Fresh Meat

Gun to my head, I’d say my three favourite meats, in ascending order, are: pork, chicken, gammon. That’s not to say I don’t like beef, but pigs and poultry are just so versatile that they dominate the podium for me. I like them so much, in fact, that three days into my vegetarianism, I dreamt of nothing but chicken sandwiches for an entire night, and of gravy-covered gammon the next.

So why did I become a vegetarian if I love meat so much? The saplings of the idea grew after a friend of mine, Mike, refused my inventive potato-based recipe on the grounds that it constituted beef and he was being vegetarian for a week as a test of will and a display of camaraderie with this wonderful blue marble that most of us take for granted. I’ve been concerned with the fragility of this planet for a number of years, but until then I’d always offset my lasagne-related guilt by turning off lights, having showers rather than baths and favouring cycling over other methods of transport. As I suspect is the same for most carnivorous humans, vegetarianism struck me as something altogether unworldly. It was the one thing I couldn’t do.

Mike’s week seems manageable when the frugality of student life dictates a less frequent meaty indulgence than living at home ever did. If I wanted to take the bull of vegetarianism by the horns – if you’ll excuse the inappropriate metaphor – I’d have to surrender meat for much longer. New year approached, and vegetarianism presented itself as a resolution. Unfortunately, my mother cooks a dynamite dinner and we had both succulent chicken and salty gammon on New Year’s Day, but I let that be my last meal before facing the gallows of soybean burgers.

Three weeks into the experiment and my experience so far is mixed. Until vegetarianism is in vogue on the same scale as owning a hybrid car or sporting red hair, people will always ask “why are you a vegetarian?” to which I’ve given answers ranging from “because I can” to “for environmental reasons” with the odd “health reasons,” thrown into the mix, all of which are true. It’s hard to say after just one month, but I’d say baked beans are a healthier alternative to chicken for the same protein mass, and without throwing mince into pasta recipes, fibre intake is up and fat is down.

Despite the much greater acceptance of vegetarians in society now as opposed to 40, or even 20, years ago, there is still an enormous discrepancy between the meat-constituting and vegetarian menus at restaurants and, to a greater extent, pubs. Where a pizzeria can offer plenty of toppings besides ham and pepperoni, the traditional “pub grub” has always involved some form of meat and that tradition seems less likely to be dissipated than the still-imposed archaic ban on same-sex marriage.

On the other hand, eating at home – which is much preferred on a student budget, anyway – becomes a much easier task without the preparation of meat. If you’re the kind of eater who enjoys sandwiches or ready meals, these become much cheaper without the meat. Precooked meats have some of the highest mark-ups of any retail foods.

Further to financial benefits, there is a certain anatomical difference between the human and the other carnivores. The human stomach, for instance, is underequipped to cope with the vast arrays of bacteria (E. coli, salmonella, etc.) that frolic on dead animals’ flesh. Hence why we have to spend hours laboriously cooking meats. Although, it is tastier cooked.

All in all, I’d recommend at least a trial. A month is better than a week, as the first week is the hardest. Thereafter, vegetarianism becomes habit. I’m not certain of the timescale that environmentalists are currently shouting from rooftops, but if every meat-eating human went for one month without meat, that’s 4 billion months less meat-related damage. That would surely buy us an extra decade before colonising the moon becomes a necessity to avoid apocalypse. Furthermore, your bank balance should enjoy it and the scales undoubtedly so, but you may want to apologise to poultry farmers. You can always buy their eggs, unless you go all the way vegan.