Like many people I have a weight problem and have always tried to be conscious of what food I eat. The main priority has been to eat healthy food that will do my body good and not harm. I was a regular meat eater until I started questioning the quality and taste of the meat and poultry and its harm to health.
You see I'm old enough to remember when meat was actually naturally produced. The animals were well cared for, had fresh air and green grass and chemicals in farming were basically unheard of. In recent times, however, I just did not like the taste of the various meat I ate and it stank in its raw state. It just was not the same.
Then I learnt about factory farming - intense farming techniques that involve dosing animals and poultry with various chemicals and antibiotics. The animals also live in restricted and often filthy conditions.
When I realised this was why the meat was not so nice that's when I started to eat less of it. Sometimes I felt sick thinking about it and left it on my plate.
At a later stage I learnt about the animal cruelty aspect of factory farming and live animal exports and that was the last straw. After seeing videos of farm animals being tortured and slaughtered inhumanely I just broke down and cried. I decided I was not going to be part of this cruelty and stopped eating meat altogether.
It's got worse since then because I have learnt so much more about what goes on in farms and how animals are treated. I learnt that these animals do actually have intelligence, emotions and feelings like we do and we slaughter them cruelly by the billion every day for meat.
I began to see meat as what it really is - dead flesh, dead body parts that we call chops, rump steak, T-bone and fancy names like that. But it is dead body.
Since I stopped eating meat I found many new avenues in the world of food. I've always been a bit of a cook and now I'm discovering and inventing exciting dishes that don't do me or any animal harm.
The great thing is that my health is better for it. No high blood fat or blood sugar or high blood pressure. And I kind of feel more natural and more part of the natural world.
