOVE. IT. Enjoy.

More with Less Part 2: Why it Matters What We Eat

Lovely, uneaten beans in our kitchen. 

It's August 20th, and I had a left over lemon poppy-seed scone for breakfast. And plenty of random processed stuff all weekend. And our fridge is still full, and our good intentions have not yet leaped onto our plates of their own volition. It's the truth. It is hard to eat well and thoughtfully. It is much easier to go with the path of least resistance (and least cooking, and least menu-planning, and least dish-doing). I'm still convinced it is worth the effort, but I have to get over this hump somehow.

I was sitting awkwardly at the little picnic-table area of Costco on Saturday, guiltily wolfing down my slice of Desperation Pizza and wondering exactly what it would take to turn things around. When presented with a quick, cheap slab of gooey cheese and pillowy dough and I haven't eaten lunch and it's 2pm, I lunged for it. Even though I knew I would be muttering profanities under my breath in a few hours because of the wheat. I wanted something to eat, and I hadn't set myself up to make a good choice. So I went back to the easiest and fastest path to shut off the rumbling in my stomach.

And besides, it doesn't really matter what I eat, right? I mean, those hungry people in North Korea or sub-Saharan Africa or downtown Raleigh or rural Mississippi are not going to go to sleep with full bellies just because I refuse to buy BigBox Store pizza or out-of-season tomatoes or anything that was shipped from Chile, right? Even if I change my diet and a few others follow suit, we're not going to change the food industry or re-direct any of my uneaten bagels to Bangladesh. So, do my food choices really matter to anyone but me?

Here's where I would love to reprint the whole 4-page chapter from the More-with-Less Cookbook called "Change - An Act of Faith". I have re-read it a couple of times this week to help me keep my eyes on the bigger picture, which, as the book points out, is essentially this:

In our complex world, it is hard to visualize how the struggles of a few families to save food will help. Channels to the needy are long and circuitous. Yet deconsumption is an obvious first step. The very complexity that frustrates easy answers also means that our decisions in the global family are interrelated. "Life is a huge spider web so that if you touch it anywhere you set the whole things trembling" says Frederick Buccher in The Hungering Dark.

 ...How can we continue overeating in the face of starvation, and be at peace with ourselves and our neighbors?... If we expect North American food conservation to totally solve world hunger, with good reason we sound naive and even paternalistic. Concerned Christians will move on to initiate food production and distribution programs. They will challenge oppressive government policy. But these broad areas are being dealt with in other settings. The scope of this book is necessarily limited to what some older preachers call "putting our own house in order". 

So that's where I'll commit to start. Putting our own house in order. My parents worked hard at this when we were kids. They were committed to some counter-cultural convictions, and it caused endless misery in my school-age years. WHY can't we have this toy or those jeans? WHY do we do these lame Family Devotions every Sunday? What if my friends find out that I'm reading Bible stories with my family, and that's why I've never seen The Simpsons?  They were putting their own house in order. They were looking at the Bible and at Jesus' teachings, and saying, as did the little cross-stitch next to the front door, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." For me and Les, we've been convicted that part of that means getting a handle on our consumption.

The More-With-Less Cookbook cites Jesus' miracle of feeding the 5,000 as a model for how WE are to respond in the face of seemingly impossible instruction and an overwhelming number of hungry people. We look at the huge need, then at our limited resources, and then back up at Jesus. He says "Share what you've got! There will be enough." and then we have to be obedient, even though that idea sounds nutty. Even if our faith is wobbly and our desire to trust and be obedient causes us to shrug and walk sheepishly into the crowd with one little loaf. We act in obedience, and God takes care of the rest.

Handily enough, the sermon we heard in church yesterday was ALSO about this miracle and the same point about obedience in the face of the overwhelming needs of the world. Here are the 3 tidy points of his three point sermon:

1. Jesus models a new perspective - We see overwhelming needs and feel powerless and frustrated. Jesus sees the crowd and is filled with compassion. 
2. Jesus gives us a new role - We're called to serve! Creatively, compassionately. Servanthood, he reminded us, is not limited by convenience, and we're not intended to take this all on our individual shoulders - we all share responsibility for everyone.
3. Jesus gives us a new set of rules - Nothing is impossible with Him. 

