Before a recent one month trip to Americaland (as I call it) I asked a number of my vegetarian friends if they would share some of their stories with me. I have a section on my blog called ‘Taboo Topics’ which is filled with stories from people on a variety of topics we rarely speak about, and this felt like a good one.
Seven of my friends responded and wrote some very eye-opening posts, which you can read over here if you are interested. The stories really challenged both myself and my wife, the beautiful Val (a.k.a. tbV) to consider taking our food a little more seriously.
We were already making baby steps into better eating in terms of trying to buy free-range and source ethical coffee and meat, but this felt like a good next step of taking it another level.
NOT QUITE READY TO TOSS OUT THE BACON
Don’t get me wrong. We both really enjoy meat. And we are not quite ready to throw it all out and become vegetarian. In fact, the one area from my friend’s stories that spoke to us was the information on how much more it costs the planet to produce and grow a grain-fed cow than it does the equivalent amount of wheat (something like 7kg grain for 1kg beef plus greenhouse gases and a whole lot more).
So tbV and I decided to do a little experiment.
What if we went for a week without eating any meat?
I know. Not such a big deal, right? Although some of our friends and family almost had a nervous breakdown at the idea – What? A whole week meat-free?
That was fourteen weeks ago. We are coming to the end of our seventh meat-free week and we feel great. tbV was actually saying to me last night that she enjoyed the veg weeks more than the meat ones now.
THE SIGNIFICANT EFFECT
While going one week meat-free (every second week) is perhaps not the biggest of deals, what we have effectively done is reduced our meat consumption by half. And that feels like a bit of a bigger deal. Obviously if more people took part in this experiment, it would start to have a huger impact.
Could you go without meat for a week? Would your family/friends be up for it?
Therein lies the challenge. The idea is not to be super religious about it and so if we go for a meal with friends during a non-meat week and they didn’t know and cooked meat for us, then we will eat it. But if there is a way of being at a family gathering where we simply eat the non-meat dishes and that works out we will rather go for that.
How about it? You up to trying it for just one week and coming back here and commenting on how it went?
Think about it: If you eat meat for a week, and then follow that with a completely meat-free week, and then have another week where you eat meat, you may not have solved the whole world’s problems, but you will have learned the important lesson of making both ends meat. Looking forward to hearing about it.