Begin by going one day a week, any day or any meal, without meat. Then advance to more days on more occasions.
Or start with eliminating dairy and eggs. About 65% of the human population has lactose intolerance. Eating/drinking dairy, besides being unnatural after being weaned from mother, besides causing digestive disturbances via lactose intolerance, coats your tongue white and causes halitosis (bad breath). Try foregoing the cheese on the burger, the cream in your coffee. Try some veggie cheese, then try the veggie burgers. There are many great tasting dairy-free coffee creamers on the market.
Eventually you’ll no longer enjoy the taste of blood from the meat, dairy from the cow, egg from the chicken, or the fishy taste of sea animals, and you’ll wonder why you ever did. The reason you did is because you were raised on those products.
I often wondered why I continued to eat eggs (not that I ate that many, since I didn’t like the odor of them cooking) when it was common knowledge that they contained salmonella – the most common form of food poisoning. We were told via the government and egg producing industries that all we had to do was cook the eggs well to deactivate the poison. What? Who would want to eat something that had a known and well-documented poison in it, deactivated or not?
We did it because everybody else was doing it and the authorities kept telling us it was safe to do so – given that we prepared them right. Well, salmonella is still the most common food-borne illness despite their claims of safety.
As we grow up and leave the nest, it seems that we long for earlier days in a nostalgic kind of way, we become homesick, remembering family and family occasions that always centered around food. That’s why you so often hear people on television who opened restaurants talk about making a dish just like mama did, or just like in the old country.
Cooking like mama did makes us go back in time, giving us comfort. That’s why they call comfort food comfort food. It’s what mama used to make. It takes you back to a different place, a different time, a simpler time. Longing for home is what it’s all about, and food takes us back home, when that home no longer exists, or mama or anyone else you love is no longer here. It’s like seeing them again.
It’s time to grow beyond the food. It’s not the food you long for.
It’s time to choose new food that tastes familiar – absent the cruelty, absent the ill-health caused by eating the flesh and blood.
People respect those who care about their health and the well-being of other creatures.
You respect how you look, how you feel, and that your actions not only help you, but help preserve life on the planet. Mama would be proud – even though she would resist you in the beginning. Remember, Mama is just like you. She longed for home too.
You’re the example that others pay attention to. Mama would like that. People notice the confidence you display in controlling what you eat and how you act. They notice the aura of power that surrounds everything you do, that makes you the most important and influential person at the center of your universe.
People respect that power in you – because you respect yourself. Mama likes that too!
That power is free. Seize it. Remember mama for the great person she is and that she nourished you in many ways. Food was only one of them. I’ll bet you would love your mama as much, no matter what she fed you.
Respect Mama by being your own person, while bringing her along in your heart and soul wherever you go, whatever you do.
Mama’s hitchin’ a ride right now. All aboard!
