I hate meat. That’s my full admission and there truly is nothing more to it. I’m not an animal-loving, religion-preaching, peace-marching hippy that screams in meat eater’s faces in the local Burger King much to people’s surprise. The misconception of a vegetarian is laughable; we really don’t care if you consume half a cow in front of us or not.
I have to put a few things straight before I’m force fed a fish finger and forget what I feel right now. Meat-eaters think we all care so much about animals; we probably sit at home talking to our Noah’s Ark worth of pets whilst feeding them our very own cuisine of freshly cooked dust. However, the truth is some of us don’t. I’ve never been an animal lover. In fact, I thought that the juicy Quarter Pounder and cheese meal at Mcdonalds was created by the hands of God. It was only when I was a naïve eleven year old that I decided my consumption of the pig from a farm down some Kentish road was inhumane. I believed in animal rights whilst other eleven year olds were discovering the meaning of puberty. It was a rash decision that wasn’t intended to last a lifetime but changed every mouthful of food and probably every friendship I’ve ever had since.
Over the decade of my vegetarianism, I’ve chosen to hide my non-meat eating ways to please others or to shield that look of complete abnormality. It’s as though you’re a ‘friend of the earth’ that should be locked in a shed on an allotment closer to Mars than to any flesh-eating being on the planet.
Some men say ‘I’d never date a vegetarian’. Why, because you couldn’t use chicken breast in a game of kinky-but-tasty foreplay? The answer is normally because we’re ‘too fussy’ which really does make me splutter into my vegetarian curry. The only thing we don’t eat is the muscle, skin or any other blood-induced part of a dead carcass so I’m struggling with the fussiness part.
There is a fundamentally irritating part of being involved in a vegetarian’s life however. Before going to any restaurant, there is a long winded process of checking if there is something remotely edible to eat before trekking forty minutes on an over-packed, body-odour stinking underground train to the restaurant. Most eateries offer two wonderfully imaginative dishes that have been cooked with as much tender loving care as the medium rare steaks; mushroom risotto and red pepper and cous cous. I can eat these once or twice or possibly a thrice time to settle the stares of meat-eaters shaking their head behind their menu but not at every single place I go to. Count yourself lucky that you have the pick of an entire eight page spread as opposed to hunting for the two little ‘V’s’ that are in the smallest print feeling slightly embarrassed of themselves.
As soon as people discover I’m a vegetarian, a classic line always follows ‘I couldn’t be a vegetarian.’ I want to reply with the straight up, all sprout and no bull answer of ‘no one is asking you to be.’ but I tend to smile and wait for the next line. Meat-eaters will then describe all the foods they couldn’t give up if they had an AK47 held to their head whilst holding a bloodied steak in the other. Just like you all don’t care that we divulge in the joys of a kidney bean and tomato burger, we have no interest in your heartbreak and sheer end of life in giving up a wing of barbeque chicken.
After discovering my deepest, darkest secret of vegetarianism, a boy at university branded me ‘sub-human.’ He said it isn’t right and ‘shouldn’t be allowed’ as though it was a murderous decision to all the carrots out there trying to escape my clutches. It was all very melodramatic until he proudly admitted that he got his so-called revenge on us fiends in society. If you can’t wreak havoc on those that deserve it the most, how could you call yourself a moral citizen? He proceeded to tell me that in his four years at Mcdonalds, he was in charge of cooking and always spat in the vegetarian meal when sending it to the customer at the front. He said it was much more effort to cook for a vegetarian. I mean after all, it must be extensively hard to cook one vegetarian burger as opposed to over a hundred cow burgers whilst admiring your arrogance in a compact mirror.
People may ask, and have done so in the past, why be a vegetarian if you don’t want to be? It is no longer a question of choice. They say, whoever they are, that you teach yourself phobias such as being scared of spiders or snakes. You’re not born with the inability to sit side by side with a nine foot anaconda whilst sharing a plate of dinner but you teach yourself that you can’t. Vegetarianism, in my case, is similar. I made a life-changing decision at eleven with no thought to the future or to what I was committing myself to in the long run; my rebellion was in full flow.
Once I started eating vegetarian food and growing tired of the constant crunch of tasteless beans and wiring spinach that sits in your teeth like an unattractive filling, I wanted out. I wanted bacon sandwiches coated in thick ketchup and roast dinners with a piece of tender lamb in gravy but I couldn’t. Psychologically, I’d taught myself it was wrong as though I was forbidden from doing it and this has stuck with me. There’s no going back and I will always be looked upon as going against our ‘evolution’ as human beings and the idea of the ‘survival of the fittest’. It’s amusing to think that at one point I believed my decision would change the world and now meat-eaters believe that I’m going against the world. Who knew that one tiny broccoli-consuming vegetarian could be so controversial?
I’m well aware that some people couldn’t care less either way. My boyfriend will sit and enjoy a vegetarian bolognaise without comparing it to the cow-back of ‘normal’ mince that he probably imagines when munching. I would encourage him, and everyone else, to stay with meat. It’s better for your immune system and you’re not constantly defending yourself against the small-mindedness of men with tiny genitals or women who believe that being outspoken means talking about things they have no idea about. However, for me, it’s better to be feeding the ducks than to be sat in front of a plate of them.
Trina Holmes 