By Erika Zell
After nearly four years of soy milk and bean salad, I finally took the plunge — I shed the tofu-y confines of vegetarianism, and, depending on who you ask, either stepped back into the light or closer to eternal damnation.
Unlike most lapsed vegetarians, bacon wasn’t my gateway meat. Instead, it was a delicious, cheese-filled, turkey and cranberry sandwich from the Shadow. I’ve since had a burger, maybe some chicken . . . but I’m not really sure. That’s the best part. I never felt like I was limited by being a vegetarian, but by needing to think about my food less, I’m finding that I’m enjoying it more.
I fell into vegetarianism by accident when I first started university: after moving out on my own I didn’t know how to cook meat, and could barely afford it either way. I slowly (unintentionally) phased out meat to the point where I wasn’t eating it at all, so I decided I might as well stick a label on it.
That was where the problems started. Once you join the V-club, there’s no going back. Friends taunt you with seemingly innocuous comments, like, “Still vegetarian?”, which nevertheless goad you forever onwards. It becomes a challenge, but by the time you realize it, you’re past the point of no return. People hold you to vegetarianism unlike any other diet. When was the last person on a low-fat regime judged for taking a break and eating the darn ice cream? For a vegetarian, it’s different. Even looking at a steak is enough to send dinner companions into an uproar.
To compound the problem, vegetarians give as good as they get. We’re a notoriously pretentious crowd, and we rarely pass up the chance to lecture the schlubs on their moral depravities. Mockery is returned with snobbery, and eventually both groups are so caught up in the cycle that neither can concede any ground.
Even those stuck in the middle are ruthlessly labelled. Pescatarians, flexitarians, weekday vegetarians, sometimes vegans . . . all are variations on the same idea, and all are swept up and pigeon-holed for whatever their personal dietary choice happens to be.
And who can blame them for trying their hand at the veg lifestyle? There are many convincing arguments to go meat-free, but they all come with conditions. You say vegetarians are healthier people? I say only if you don’t eat pasta every night because you’re too lazy to find something new to do with tofu. You say animal cruelty? I say make informed consumer choices.
The argument du jour for the veg lifestyle is that it’s more ‘environmentally friendly’. I learned a lot about truly sustainable food systems in my time in the club, the most important being that ditching meat alone isn’t enough to save the world. Did you know that many soy products are grown from clearing rainforests in Brazil? What about how many food miles it takes to ship fresh produce up from California?
After almost a year of pescatarianism, I moved to Honduras to work as a scuba instructor. For four months I stopped eating fish, which would have been roughly akin to eating my livelihood, and instead switched back to poultry and the occasional ham sandwich. Afters years of geography classes, it was suddenly clear: the sustainability of food systems has spatial variability, and what’s viable in one region could have huge environmental impacts in another. Back in Vancouver I made the conscious decision to switch back to Ocean Wise seafood, but only after the careful evaluation of what I could eat with the smallest impact.
I’m not fully off the veg train yet (nothing beats a good chickpea curry after all), but I don’t plan on hopping on again any time soon. If I can eat better balanced meals, and still consider my ecological footprint, what is there to gain? I’ll admit the animal cruelty argument is a tough one to get around, but we do more bad things to animals for their by-products too, and I can’t believe that eating meat once or twice a week is substantially worse than eating none at all.
Moral of the story: I’m stoked to be able to eat whatever the fuck I want, but more importantly? I’m excited that I don’t have to stick a label on it.
