I like to eat meat. Let me rephrase that: I love to eat meat. I haven’t met a piece of meat that when prepared well I won’t eat. So the decision I made to try and be a vegetarian for a week felt a little strange. It’s not that I suddenly hate the meat producing industry or refuse to eat meat. I decided to do this because I try to lower my carbon footprint (and producing meat does tax the environment quite a bit) and I was curious if there were ways of doing it without compromising my eating habits too much. So how did it go?
As for replacing the meat I have to tell you surprisingly well. All it really took was cutting the meat out of my daily eating habits and just replace it with something different (it helps if your eating habits are fairly healthy to begin with and not based on say fast food). For breakfast and lunch I would replace the meat on my sandwiches with cheese, jam or soy based meat replacements (which nowadays taste a whole lot better than the ones I tried a few years ago). For diner I just tried out a few vegetarian dishes (some I’d tried before) or again replaced the meat with soy based meat replacements.
And as stated the taste of the substitutes was surprisingly well. That didn’t take away the fact that for me the dishes would be better if it would’ve contained meat. It’s not that the spaghetti with soy based meatballs tasted bad; it’s just I think it’s better when the meatballs are really meatballs. And that’s all a matter of taste I’m sure.
It wasn’t difficult to change to an all vegetarian diet nor did it produce awful or tasteless food. It went well enough and because I also read more about the advantages of being a vegetarian and cutting down on my meat consumption, I’ve decided to join the Meatless Monday movement and from now on make my mondays meat-free. That way I’m helping to reduce my carbon footprint while I still can enjoy something I love to eat the rest of the week.
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