Gack Yack

On the day I watched Meat Your Meat for the first time, my eating habits changed forever. I never really seriously considered becoming a vegetarian until I watched this movie. One random day in our office, a co-worker (who had recently converted to vegetarianism because of MYM) dared me to watch MYM and then eat a hamburger. No problem, I thought. Needless to say, I never made it to the hamburger, and I stopped eating meat almost immediately. It inspired me to learn more about the food I put into my body. I read Food for Life, China Study and finally The Omnivores Dilemma. I also watched in-depth documentaries, including King of Corn, Food Inc. and Earthlings. And although Fast Food Nation and Super Size Me are more popular films, neither was as influential as Meat Your Meat.

With a run-time of only about 10 minutes,  MYM is the perfect way to ruin a holiday meal. Play it for your family right after they finish mocking your meatless ways and are about to sit down to a nice turkey day meal.  Tell ‘em it’s your school project.

Oh, and you can’t beat the narration by the superbly dramatic Alec Baldwin either.

As a card-carrying member of the carnivore family, I spent most of my young adult life dining on the weekly T-bone steaks and shredded chicken fajitas provided to me by my parents. And I’ll admit–even now, I can still smell how delicious those grilled, spicy fajitas were. *sigh.

The first time I ever thought about giving up meat was my junior year in college. One of my old high school pals came in town for the night to visit, and we went to Rockfish for dinner. I had chicken something. The next day, we went to Taco Cabana for lunch. I had chicken quesadillas. I thought both would be harmless since I’d eaten chicken in restaurants hundreds of times before, but both proved to be a ginormous mistake. And the next day, as I laid in my hospital bed and watched the IV drip into my arm, experiencing such intense abdominal pain that I could barely move, I told myself I would never eat chicken again. Nothing in the entire world was worth salmonella poisoning.

But it wasn’t as easy as I thought, and I ended up wavering on my promise. Four years later, I decided to give up chicken for good, and that I would say good-bye with one last favorite dish: chicken spaghetti. Since I’m cooking it, I thought, I can be extra careful so I won’t give myself salmonella. Totally safe. Totally wrong. The only thing worse than getting salmonella twice is knowing that the second time you gave it to yourself and you can’t call the health department to complain this time. After that, chicken and I were no longer friends.

A few months later, a coworker forced me to watch a lovely little video called Meat Your Meat. I didn’t think it would have much of an impact on me, and I didn’t even take it seriously in the beginning because it was narrated by Alec Baldwin. (If you watch 30 Rock, you get where I’m coming from.) But afterward, I was incredibly horrified. I’d never really thought about what meat went through to get to my plate before–just that it was usually bathed in something magically delicious when it was served to me. So, I gave up pork. The pigs seemed to be the worst off in the video, and it felt like the right thing to do.

Beef was the last meat to go for me. Every time I considered giving it up, my mind immediately thought of the delicious smell of a grilled steak or smoked brisket. But it wasn’t until a few months after the video that it happened: while eating a piece of cold brisket one night, I unknowingly bit down on a huge chunk of cold marbled fat. I immediately gagged and spit it out in the sink, and after a massive wave of nausea passed, I knew: I was done with beef. (In my mind, the incident was comparable to the scene in the first Ace Ventura movie when Ace realizes that “Finkle is Einhorn,” and “The Crying Game” begins to play.)

I realize that this entry may make me seem like a fair-weathered, cause-and-effect vegetarian, but with some things you really do have to learn the hard way. I’ve lived a much healthier life since I gave up meat, so I believe the struggle was worth it. It’s not always easy, but it’s a work-in-progress, just like me.