A Meatless Life
My heart was racing. I could feel the soles of my shoes burning beneath my feet on the hot tread. I had already gone twenty minutes and I couldn’t give up now. Something about the excessive amount of sweat that slides off every inch of my body and the loud amplified music filling the bowls of my ears makes working out an escape for me. When I’m in any setting or situation, enduring any type of discussion involving fitness or health-oriented activities, I feel heard. My friends and family all look up to me for advice when they decide to take that initial leap towards a healthier lifestyle. My friend Aidan and I go to the gym together a few times a week and I teacher her the reigns on how to work the machines and help her with exercises that are best for her intended goals. I’m extremely fond of working out and eating healthy and consider it my lifestyle, not just a period in my life. It is my life. I think of each day as a new opportunity for me to explore ways to better myself and my body, which led to my journey as a vegetarian.
It was an average scorching hot, thick humid day in Florida as I was sluggishly sitting in the cold seat of my Ap Environmental Science class. I was eager for my teacher to quickly address the class as we all dreaded lecture days and couldn’t wait until the bell rang to dismiss us. My teacher stood tall in front of the class, read our daily objective and informed us we would be learning about the mass production and regulation of animals in factories, including how poorly the FDA fails to regulate large corporations. As my teacher clicked through the slides of the power point, my stomach felt uneasy, knowing I’ve been consuming meat for eighteen years of my life, unaware of what I’ve been putting into my body. Following class, I sat uncomfortably at my lunch table as I watched everyone around me aggressively shoving grey-looking chicken tenders and hamburgers that didn’t look like real meat- into their mouths.
“Hey Cam, are you okay?” questioned my friend Jackson, “You look like all the blood has been drained from your face…”
“Yeah. I’m fine,” I lied, feeling the vomit rising in my esophagus.
If only they knew the conditions in which their “meat” was prepared and all the bundled heath issues that came along with it. I immediately dumped my turkey sandwich into the trashcan and stuck with trail mix and an apple for lunch.
I wasn’t the only person that day who was extremely scarred by the terrors of eating meat. My friend Lindsey sat next to me in my Ap Environmental class and that day we both began our new meat-free lifestyles. We decided to research intermediate vegetarian diets to initiate our new and improved healthy lifestyle. We came across a series of articles and recipes entailing the benefits of juice cleanses and thought it was a perfect idea to kick start our diets.
I immediately drove straight to the grocery store after school and rushed into Publix to the cold isle of produce. I threw apples, beets, carrots, spinach, ginger, pineapple, and kale vigorously into the metal wired cart. I handed the cashier a twenty-dollar bill and two dimes and rushed back into the hot black leather seats of my car. Once I got home I fired up the juicer and set out all my ingredients for each recipe and watched the juice gush out as I slid the fruit into the press. After straining the juice to separate the pulp, I bottled each juice into its previously used plastic bottle that I collected from around my house and labeled them ‘1-4’.
The following morning, I strutted into my Ap Environmental class proudly holding the bag of eight juices; four for me, and four for Lindsey. I eagerly handed Lindsey her bag of juices and we both reached for the juice labeled “#1” and twisted it open. Lindsey was the first to react.
“EWW!” She screamed, “WHAT’S IN THIS?!”
“Is it really that bad?? I’m sorry, I just followed the recipe…”
As the day went on, we both struggled to drink our juices with a lack of substance in our stomachs. I came to realize that starting a new vegetarian diet with a juice cleanse wasn’t the best idea.
This whole time I thought I was living a “healthy”, consistent lifestyle, working out every day and limiting my carbohydrate consumption. I was wrong. I no longer felt healthy but felt cheated from not knowing the truth behind the sickening meat production. That day, my definition of being “healthy” changed. I became more concerned with the way food was produced and harvested and stopped supporting mass corporations and businesses who lie to their consumers for the sole intention to make money. My meaning behind healthy now entails eating less processed foods and more organic products. Little did I know, that average scorching hot day would be the last time I would ever consume meat again.
This dramatic change in my lifestyle was not an easy one, but it helped me reinforce the healthy ideals I live by daily. I found myself more invested in researching vegetarian recipes online and broadening my pallet to eating more fiber and protein rich foods like tofu, beans, and whole grains. I became interested in watching documentaries such as “What the Health” by Kip Andersen, that helped strengthen my knowledge about animal cruelty, the meat industry, and the tragic health issues that are entailed with eating animal by-products. Kip goes to great lengths to “uncover the secret to preventing and even reversing chronic diseases”, which brings plant-based diets into play. Being a vegetarian has been an eye-opening experience that assisted me in realizing that there’s more to food than just meat, and it’s allowed me to explore many ways to cook without it. I’ve become so in love with the possibilities of cooking with vegetables and found cauliflower pizza crust to be one of my favorites. Juicing and making smoothies has been another favorite part of my journey, finding endless ways to incorporate nutrients and protein supplements into a cold blended treat that satisfies any craving on a hot day. Being a vegetarian has also granted me the interest in finding new restaurants around me that are courteous towards the vegetarian community and focus their motives towards providing unique, delicious dishes to those who are doubtful of the nutritional value vegetarianism has to offer. After being on a plant-based diet for almost a year now, I’ve never felt more satisfied with myself and my body and have noticed a change in the way I present myself to others.