Jason’s musings

Probably if you know me, you are aware that I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 4 years old (17 years without meat). Here I just want to clarify my current perspectives on the matter.

The first reaction I often get when I tell people I’ve been a veggie since 4 is “Your parents are vegetarian too then?”. Quite the opposite, I became a vegetarian against the behest of my parents. My household is of the meat as a main food variety.

I first became a vegetarian because, quite simply, I didn’t like the taste of meat products. Coming from a farming family may have served to make me feel a little repulsed at the idea of eating animals too. But, I’ve never really had an ethical problem with eating meat, and I consider it perfectly natural for humans to be carnivores (factory farming I do have ethical problems with). Humans have been farming animals for so long that evolution has had time to occur and in the scheme of things, those animals really do exist for human consumption. I’m not going to go into details here, but that’s what I take from my limited knowledge of evolutionary biology.

So, why am I still a vegetarian? Quite simply, that’s just who I am. I now consider it part of my identity, not in some superficial way, and I would definately eat meat if it was required to survive. Perhaps I am revulsed also by the idea of eating an animal, and there is still a taste factor. I also think that it is a good health choice, as there is no doubt that meat should only be consumed in limited amounts, again due to evolution when homosapiens were hunter gatherers and meat came once a month. I do have difficulty however keeping protein intake high enough, but I’m addressing that problem.

An interesting experiment would be for me to try red meat and see what kind of mental effects it may induce, given my inexposure to many of the chemicals that it contains. Would I suddenly have a massive burst of testerone production or similar effects? I can only wonder.