The disciples looked around at all those hungry people, and what did Jesus do? He didn't zap the loaves and fish and watch them mount into huge mountains of food. No, he looked at the disciples and said "You give them something to eat." They had some, and everyone around them had none. Sure, it looked like there was no way it would be enough. But it was! Plenty. Miraculously. And, as the story of the 5,000 reminds us so terrifically when it makes a point to mention that there were 12 baskets of food left over at the end (one for each disciple), when we work alongside God to fill the needs of others, HE PROVIDES FOR OUR NEEDS AS WELL.

So, bottom line. Will changing your food habits solve the world's food crisis? Will the world be a better place because you or I cut back? Will a scrappy band of Jesus-following vegetarian Robin Hoods start redistributing food all over the US and stand on a hill in the sunset and yell "As God as my witness, THEY will never go hungry again!"?

Maybe not. But maybe. And I'll just end with this. Like so many other ways that followers of Jesus are called to live lives that are not conformed to the patterns of this world, maybe our food choices are part of that set-apartness. Maybe they should be, if they are not. Maybe you or I or someone we know will feel God calling them to advocacy, or food redistribution, or to go down to the park where all the homeless gather and just share a big pot of chili with them and get to know their names. Maybe it's just time to get our own house in order, and keep looking up to God when we come face to face with the hungry and the sick and ask "Ok God, what are You and I gonna do about this? What do you want me to do here?". We have to start somewhere. Because I have already committed to Follow Jesus. And guess who he hung out with? Guess what his kitchen and pantry were stocked with? (Trick question!).

So I'll keep re-committing to getting my own house in order, and keep plodding along as I biff. I'll try to Give Thanks, to share, to be grateful. To celebrate joyfully, to live more within the bounds of "enough" and "plenty" instead of constant feast mode. And maybe, as the Mennonites who brought us the More-with-Less cookbook did, the money we trim from our food budget by eating simply can go directly to the folks who are hungry rather than right back into our pool of cash for other stuff we don't really need. It is not easy. It's a road less traveled. But we're on it now. One foot in front of the other, slowly first, then skipping. Then dancing.

More With Less Part 1: Reflecting on an over-stuffed fridge, stomach, and life

I came to the big revelation this week that the Food-focus month is going to take more than a month.

It might take us a month just to get our act together enough to START overhauling our consumption. For one thing, unlike steering clear of Target for a month which one can do with little more than a pang of stuff-lust, we eat every single day. Every darn day! And yes, I guess I could have started this new chapter off with a fast so I could really drill down prayerfully and thoughtfully, but I didn't do that. We're still eating while we figure out a new way to eat.

But I did get the More-with-Less Cookbook from the Library this week, and have been reading through the introductory chapters about WHY it matters (to more than just our waistlines and wallets) what we eat. Good, challenging stuff.

The Library only had the 1976 edition and I know there is an updated version available, but I'm pretty confident that the basic theological information and premise are the same: our North American overeating, overspending, and insatiable consumerism DO impact the world. And stand in sharp contrast to how Jesus told us to live. Our appetites drive the depletion of global resources and a sustainable environment, and keep unjust and inhumane systems chugging along.

When I first started reading the book, I thought "Ugh! A life without fancy food sounds pretty joyless and painful to me." It is always a bit painful to focus on giving up something you love (food!). The More-with-Less authors remind us that even on a simpler, more mindful diet, food can be a joy:

Around the world people who must live on monotonous diets still manage an occasional celebration. Undoubtedly their celebrations bring enjoyment in proportion to how much they vary from the daily routine. 

The four Gospels show Jesus entering wholeheartedly into times of joy and feasting...But the fact that in North America we tend to feast nonstop can dull our festive joy...More with less means affirming faith and relationships as the basis for celebrating, and letting food play a complementary role.

I look around our kitchen, and I recognize that on any given day it may appear to someone from another culture that we are in the throes of preparing for a feast. We have enough food on hand to sate a small army:

Jam-packed, albeit a euro-size fridge

Tons of dry goods and jars.

Potatoes, apples, onions, and other things that don't fit into the  fridge or cupboards.

Yep, that's even more food on TOP of the fridge.

I felt that twinge of embarrassment that pinches you when you arrive at a friend's house to crash for one night and your stuff and extra shoes and bag full of hair appliances make it look like you are staying for a month. We don't need this much food. We're not in a food crisis here in NC. In fact, we stock up on so many different things at once that a shocking percentage of it goes bad before we can eat it. Our eyes and our appetites are bigger than our stomachs. And stronger, it would seem, than our commitment to a life of faithful simplicity.

