As someone who has instinctively had an extreme aversion to eating animals since I was very young, I was still indoctrinated into this “You NEED Meat, Egg and Dairy to be HEALTHY” system. I struggled for decades with my own inner core feelings and the things the world around me said, practiced and preached. I was forced to be a meat, egg and dairy consumer my first 18 years by my well meaning parents. At age 18 I stopped eating cows, and soon afterward I stopped eating pigs. I ate chicken for several years after that, but in very tiny quantities. I ate fish occasionally. There was a point in time when I was about 12 through my teenage years where Jumbo Shrimp with cocktail sauce and Lobster tail dipped in butter where among my favorite things. (I have 2 stories of intensely bad shrimp experiences and a lobster one too, although luckily not about getting sick.) As a kid I hated milk and eggs and disliked cheese. I couldn't bear to swallow more than a couple spoonfuls of yogurt. Cottage cheese was downright terrifying. It was all disgusting to my mouth, my nose, my throat, my tummy! My sinuses, my whole body. One swallow of milk and my whole mouth would revolt in a surge of swollen mucousy repulsion. Then my throat would swell and that space between my bottom lip and my chin would feel cold and intensely uncomfortable. Then my stomach would cramp and I would get terribly bloated and gassy. My spirit and mind, all said NO. NO! Eventually as a vegetarian oft urged to “get enough calcium”, I had cheese in my diet regularly. In the form of pizza and deli slices of American. Sometimes Chedder because that was what my Dad liked. But I found it way too greasy and I also had an aversion to greasy foods. A strong one. Senior year of high school I would eat a piece of cheese pizza every day after school, and looked forward to it with addictive zeal. Mmmmm hot, gooey cheese! Yuck!
I dropped all “meat” from my diet at some point and only consumed (liquid meat) cheese and eggs occasionally. Fast forward to my first pregnancy and I became physically unable to tolerate any dairy of any kind. My usual egg and cheese sandwich in the morning became excruciatingly painful to digest and I became vegan for 3 years. I got pregnant the 2nd time and started to eat some dairy on occasion. I was about 85% vegan. Meaning, I viewed dairy products such as ice cream, cheese, whipped cream, chocolate, chocolate cake, cheesecake, cookies, as something that wasn’t healthy in any way, but was a treat I would “allow” myself to indulge in for special occasions.
As I lived this way and stopped eating cheese and stopped eating treats that often, more because of the sugar and fat content and wanting to heal myself and be well by avoiding processed sugars as well as processed fats void of any nutritional value. I found myself shifting from viewing cheese and dairy products as “tempting and yummy” too disgusting and painful!
Glass Walls is a documentary project pertaining to the Factory Farming Food Industry, conducted by Tal Gilboa and Roee Shpernik.
https://youtu.be/5-g9D9tFpLw
https://youtu.be/5-g9D9tFpLw
Watch This!
I also found that the longer I went without consuming dairy, the worse my body reacted to it and the more painful each “treat” became.
If my body NEEDS something to be healthy, wouldn’t the opposite be true? Wouldn’t I feel worse when refraining from consuming it longer and feel better when eating it again?
Could it be that my body was clearing itself of the toxins that build up my system when I eat unhealthy things. And when it was reintroduced, my body would react severely against it. My body said NO. It is the complete opposite feeling when I go a whole day without eating fresh fruits or vegetables. Anytime I am unable to eat fruits or veggies for some stretch of time my body starts craving them and screaming out for them. Then the moment I sink my teeth into a juicy cucumber or some lettuce, some fresh fruit, my body responds with a rippling, resounding YES sensation satiating my entire being.
Maybe some meat and dairy lovers feel that way about meat and dairy? But for me those things feel, smell, look like, and are, death, decaying, suffering, cruelty, sadness, rotten, unhealthy, disease promoting, exploitation, slavery, murder, rape, so much more, a sickness that permeates so many facets of society that people like me are considered the warped ones.
I remember a time when I did not think highly of “Animal Activists” or whatever skewed idea I had in my head about them. I remember believing that “dairy wasn’t that bad.” That was before I took the time to learn the truth. Before I actually knew anything about dairy at all. In fact I believed the lie that I had been somehow brainwashed into that cows just make milk all the time, just cause, and they NEED us to help them by relieving them! God how they need us!
