Chosen Modality: Experiential
In response to the information I learned during the Food Unit, Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, and watching Food Inc, I decided to take a 72 hour break from eating meat. So basically, I became a vegetarian. In my family dinner time always has meat included and me and mom have agreed upon that. I couldn't even begin to come up with words to tell my mom I wasn't going to eat the meat she made for 3 days. It simply wasn't going to happen. So I had to get smart, and sneak and not eat meat, making my task twice as hard. Since I don't eat with my mom and she had already cooked a week supply of food including steak, broccoli ,and corn I figured it shouldn't be that hard to avoid her noticing I was avoiding meat. Since I was trying to avoid the meat I just ate the broccoli, and the corn. For all my meals at home I would just avoid the steak and not eat it.
I tried to warn my mom ahead of time, to not cook any meat. Meat is a big part of my family and we eat meat just about every night. Chicken is usually the main meat ingredient. To avoid my mom noticing me not eating the meat off my plate for 3 days was quite a task. Even though I hate to admit it, I threw away all the meat from my plate for 3 days. I found it extremely hard to fill my stomach without meat being included in my diet. I felt as though I had to eat twice as much. Carrots, apples, grapes, strawberries, corn, and cherries just weren't cutting it. There was even a point in time, where I felt I needed to drink liquids to fill my stomach literally.
To compensate for my lost of meat which is definently a food that really sticks to my ribs and fills me up, I had to eat just about every hour to stay full. Even though I knew there was meat in my fridge in fact I could go there right now and pull out a honey turkey piece of meat. That would completely defeat the point of this experience. I wanted to chomp into a big steak with bbq sauce I fought the urge. It was bizarre to make a conscience effort to avoid meat and led me to realize that having some form of meat on my dinner plate plays a major role in the enjoyment of my dinner. If I were to change one thing about my experiment, I would have just told my mom I wouldn't being eating meat for 3 days and just deal with what she had to say about that. I felt really bad about just wasting meat. Not because I wanted to eat it myself, but because there are many people out there in the world starving.
While conducting this experiment upon myself I learned that eating meat every day matters a lot to me. It serves purpose to me not only as an enjoyment but, as a necessity. As Pollan stated in Omnivores Dilemma, we as Americans are very customed to the norm of what our society portrays. We try not to question the norm and try to follow it. If we were to deter from the norm path we would be considered weird or special among other people. Eating meat on a daily or weekly basis is an ongoing social practice in this society and for me to straw away from this made me feel weird.
In what seemed like a very long 3 days experience, I had really begun to understand my food values in a way I never realized. This experience has taught me that I will never become a vegetarian or a vegan. Meat is just something that really fills me up, and I enjoy and can't imagine living without. I was born an omnivore and I plan to live my life and die as an omnivore.
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