Going meat free.

A first time blog. By Lewis Ilbury.

Deciding to go meat free.

It was something that i had been thinking about for a while, going meat free. There seemed to be more and more people choosing to ditch the meat and choose a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle.

But could i really just stop eating meat? I certainly wouldn’t have been able to a couple of years ago, i was one helluva fussy eater, not helped by the fact that i am severely allergic to basically every nut known to man (nuts, laugh it off). I would have lived off of chips (fries), or starved. Luckily in the last two years my palate seemed to have warmed to new tastes and i started to enjoy more foods.

The reasons for stopping a heavy meat diet were becoming more and more apparent. The amount of meat the human race devours is incredible; livestock are consuming more and more crops for food, using more and more water for various things and taking up more space. The conditions in which livestock are kept are, more often than not, horrendous. They are forcefully crammed into tiny spaces, given steroids so they can efficiently convert their feed into meat, meaning they grow a lot quicker. Then slaughtered. All for us to have one meal. To many people, this isn’t a problem; these animals don’t know any different and have been bred for many years, purely to satisfy our craving for meat. To be honest i thought the same for a long time. But this way of life and eating is not sustainable.

I never used to think about what i was eating, where it came from, what it was, or how it lived its life. Then one day my brain seemed to have turned on, i was thinking about everything i ate. I didn’t like the thoughts of what we do to these animals to make food, or the thought of destroying more of earths natural beauty, in order to build more farms. Then a friend suggested a documentary to watch, he told me it would be hard to watch, but would open my eyes. That documentary was called ‘Earthlings’. After watching just how the meat we eat, gets to our plate and what these fellow earth inhabitants have to endure, i decided enough was enough, i was going to attempt a meat free diet.

Pescetarianism.

I decided i couldn’t just turn strict vegan straight away, after 22 years of eating anything i wanted, not worrying about its contents. So i decided the best way to go about ditching animal meat was to become a pescetarian; someone who eats fish and other sea food but not animal flesh. This wouldn’t have been as much of a shock to my body.

A few challenges faced me straight off, such as, how would i get enough iron with my new diet. The fact that i hadn’t actually tried much fish was also a hurdle i had to cross. I was brought up in a house that didn’t like any fish, so my exposure to different seafood dishes was minimal for most of my life.

I started combing the internet for ways to quit eating meat whilst not losing any of its supposed nutrition. It soon became apparent that i could continue to get my iron and other such nutrients from a variety of green salad leaves, dried fruits and wholegrain pastas just to name a few. I also started to discover that many of these foods actually held more nutrients in than meat. Kale, for example, per calorie contains more iron than beef, and more calcium than milk.

Over the next few months, i tried as many different types of seafood as i could, surprisingly i have liked every single one up until this day, about 3 months into my pescatarian diet. This fish is also giving me health benefits, such as omega 3 from oily fish and low fat protein from white fish.

Quorn and other meat free alternatives.

A decision was made by myself to try some meat alternatives. I started off by buying some Asda meat free mince. After it being cooked, i quickly found out i was allergic to soya protein (the main ingrediant in most meat free alternatives). I felt like the universe was trying to tell me something. But i carried on forward and after some more research, discovered Quorn meat free alternative products use something called mycoprotein and not soya. Hoorah, i was getting somewhere; i was pleased to find the Quorn burgers tasted like, well, burgers. The sausages like sausages and so on.

It’s been about 3 months since i cut meat out of my diet completely. I feel good, if not better than before. I’m not worrying as much about where my food is from, or what life it had. I actually take more care with my diet than before and eat healthier. My next plan is to start taking things further by cutting out dairy products etc, if that goes well then, i will keep going and cutting out more and more. Who knows maybe i am on a path to becoming a vegan, or maybe i will stay pescatarian. One thing i’m sure of, i plan on staying meat free forever.