[insert sarcastic expression here]
One day, at a celebration I was enjoying, there was a Carvel ice-cream cake. Oh how I loved those little crunchy things sandwiched between the vanilla and chocolate layers! And that thin but sweet icing on top! I decided to allow myself the indulgence and have a piece! I sat on the couch with my carvel ice-cream cake on my little paper plate, eating it with my little plastic spoon. Halfway through my stomach started churning. I decided to toss the remainder. Half an hour later I felt like I had eaten a plate of nails! The dairy was churning in my belly and I was very unhappy. I reminded myself of the truth I have always lived by, “If something supposedly yummy gives me a tummy ache, it’s not yummy, it's yuck!!” I mean, I figured that out when I was quite young and I lived mostly vegan as a kid based solely on the “yucky principle”. My yucky principle was simply, if it makes me feel yucky, it is yucky, regardless of how “yummy” it’s supposed to taste, or how yummy others say it is. And if it’s really yucky to even look at, like dead animal parts, then it IS YUCKY!
I remember eating ice cream as a kid, feeling so happy we were being treated to such a yummy dessert. And then by the time I finished it my stomach was hurting and I made the connection as a kid. Ice cream causes my tummy to hurt. But living where I live, I have been bombarded with the theory that ice cream is fucking delicious. And I continued to “indulge” in this idea of the ultimate treat, frozen cow’s breast milk, whipped with sugar and churned into a smooth, creamy addictive concoction of…..stomachaches and misery! I convinced myself for awhile it was the hot chocolate syrup on top that hurt my tummy, not the ice cream itself. No!
NOW every time I see dairy ice cream, visions of Mama cows and baby cows dance in my head, muscle memory stomach pains shoot my tummy reminding jabs, and I feel sick.
Everywhere I go, every meal shared with non vegans, I am surrounded by dead animals and their secretions sucked and pumped out of them just as violently as they are then killed, still children, because their bodies are so worn out from abuse that they can not survive. I see flesh dripping off people’s plates, overflowing their news feeds, hanging from restaurant windows, bulging from saran wrapped packages in the grocery. I try to act like a normal person, unaffected by the death everywhere. Living in an insane type of Opposite World where humans live in sheer denial that everyone humans and all animals face the inevitable death and everyone we know and love will one day perish from our limited and fragile, vulnerable, delicate human bodies and re-enter the cosmos of the Great Big Everything where we all started from and will all return too. None of us, except the most excruciatingly sick, suffering and ill mental and physically unhealthy of us wants to die. No one wants to have their live prematurely taken! The idea of "Humane Killing" is like a horror sci-fi silm in real life. Are people really so cruel? So disconnected? So unfeeling for what appears overtly, clearly, without any hesitation, doubt or any inkling of uncertainty that every single species of life on this planet (and most likely across the infinity of galaxies that exist) no creature, no single life form WANTS to die! NO. No creature, whether they have a "natural predator" or not, WANTS it's life taken through becoming another's meal. True it happens in nature, but the idea of some "generous life sacrificing lamb" or "they are put here on this Earth for us to take and use and exploit and pump out their semen, their mother's milk, their menstrual flows, force them into having babies so we can force the babies away from them, they never "give them willingly for us". People take a beautiful natural thing and exploit and twist and distort and contort and infuse with cruelty and hell on earth then sell it to you as gold. As delicacy. As neccesity. As luxury. As life bearing, health giving, pure wonderful stuff. This packaged death. This product of speciesm, hate, degridation, genocide, rape, torture, destruction of families, of mothers and fathers and babies. The sick violations of life in every possible conceiviable conception turned into industry and profit. Which in turn churns the twin or parent industry of Pharmacology and all it's limps and arms of death, sickness, pain, suffering, and illness of every kind from mental to physical to earth sickest moments, and our Spirits and Souls lowest state sunken into the darkness of a Modern Medieval Renaissance! Oh how we Romanticize that we are So Civilized and modern! Our technological advances helps us falsely believe that we are truly divorced from any animal we want to use, eat, wear, consume. We think we have all the room and all the time and all the rights in this world and in our bodies for this kind of self-centered attitude that Might makes Right and it's your "right" to consume whatever death you choice just because it is so easily available and ubiquitously existing. Just as Slavery existed, and still does, and people would witness slaves in every facet and aspect of life but that did not and does not make it "right"! There are places where some people drop bombs on other people or other people shoot and kill other people. There are places where people shoot their neighbors or hid them away in their basement to use and exploit and do every sick, twisted thing they image or see in the media, to this poor soul chained in the basement. We are shocked because it is the most heinous of crimes. Yet we care nothing for the billions of dead bodies we see everywhere and then consume them with glee! Oh gee!