But change doesn't happen over night. Or maybe it does?

Confession: Les and I ate so much last night that I went to sleep uncomfortably full. We got up this morning and started talking about a steady change. We talked about the More with Less book, and other books that I've been reading for this month's challenge (more on those later). We're toddling towards major lifestyle changes here. We both LOVE food and LOVE to cook, so this will involve some cognitive retraining to get into a groove of not buying one or more of everything that looks delicious every time we go to the grocery store.

That would definitely help our food budget as well.

So here we are at the very beginning of this food-change journey, and it's already Aug. 12. And I can already foresee that the More-with-Less cookbook may not be a great fit for my Grain-free (or at least very grain-light) health needs. But the book is a great step in beginning to change the way we THINK about food and the impact our choices have on the big picture. That'll be Part 2. Stay tuned.

From not buying to not eating stuff we don't need. Mostly.

No-Buy July was a semi-fail.

I admit it. We still bought plenty of things we didn't need. We did decide NOT to buy a lot of things too. But even during a month we were supposed to be shutting down every lurch towards Chipotle, Target impulse buys, desserts, and Random Big Purchases (see below), we still bought stuff. If I didn't know better, I would say we "accidentally" bought stuff. Mindfulness is a discipline, and we're pretty flabby.

Just imagine what No-Buy July could be like if we were really committed, thoughtful, and fully engaged with our interactions between our wallets and the world! We're going to keep at it. Never going to get there if we only really try once a year.

I'll also confess that on Aug. 1 I went to Target. I went to Target, and I bought the "Best of Shark Week 25th Anniversary Special Edition" DVD, and a latte. And 4 random officey things from the dollar bins. Accountability, people! I need some! Technically the month was over, but obviously my impulse control could use a lot of work.

Speaking of impulse control, something about even TRYING to NOT buy things made us both extra twitchy to buy things. Sort of like the "Don't think about white bears!" psychology experiment from back in the day. Anyway, one night a couple of weeks ago, we had a conversation that went something like this:

Les: "Hey, don't we have some gift cards left over from our wedding?"
Me: "Yes. I've got the keys. Meet you at the car."

So we went to the Big Mall in Durham so we could skulk around the Pottery Barn and Williams Sonoma. It's not really "buying" stuff if you use gift cards, right?

Les bought a guy-friendly apron from Williams Sonoma that was on clearance, and then we went into Pottery Barn. And after about 45 minutes of deliberation about how best to spend our generous gift card bounty, we came home with this:

Thanks, Monteiros!

A chunky-knit blanket for our bed for the winter. It is way too warm to use any time soon, but we wanted something to add some texture and coziness to our bedroom, so we chose this. Something we would never buy with our own cash. For now it sits on top of the trunk in our bedroom out of reach of AugDog paws.

An unnecessary purchase if I ever saw one.

Well, it's August now, and I'm newly committed to bulking up my mindfulness muscles. If I realized anything really shocking during No-Buy July, it's that it is STILL our food purchases more than anything else that derail our budget and indulge those impulsive craving-quelling purchases. I always want more chocolate bars, more apples, more ice cream, more fancy cheese, and any food I want any time I want to eat it.

So even though I've been eating my selfish way through these first 5 days of August and just went to Trader Joe's last night, the rest of this month will be devoted to Food Mindfulness.

For us, that will mean:

• Getting serious about our food waste. Any wasted food it too much, but this month we're making it a priority to plan meals and to EAT what we buy and use up some stuff in our pantry, fridge and freezer.
• Finding this book at the library ASAP and getting into it with our menus: *
• More-with-Less Cookbook: Suggestions by Mennonites on How to Eat Better and Consume Less of the World's Limited Food Resources
• Giving Thanks to God at every meal and snack.
• Praying for Food Justice. (Maybe while fasting. I'm looking into this.)
• Figuring out a way to help/volunteer towards food security in our community (food bank, etc).
• Some version of the "7" food rules. I haven't quite worked them out yet, but I'll post them when I have. Something along the lines of eating the beans and lentils and stuff we already have + a limited number of fresh foods per week. No processed, packaged, or convenience foods.

Easy enough to lay that all out on the blog, but if No-Buy July is any indication of wobbliness, I think I'm gonna need some compatriots for this. Anyone want to join us? Even if you join us in our mantra of "It's Just One Month"?

* Some inspiration for this month's Mindfulness project, particularly the cookbook recommendation, came from this blog post on the Deeper Story blog.