Reflection

Me with a veggie dog - not a very good one.

            Through doing this project, I have been able to actually carry through with something I have always considered doing but never had the initiative to do. I don’t think solely doing this project myself had a very large impact, but I think it’s like voting – one person doing it doesn’t make much difference, but many people participating creates the outcome. I have had people tell me that there is no point in doing something like this because it won’t make a difference, but even if there isn’t a large group doing it, I think it is still worth living your life a certain way that abides to what you think is the right thing to do. If someone thinks that eating meat is bad for the environment, and in general for the methods of farming used, and doesn’t want to support that practice, then I think there is definitely a point and purpose to what they are doing. Thus, by not eating meat these 3 weeks, although I may not have made a marginal difference in the world, I felt good about not supporting these large meat companies and their farming practice – because even if people don’t realize it, just buying a product is supporting that company and anything it does to provide you that product.

            I don’t know if I made an impact on anyone of my friends or family while doing this, but they were aware that I wasn’t eating meat. I tried to install any information that I could about bad meat farming practices to my dad, and convince him that we should eat less meat, or try to buy meat from farmer’s markets, and I think he agreed with eating less meat, but it would be difficult to get him to buy other meat if it is more expensive. I also have a friend who lives on a farm and has her own chickens and bees. She also shops at farmers markets and is always telling me about how food is produced, especially meat, so I think she gave me more insight than I gave her. But, even though I probably didn’t influence anyone in a huge way, I think that friends always influence friends even if in the smallest and most subtle way. I think, maybe subconsciously, you always pick up on the things your friends do and how they act.

            Initially, I thought giving up meat would be harder than it was, but I found it to be pretty easy. I didn’t have many incidents where I almost ate meat, and it didn’t affect my life very dramatically. There was only few times where I thought I could smell chicken somewhere there wasn’t any. I think it was made easier by the fact that I knew it would be over in 3 weeks and I could eat meat again, and that I only had to go to school for 1 class, and could eat lunch at home. I almost always had a turkey sandwich, and it was so easy to bring to school, so I thought that part would be hard – to find something else to bring. But since I didn’t have to be a school for lunch, I could eat at home (hummus and pita), or sometimes I woke up late and had breakfast at noon and didn’t even eat lunch. But once I find something that I could easily bring for lunch, I think I could continue eating less meat. I don’t think I will continue eating no meat (not in the near future), but I will definitely eat less of it and try to buy from companies I can respect for their practices. I don’t think giving up eating animals and animal by-products is necessary, because animals’ eating each other is part of life. But the methods we choose to allow ourselves to do so is a large issue, one that many don’t realize or consider, or care about. 

Post Project

            I continued to not eat meat today though the project was over yesterday. I have found it pretty easy to not eat meat, and I think I could have also given up seafood without much difficulty as well. Today I actually didn’t eat any meat at all including seafood – I had cereal, a veggie sandwich, and rice, vegetables and eggs for dinner. I found that many places are more accommodating to vegetarians and always have some sort of meatless option even if the amount of choice is small. This is probably because more people are becoming aware of vegetarianism and it is probably getting growingly popular as people see that you can be perfectly healthy not eating meat, as long as you make sure you get other sources of protein. I’ve also always thought about being vegan in the future (probably not near future) especially since watching Ellen DeGeneres become vegan and see her show many examples of vegan foods and things like meat replacements that are vegan that still taste good and have the same texture. This would be much, much harder to do, but doing this project lets me think about it more realistically than before as giving up meat would be a step closer. 

Day 21

             Today I had another veggie sub from Subway. I definitely think this is something I can do more often in the future, which is get a veggie sub rather than one with meat, especially since it’s also one of the cheapest subs. At dinner I had the same thing as always – rice, vegetables and fish. My parents pretty much just keep my meals the same and just take the meat out and replace it with seafood. They have been good with the idea of me not eating meat, but they also keep asking me when I’m going to be done with it so that we can barbeque. I think I may have also convinced my dad to eat less meat in the future, which was helped by the fact that his cholesterol is high. I also want to try and get them to buy more meat that is organic, local, and farmed ethically, like free-range turkeys. But that will be hard since it might be more expensive, at least free-range turkeys are. I think around Thanksgiving I saw that regular turkeys are about 30$-40$ and free-range ones are about 70$.

Day 19

Today my parents barbequed again at dinner but I wasn’t bothered by it. I haven’t really had any trouble with not eating meat, but I think it would be harder to continue for a longer time. I think it was easier these 3 weeks because I let myself eat seafood, and somewhat because I’ve been eating lunch at home, so it was easier to find something to eat rather than have to pack something, especially since I always had a turkey sandwich. I think it’s also been simpler because I knew it would be done after 3 weeks and it’s much easier to get through something if you know it’s going to end and you can stop caring after that time. Although, I thought it was going to be much harder before starting and it has been the complete opposite. The only slight difficulty has been remembering to watch what I eat, especially when not at home and am somewhere else where I’m not paying attention to my food. 

Day 18

Yesterday, for dinner, I had a vegetarian sub from Subway, which is exactly like all the other sandwich choices, but it has no meat. You go straight to cheese and vegetables you want on it. I’ve always thought that a sandwich with absolutely no meat, and no meat substitutes, and just vegetables wouldn’t taste very good but the sub I had didn’t taste very different and was good. I think this could be a choice I side with more often in my future Subway trips, especially since I don’t know where Subway gets its meat, and considering they’re a large fast food chain, they probably don’t get it from local, organic farms that use extremely ethical and environmentally friendly methods. Today, I was at Relay For Life, so I was at school for 12 hours. I ate a bunch of junk food, and vegetarian pizza at lunch, which wasn’t new for me, and a veggie dog for dinner, which was new for me. The veggie dog tasted a little funny and the texture wasn’t that appealing, but I don’t generally like hotdogs anyways. It wasn’t too different from a regular hotdog but definitely tasted worse. I think I will stay away from all hotdogs as much as possible in the future.

Day 16

            Tonight I went to the IB dinner, which wasn’t an actual dinner, but there were appetizers. It was harder to make sure I didn’t eat meat because I didn’t know what was in the food, but I had people pre-eat things for me and I’m pretty sure I didn’t eat any meat. Even though it hasn’t been very hard not eating meat, I don’t think I will continue doing it after the project. I think I will eat less meat and when I do eat meat, I want to try to buy the right type of meat. I’ve seen at Farmboy that they have a local and organic meat section. It’s small, but at least it’s existent. The meat comes from local Ontario farms. There are also many free-range options like for turkeys and eggs. I think I will also try to consider buying better animal by-products that aren’t meat as well, like eggs and milk. Lots of people forget about the fact that even if the animal isn’t killed, it doesn’t mean the animal doesn’t suffer. 

Day 15

            Yesterday for lunch I had hummus with pita bread, and today I had a pasta salad. This is the only meal where I’ve had to adjust because I usually have a turkey sandwich. It has been easier to find something to eat because I’ve been eating mostly at home the past 2 weeks and a few times at a restaurant. If I had to bring a lunch as usual, I probably would have considered buying Tofurky so that I could continue making sandwiches, which are easy to bring. I also managed to eat almost no seafood today either except for a tiny bit of salmon at dinner.