Vegetarianism

I'll start this off right now with a straight fact about me. I am a meat lover! I love the juicy steak, and beef in general. It is just so delicious! I can't help but consume cows. Even with that in mind, I'm going to change it. I hope I will be able to have the determination of ridding meats from my diet. Starting with the one I love the most: beef. My final goal is to rid of meat all together.

These are my definitions of a vegetarian:
Full: No beef, pork, lamb (I don't eat this anyways), chicken, shrimp, fish, etc. Like a normal vegetarian. With the exception of beef, chicken broth. That I don't really consider meat, but it does violate the normal "vegetarian rules"
Half: No beef, pork, lamb, and chicken. Seafood will be allowed, because I don't eat seafood much anyways.

This is my plan. I will start by eating as a half vegetarian for 2 days in a 7 day week. After I have accomodated to that 70% to 80% of the way, I will progress to 4 days in a 7 day week of half vegetarian.

If successful, I will then move on to a minimum of 7 days a week of half vegetarian and at least 2 of them will be full vegetarian. Then 4 days of full, and etc. Eventually I hope I can reach my goal of becoming a full vegetarian.

Why after 19 years of being a meat lover have I decided to become a vegetarian?

Eating as a  vegetarian have much lower calorie count, which can keep down the weight (Not like I need to anyways). However without the intake of meat, the protein intake will drop. The good thing is, there are alternatives to protein other than meat, such as tofu, nuts, beans, eggs, cheese and etc.

Other than just trying to eat healthier, it will lessen the environmental impact. "How does eating vegetarian reduce your environmental impact?" Good question. Nowadays, cows no longer eat grass as we would imagine on a farm. They eat now eat corn, because corn is cheap to produce especially true with GM engineering. It takes 20kg of grain to produce 1 kg of beef. Essentially, you lose 19kg of food. How does is that beneficial or economically effective in anyway? There are people starving all over the world. If we stopped farming for meat, and diverted some of that corn to various places around the world, I believe we can lessen the amount of people starving.

Global warming is contributed via depositing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere; currently that is our primary concern. However, methane gas is a much more effective greenhouse gas. Cows shit and fart a lot, and they produce a lot of methane gas from that. If we can just get rid of the cows, the effect of global warming will be reduced. Simply changing the way you eat will reduce your ecological AND carbon footprint by half.

What's even worse is that meat production (in my opinion) can no longer be considered farming; it has become essentially a factory. Injecting cows, chickens and various other animals with hormones so that they can grow bigger in a significantly shorter amount of time just to produce meat. The problem is that we are consuming those hormones in the meat we eat! I don't think thats a very healthy thing. The pink tuna (I think it was tuna?) that we buy is in fact food colouring. Injecting food colouring to make the tuna look nicer just to sell better is kind of disgusting. The food production is now purely a profit oriented business.

I'm not sure if I am capable of succeeding as a proper vegetarian. I will try though. I have yet to decide a start date of my plan. Hopefully soon, maybe the new year, sounds like a good place (time) to start.

I hope that I can have some people encourage me and support me in my decision. I am not asking for you to join me to become a vegetarian, I am asking you to tell me not to order that meat containing dish when we go out to eat.

With my reasons listed out to become a vegetarian, is that enough to persuade you to become one as well? If not, maybe you could watch a documentary called "Food Inc." But, this is my choice, yours is yours.

Oh Jay, I'm going to miss eating that Junior chicken with you! And the steak as well (I know you don't like steak, that was just for me. haha).