I grew up in society where eating meat is normal and meat is available for almost everybody. I heard that meat is source of energy, that there are proteins which we need and cannot get from other food, that people are omnivores by nature, that roasted meat has unique flavour and taste, can be prepared in thousand ways, and so on and so on… As I grew up in that environment, heard about that from my parents, grandparents, friends and parents of my friends…, it is normal for me to eat meat. Or should I rather say it was?
First doubt I`ve got when I have heard recently that to bring 1 kilogram of beef meat to my plate costs this planet up to 15 000 litres of water that is spent and also contaminated in variety of ways. That is surprisingly quite a lot!!! Nobody told me that before, I never thought about that on my own, I really did not care about that, once a perfect steak was looking at me in a restaurant. Now I know that this knowledge is available for long time, but as it is not popular among big meat industry stakeholders and other big money makers, it stayed somehow hidden from my eyes and ears unfortunately. As my interest about environment continues, I think that at least little interest infected people around me, like my daughter. She showed me one documentary film about vegan food. I have heard about vegetarians and vegans before, of course, The whole film was really interesting, but one information grabbed my attention the most – 1 hectare of land can sustain :
one meat-eating man (1 pc)
or
twelve vegetarians (12 pcs)
or
even up to fifty vegans (50 pcs)
– wow …
I know, meat industry is a big business, it feeds a lot of people, but shouldn`t it be better to focus on vegetables instead of animals to eat? Of course, I did not immediately stop eating meat because, as usually, my scepticism pushed me to get more information about vegetarians, vegans, fruitarians, vitarians, freegans, lacto-ovo-vegetarians. A lot of people do not eat meat nowadays – mainly because they do not have the access to it, but also due to their religious laws, environment-friendly way of thinking, ethical reasons, health focus, etc and yet they survive without it – so it is interesting for me as well. My son also appreciates that There are also some negatives, as I have read in some articles, but negatives which we can avoid by some quite easy actions.
So, now I am starting almost 3rd week as a vegan . But if I will return back to meat (as they say – habits make everything easy), I’ll tell you about that, I promise!
