Climate action
I was prompted by a question from Climate Outreach’s PDF How to have conversations about climate change in your daily life: “How did you get interested in climate change?”
I didn’t have an answer then, and still don’t really recall what got me into it.
Some things I do primarily because of the global environment. Others I do primarily because of individualized health or financial reasons. Some things I’ve done on and off. Others are more consistent.
This is the first post in a series about my past and current decisions about food, apartment living, and transportation/travel.
Let’s start with food: chicken, fish, and meat.
How have I reduced meat-eating? Has it changed over time? What do I miss? How did I replace it?
Poultry
In 2017, when I moved out for the first time, I was keeping a strict/modern orthodox kosher kitchen.
I didn’t buy poultry because I didn’t want to buy a second set of dishes/equipment, touch the uncooked chicken to cut away the blood and wash it (ew, visually, and smelly), or spend the money. [Kosher meat is typically more expensive than non-kosher meat.]
I would eat chicken out though, when I’d be at my parents for a meal or as my go-to from a meat restaurant.
But even now thinking back, I’m remembering the sauces and onions more. It’s hard to pinpoint what chicken tastes like. I think I liked the seasoning, sauces, and stir-fry more than the protein itself. I don’t miss chicken.
Chicken soup and gravy was a different story. I kept on partaking; I wasn’t a ‘strict’ vegetarian. (I no longer have either.)
There was this one chicken gravy that my mom made within the past year that I was mainlining (neither of us can remember which recipe, unfortunately). I brought the extra gravy home in a container and would microwave it to eat it, soaked up in bread. Mmm. It was so delicious.
Not eating chicken soup is harder. But even as I tell myself that vegetable soup is just as tasty, there is a sense of loss in not taking part of a big cultural food. When I look for veggie bouillons and pass over chicken ones at the grocery store, I can sense it. And when I turn down my mom’s A+ chicken soup, I feel a tinge of regret. But, having the broth seeped in chicken marrow... it seemed like I was cheating a commitment I had made.
Fish
I didn’t eat fish for a very long time. It was smelly and I was holding a grudge. (One time, I was expecting chicken fingers and my first bite revealed fish instead.) I also didn’t think I would like the texture.
When I started eating fish, I used the sauces and seasoning I liked and missed from chicken recipes.
I don’t quite remember why I started eating fish. Maybe I ate it while I was a guest and couldn’t think up any reason why not to eat it, to buy it for myself as a suitable protein?
Also, I don’t quite remember why I stopped eating fish. I think that choice was because of learning about mercury in fish, overfishing… And I couldn’t be bothered to spend so much energy on researching and making sure the fish I bought was the “right” kind and learning more about where it had come from.
(And, the frozen fish I was buying wasn’t local, so then you have the refrigeration trucks trying to keep it fresh from whatever coast it came from, all the way to central Canda.)
I decided to stop eating fish in 2019, a couple of days after I stocked up buying frozen fish. (I gave it to my mom).
Meat
Sometime in the early 2010s or so, I stopped eating steak (maybe monthly or so) when I noticed I felt really heavy and weighed down after eating it. I also didn’t like the toughness nor texture. Not eating steak doesn’t mean anything to me.
We didn’t really eat a lot of deli. And I think I just considered it as something to eat with ketchup. No loss there. (And I stopped buying ketchup to cut down on processed food.)
A special holiday meal was veal stew, which I loved. I’ve since discovered that what I enjoy most is the stew part. (Which I can definitely still enjoy either without protein or with beans.) I vaguely recall enjoying the tenderness of veal. But that gets overridden by my decision not to eat cooked corpses.
What I enjoyed most about ribs was the sauce, which I can just use on tofu. But I’ve never once bought rib sauce for tofu, so I must not want is (miss it) all that much. I stopped buying honey garlic sauce because I didn’t want to have so much sodium.
I don’t miss meat at all.
—
Somewhere in that timeline is when I unknowingly ate nonkosher seafood and had an intense physical and emotional reaction to it.
Somewhere in those stories is wanting to be consistent across all animal proteins.
Sometime, I started to eat and enjoy tempeh, tofu, and beans.
And, sometime, the TV show I was watching had scenes of people in a bunker trying to eat human protein #The100.
So I stopped eating all protein that used to be an animal because I got grossed out.
I do miss my mom’s chicken soup though.
Next up in the series - Food: Dairy and eggs