Deborah has been low energy for last few days and has been craving red meat. It’s been a year and a third since we became pescatarians (vegetarians who eat seafood) and it may be catching up with her. Her lack of vigor has probably been compounded by her totally abstaining from wheat for the last 8 weeks, a grain to which she is allergic, and also eating minimal sugar. She’s losing weight but also losing energy. So like a junkie in need of an iron fix she hightailed it to the grocery store for some beef and broccoli. She swallowed her guilt along with the dead animal flesh and actually started to feel better after just a couple of hours. It’s still too early to tell if the result is real or psychosomatic. At any rate she doesn’t plan on an extended carnivorous binge, but the occasional steak may be in order to keep her functioning.
It’s somewhat ironic that she is the one to break with our pescatarian ways given that the primary reason we started this diet was to lower her cholesterol. I went along with it after learning more about the unhealthy consequences of the meat-rich western diet (we eat much more protein than our bodies can even process), not to mention the horrible conditions in the factory farms and slaughterhouses, and the environmental degradation that results from our industrial approach to livestock.
The Australian beef industry is huge and exports 60% of production, primarily to the USA and Japan. Exports aren’t hurt by the fact that Australia is free of mad cow disease. My understanding is that Australian beef is almost entirely grass-fed. This is in contrast to the USA where we take the cattle out of the pastures where they would naturally graze on grass and instead crowd them into feed lots where they are force-fed corn, a grain that makes them sick and could actually kill them unless done gradually and while they are continually pumped full of antibiotics. But the corn fattens them up faster, as do the protein supplements and growth hormones. And faster equals more profitable, even it means an inhumane, nutritionally inferior product and a heightened prevalence of E. coli bacteria. (Listen to me on my high horse...or high cow).
Australians love their meat as much as Americans, and will start drooling at the mention of pork chops or snags (sausages) on the barbie (barbeque). Still, we haven’t had any trouble at all finding seafood or vegetarian alternatives wherever we’ve gone. I’ve grown quite fond of salad sandwiches, which are ubiquitous.
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I’m actually not opposed to eating meat. I just want to ensure that the animal I’m eating is healthy, lived a natural life and was killed in a humane way. If my nephew traipsed through the woods and shot a deer, I would eat it. And, though I haven’t done so yet, I think I would eat kangaroo. Kangaroo meat is only produced from non-protected species of free ranging animals on property owned by individuals, not via organized farming. But for now I’m okay sticking with seafood (not farm raised), and at any rate want to continue eating much less meat than I used to. Now I’m off to find some nice road kill for Deborah.
