A Mess of Meat – EVST 100: Intro to the Environment

By far the most difficult thing I encountered this week in maintaining a meatless diet was how busy my week was. Not only did I have my schedule completely filled, but my family made their annual visit here too. While I have been self-disciplined throughout the past week on my own, as I even ordered a tofu burrito from Don Juan’s (I didn’t even know they offered tofu), it was way more difficult with my family here. My whole family loves to eat meat. One day we were at lunch and I told my brother I had planned on taking them to a burger place for dinner, he was upset that he couldn’t order a burger for lunch too. The social pressure to eat meat around my family occurs on an everyday basis when I live with them. I admit, I did eat meat when I went to Slainte (a restaurant known fro their stuffed burgers) with my family, but at least we ordered the Irish nachos without meat, so that’s a little better right?

While there are many resources that have a ton of data supporting the idea that vegetarian diets are more sustainable that meat-based diets, there is another question that is still unanswered: are vegetarian diets sustainable, or are they just more sustainable that meat-based diets? I thought this was a particularly interesting idea in the Vegetarianism and the Environment article. Chooseveg.com provides a lot of data supporting the lower impact of vegetarian diets on the environment. One statistic that stood out to me in the article and the chooseveg.com website was the mass amount of water used to produce animal meat. Water usage is something that many people think about as a distinct topic, but it is very intertwined with the production of meat. I almost feel like having a vegetarian diet is killing two birds with one stone. I could have done my sustainable behavior challenge on my water usage, like shortening my shower time or turning my faucet off more when I brush my teeth, but I feel like I am limiting my water usage by having a vegetarian diet. Here are the links to the resources I looked at, they have great statistics!

http://www.chooseveg.com/environment

http://umurj.org/feature-articles/vegetarianism-and-the-environment/

Serena Powell says:

April 22, 2014 at 6:00 pm

It’s a really interesting point you bring up about having a vegetarian diet–is it really that much more sustainable than eating meat? Thank you for providing some statistics on that. It makes me feel more motivated to go vegetarian!
Sorry to hear about the difficulty you had with eating less meat when your family came to visit. I’ve found that familial and societal pressures definitely make it hard to go meatless. In my experience, it’s more difficult to eat less meat when I’m in a rush. I went home this weekend, where there’s a fast food restaurant on every street corner. I’ll admit that I ate meat too one day when I was particularly hurried. It’s so much more difficult to go out of my way to find something meatless than it is to just grab a burger.
If you’re dissatisfied with some of the vegetarian options at the dining hall, is it possible for you to make your own food where you live? I keep things like Boca Burgers (a little expensive, but delicious and meat free), Lean Pockets, and meatless meals in my freezer for days when I don’t feel like going to a dining hall. Unfortunately these do take away from the nice social experience of eating with friends, and aren’t quite as filling as food from the dining halls.

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