Vegetarianism

In 1982, I began to cook for my siblings. In having contact with the flesh and bone of animals, I found that I began picturing the whole animal as it would look walking around. At the same time, I was reading a lot of New Age books. I decided that I would stop eating meat. I continued to cook meat for my siblings, and to prepare a second dinner for myself, but I did prepare some meals for everybody that were meatless.

Through the next 7 years, I often told people I was a vegetarian, to make things more simple. However, I occasionally ate meat. My stance was not clearcut. Meat had always been my least favourite part of a meal, and in one sense, I decided to omit it, so that I could eat more of foods that I did like. Later on, when I read Douglas Adams' The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, in which a cow parades in front of customers, seeming to accept or even enjoy its role as prospective food, I had to admit that I might have been affected by ideas which suggested that maybe it was some animals' 'path' in life to end up on a dinner plate. However, I made a decision to never eat meat in order to be 'polite'.

I was probably anemic for a large portion of my life, but did not have a test for the first time until I was 30. I didn't complete treatment at that time, but several years later I was tested again, and since that time I have continued to take iron supplements on an ongoing basis.

I occasionally eat meat, but most of the time I do not. When living alone or spending time on my own, I don't buy or prepare meat for myself. If there is no other food in the house aside from frozen meat, I am more likely to fast than to thaw it out and prepare it.