Nutrition labeling

If you're anything like me, you have veggies on the brain!  I spend a considerable amount of my day thinking about how to cook certain vegetables and looking up new recipes for all the veggies in my fridge.  I often find myself spending WAY too much time standing in the aisles of the farmer's market examining new produce that I haven't worked with yet - frantically looking up their stats on my phone, planning meals in my notebook.  Needless to say, I'm a veggieholic.  Through my knowledge (and passionate pursuit of more) I could easily live off of veggies - in fact, I rarely eat meat as is.  

So the burning question remains: Why not just *be* a "vegetarian?"

The answer, for me, is three fold:  Nutritonal, Psychological, and Ideological.

Nutrition:

Although there are healthy ways to maintain a balanced, nutritional diet as a vegetarian, the same can easily be said about we omnivores.   Not all meats are healthy and I would say that it's definitely more difficult to prepare meat in a healthy way than it is to make veggies.  I know people who are struggling to shed pounds who admit that a big reason is their lack of knowledge when it comes to preparing lean meats in a *lean* way.  People also suggest that it's easier to fry chicken instead of bake it (this I don't really understand - the best I can come up with is it's what they're used to so it's an auto-pilot activity).  Regardless of the individual qualms with the kitchen, certain meats can (and do) pack great nutritional power.  

There's a current push for grass-fed beef and there's always the tried and true free range meat - e-coli and anti-biotic free meat is the way to go for what I call "undercover" health.  With the exposure that the food industry is currently experiencing, good quality meat can only become more prevalent and accessible (we hope)!  By the way - the opposite of "undercover health" is "on top of the sheets" health which deals with the way we cook our food as opposed to all the stuff inside of it that we can't see ;)

Full disclosure: I do not eat red meat or pork.  I'm a chicken and fish type of gal.

Psychology:

This is really simple - if I call myself a vegetarian, that means there are foods that I "can't have."  Putting limitations on oneself, for some people, can make eating feel like a chore.  I never want to look at a menu and say "Oh, I can't eat that."  I'd rather look at a menu and say "Oh, I don't want to eat that."  For some people, meat is unappealing either because they just don't like the taste, it doesn't agree with their digestive system, or their ethics prevent them from eating animals.  For those individuals, abandoning meat is not a chore.  For those who have enjoyed meat and have faith in the food chain, walking away from meat will likely feel like a restriction - and viewing your nutrition as restrictive will almost always backfire.

Ideology:

I love animals.  I adore them.  Seeing videos and pictures of the way animals are treated in slaughterhouses makes me incredibly sad and angry.  The reality, for me, is that regardless of whether or not I eat meat, the industry will not change.  I can do my part to buy organic meat and promote local farms, but ceasing consumption is not going to save the lives of animals.  I also believe that if we let all of the animals live and breed freely, we'd be overrun - and the planet is already crowded.  Am I being rather reductive with all of these points?  Yes - all of it deserves a larger, more substantive conversation and I acknowledge that - but for the purposes of this blog, I choose to simply gloss the concepts and ideologies.

All in all, while I love nutrition labels on my food items, I don't desire to wear one myself.  :)