Day 2 of Turning Vegetarian

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Day 2 wasn't too bad, actually. I Did have a lot of fun at lunch when I announced to a table full of lawyers that I had decided to become a vegetarian. This came as something of a shock to them because only a week ago I had been making bold carnivorous statements such as "If it has cell walls it's not a meal." Naturally, their instincts were to try to cut my arguments to ribbons... which I attempted admirably to withstand.

One argument which was particularly tricky was what I'll call the 'natural' argument. In it's most basic form:

1. Some animals eat meat
2. Homo Sapiens evolved to eat meat
3. Acting as nature intended cannot be wrong

Conclusion: Eating meat cannot be wrong.

Perhaps I'll rebut the argument more fully in another post. Suffice it to say, digging into this gets tricky because it gets to the heart of what ethics is and how an ethical framework fits into the real world... heavy stuff.

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This will seem like a joke to those of you who know me, but I've convinced myself to give up eating meat. Starting today.

I've recently been reading the books of Peter Singer, a philosopher who is best known for his work on animal rights and charity for the poor. When I took one of his classes in college, I found his arguments impossible to disagree with, but his conclusions outrageous. That was when I first seriously considered the possibility that what I was doing when I ate meat was wrong. Unfortunately (0r fortunately... I'm still not sure) life got in the way. Dietary demands from competing in a college sport and a lack of time and gumption made dropping meat a seemingly impossible task, so I never tried.

Revisiting the same arguments of Singer's now, I can no longer justify my eating meat in the majority of cases. Being young, single, and working long hours in the city means that I eat out almost all of the time. In these cases it's a matter of picking one item off of the menu rather than another. Is my preference for the taste of beef rather than tofu so important that I need to torture and kill an animal (who I imagine would very much prefer not to be tortured and killed) to satisfy it?

Short Term Goal:

1. Eat vegetarian options at all restaurants/office cafeteria.
2. Eat vegetarian when it doesn't inconvenience others.
3. Not feel bad when a meal doesn't fall into one of the above two categories.
4. Learn more about what foods I can eat ethically.
   

That being said.... My dinner tonight tragically undelicious. I hate Tofu.

Meat... MISS U

I hope to do some posts to discuss some of the other ethical quandaries bouncing around in my head, and I'll let you know how this little experiment is going. Please feel free to give me some support (if you're so inclined) or ridicule (I may actually prefer this, probably a better motivator for me). And definitely make fun of me if I stop within the next week.