What was I thinking?? (In regards to my meat diet, of course)

This week is my last week eating meat before giving it up for the next couple of weeks. In order to reflect on this behavior I decided to make a daily log for myself, in which I wrote down the number of times I ate meat and the types of meat. Examining it I realize that I ate meat almost every day this week, excluding one. I ate meat ranging from bacon to sausage to beef. There were even some days that I ate meat for all three meals. Yikes! No wonder my greenhouse gas emission for my food and diet was double that of the U.S. average. I took a couple of minutes to reflect on the context under which I ate meat. I wasn’t stressed out or in a hurry. It was simple, I eat meat because it tastes soo good. If the meat they were serving in the dining room that day looked good then you can count on me having it on my plate. I also noticed that when I did eat meat a lot in one day I would try to counterbalance it with veggies, but that doesn’t make a difference when it comes to the emissions from that animal I just ate, even though it does perhaps help me in a healthy way.

I did some research and found an article that covered beliefs, values and structural characteristics concerning vegetarianism. Some of the key findings in the scientific article were that the strongest predictor of vegetarianism was the belief that it helped the environment and that altruistic values increased beliefs that vegetarianism benefits health, the environment and world hunger, while traditional values decreased these beliefs (Kalof, 1999).

The strongest predictor of a vegetarian is my own reason for giving up meat. My belief that my action of going meatless is going to help the environment is my motivation for continuing. So the study was on point! I am not sure if I will go back to meat or not after these weeks, but I will certainly minimize my intake of meat as much as I can.

I definitely related to the influence of traditional values on my diet. Last time I tried to become a vegetarian was not because of health issues, animal welfare, nor to take care of the environment but because I wanted to see if I could manage. Then, I did not have the support of my parents, not because they didn’t love me but because the idea was so foreign to them and they also had to change their lifestyle to fit mine (since they cooked my food). I think my Ecuadorian culture emphasizes meat and that is why my mom didn’t take my efforts to be a vegetarian seriously. Now that I have the excuse of it being for a class project do I have less jokes made about my future vegetarian diet, although she keeps bringing up Thanksgiving and that I better eat the turkey.

Kalof, L., Dietz, T., Stern, P. C., & Guagnano, G. A. (1999). Social Psychological and Structural Influences on Vegetarian Beliefs. Rural Sociology, 64(3), 500-511.