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Eating less meat

Hey everyone,

Here I am again, talking to you. About meat. Or actually, about less of it. See, together with some friends I have started eating less meat in the last year. One of my friends has actually been a pescatarian for about three quarters of a year now! I'm really proud of her and just, respect. I don't think I can ever make that step to not eating any meat at all.

However, I did start eating less meat. When I actually cook just for myself, I cook without using meat. I will either go for meat substitutes, like vegetarian "burgers" and stuff like that, or I skip the meat altogether, opting for a more bean-based dish. Honestly, the only times I do eat meat is when I eat something someone else made for me. For example, when I go home during the weekends, my parents usually cook and they cook with meat.

Why did I start eating less meat? Well, as I said, last year my friends were trying to eat less meat, which made me curious about vegetarian options, but not really take action to consciously eating less meat. What triggered me to actually take action, was a video (subtitles are auto-translated, so they are not perfect) a Dutch talk-show host made about how our consumption of meat affected the environment.  It made me think: "Okay, knowing all of this, I can't not start eating less meat." So I went to the supermarket, browsed the vegetarian "meat" options and started using them.

Now, I am aware that just my change in the consumption of meat will not have a huge effect on the environment in general, but it does have an effect on my immediate surroundings. I buy less meat, so my supermarket buys less meat from the suppliers, so the suppliers have to slaughter fewer animals, so the farmer needs to keep fewer animals. This does not only mean one animal less has to get slaughtered for my eating habits, which is sad of course, but I have kind of accepted that as a part of the circle of life, but it also means that the resources it takes to keep that animal and turn it into a piece of meat ready to be bought in a store, can be put into something else.

So my personal change in eating habits has only a small effect on the world as a whole, but if everyone started to change their eating habits, that will have a giant impact. The environment will really benefit from it if everyone decided to not eat meat just once a week. Only one day meat-free, that is not very hard to accomplish.

I really recommend everyone to try this. Especially since there are so many good substitutes for meat. Please take some time out of your day to research the impact of meat consumption on the environment, by reading these articles for example, or maybe try watching the video. I know it's in Dutch, but with the auto-translated subtitles, you will probably be able to understand the general points Arjen Lubach is trying to make.

Have you ever considered reducing your consumption of meat? Feel free to leave a comment.

See Y'all next time, whenever that may be,

Laura


P.s. if you want to sometimes see me rant about the annoying people I encounter in libraries, feel free to follow me on twitter or if you are interested in seeing the random things I find funny or care about, here is my tumblr.

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