confessions of a vegan

Christianity. Veganism. Two seemingly unrelated words. But pair a meat eating Christian with a vegan Christian and you can get a pretty heated debate going. That's what happened on Friday, except I was outnumbered 2 to 1. I had just met these two guys and we were just talking, doing the whole "getting to know you" phase. I found out they are both very into their religion, and one of their father's actually founded a church in Hastings.

I start talking about myself. "I am a Christian too, I can't wait until summer, I am a vegan, etc." Naturally, when the word vegan comes out of my mouth, the question "Why?!" is the only thing people can muster. So after calmly explaining that the way animals on factory farms are atrociously treated and that meat is not even necessary to eat, they bring out the "Jesus ate meat" defense. I don’t really read the Bible much, but I do know the “Feeding 5000” story, where Jesus ate fish. “Jesus ate meat, so why shouldn’t we?” was my friends’ arguments.

However, my beliefs give me two arguments. First, the reason I don’t read the Bible is that I do not believe it is 100% accurate. It has been through so many hands, how could someone not have messed with it? I strongly believe there were originally more women in the Bible, but through the years they were removed. So I think that the words of the Bible should be taken in skeptically, as there are many things that can be perceived differently by different people. Maybe Jesus didn’t eat the fish, maybe he did. That brings me to my second argument. The reason I am so strong in my beliefs is mainly from the horrible treatment of animals. Animals raised for food do not grow up in nature; they grow up on factory farms. They are not grown naturally; they are manipulated to grow unnaturally. Anything natural is taken away from them. They are not given space to run around and be animals. They are not given fresh air. Even fish grown in factory farms suffer. I highly doubt Jesus would condone that or consume those fish/other animals. Yet that is what the general public does- accepts the horrific, unnatural treatment of the animals as the way it has to be.

Posted by hans2929 at 2:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I read an article on Yahoo the other day called “The Dark Side of Vegetarianism.” You can read it here if you’d like: http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20090401/hl_hsn/thedarksideofvegetarianism. I’ll sum it up. It was talking about how teenagers may use vegetarianism to mask eating disorders. In regards to teens 15-18, they found “about 21 percent of teens who had been vegetarians said they used unhealthy weight-control behaviors, compared with 10 percent of teens who had never been vegetarians.”

As someone who had an eating disorder at 15, I can relate somewhat. I, too, would normally eat only fruits and vegetables when given the chance. But vegetarianism is also what helped me develop healthy eating habits in the end. I have never liked meat. Beef especially sickened me when I had an eating disorder. To me, it just seemed like it was entirely fat.

I never ate meat at school; if I ate anything it would be fruit or dressingless salad. However, my family was big on “family meals”, so I had no choice but to choke down some disgusting hamburger they put in front of me. Vegetarian meals were not an option. I would make myself throw it up as soon as possible after dinner. I know how appalling this will sound, but one summer night my mother beat me to the bathroom, so I walked nearly a mile to my neighborhood Target and threw up in their bathroom.

About a year and a half after I got help for my eating disorder, I decided I really wanted to be a vegetarian. Given the fact that they finally knew about my past eating habits, my parents were skeptical. So, I did a lot of research and literally gave them a presentation on how I would still eat well, without meat. Although it was a pain to do all that research and practically sell them on MY vegetarianism, it just showed their concern for my health. I think that's where some parents go wrong. They never have meals together so their kids are either: a) eating nothing but mcdonald's with their friends every night, or b) not eating at all, but their parents don't know because they assume their child gets food elsewhere. Granted, that's not every family that doesn't eat together, but I'm just saying that although I hated eating dinner with my family, they were more aware of what I was doing, and I wasn't able to hide my eating disorder for very long.

Posted by hans2929 at 5:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)