We pretend that Death is a shocking experience on one hand. We pretend that death is completely an inconsequential by-product of our everyday existence when it’s on our plates! You love your family and friends, and when they die, a part of you dies. The loss is so shocking and intense that, in truth, we can never be the same. Yet this same person grieving the loss of a loved one, can sit over a dead animal breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack time, dessert, midnight snack, and have absolutely ZERO thoughts about the very life lost that they are INGESTING! Chewing and swallowing! Allowing its cells to merge with your own. Inviting the death right into your very own living body. And completely, utterly, udderly! detached from the idea that animals' life mattered. Their life Mattered!. That that life did not HAVE to end. That that life was prematurely taken, without consent and with a lot of pain and suffering.
Yet someone like me who can not NOT see that, is considered crazy, extreme, and many other unpleasant things.
Yet I asked myself the question, how can caring, loving, animal lovers, real sweet human beings eat meat, eggs, and dairy daily and yet be completely detached from the reality that these animals want to live and their deaths do not mean Nothing! They are not just unfeeling, unimportant, irrelevant, products, commodities here to be utilized for sheer consumption and gluttonous pleasure!
Often I ask myself why this world is so filled with killing violence everywhere!? Our food! War! Media, movies, shows, video games, the news, violence everywhere! Death and destruction! All so “normalized” to the point where people eat meat constantly and have absolutely no thoughts about the animal that died for that bite. Completely desensitized to these creatures and their life force and spirit. It’s like there is a giant opaque yet invisible blanket hiding all the atrocities of the meat, egg and dairy industries that millions of people support daily, hiding all the horrific lies and practices behind this giant blanket and everyone walks around in blissful, illness and ignorance! Ugh! It’s so Orwellian 1984 and Matrix all right here in my own real life sci-fi horror movie it feels like I live in.
The more I insisted on not eating any animal products, the more I felt the need to educate myself beyond the “yucky principle” and actually start to witness the truth about the horrors I always avoided. I was honestly ignorant as a vegetarian for 17 years, hating meat, not eating it, yet having separate mind frame about eggs and cheese. I believed that Dairy "wasn't that bad". Only based on the fact that I didn't think they were killed and being told since childhood that I "needed" to eat that stuff everyday to be strong, not get osteoporosis, be healthy. My body told me otherwise and at some point it clicked in my mind that I won't eat chicken as a vegetarian but eggs ARE chicken! I have found myself reverted back to how I felt as a child, but now with the adult ability to make my own informed choices. The smell, look and taste of eggs is not appealing to me in anyway any more.
I have also since learned that eggs are indeed the same as a human woman’s “eggs”. We women actually “lay eggs” too in the form of our menstrual periods! When our mature egg passes through our bodies and goes unfertilized, we shed the egg as well as the lining of blood that built up inside us to prepare for a fertilized egg, and we call it our period. The chicken’s egg is in fact the same exact process, it just looks different than ours and is contained in a shell. I know many people are not squeamish as me, but the idea of eating chicken periods is so revolting that for me there is NO covering my eyes to the truth again! Just as when I look at dairy such as cheese slathered on pizza or anything where it is globby and dripping and oozing and in my mind I see pus and mucus and snot and boogers and coagulated lactations and bodily fluids that are meant for babies. I see the pain and suffering of the mother and baby cows.
I became a mother and I became a lactating mammal. I grew and labored and birthed a baby and then another baby and love them as I love myself. There is so separation in my soul’s energy from me and them. Just as ultimately there is no separation of my soul’s energy from you or anyone I know and love and everyone I don’t know and don’t love. And of all the animals that are cute and cuddly. And all the animals that are creepy and spooky. All the animals that taste good, and the ones that are poisonous. All the animals that are vicious indiscriminate killers and the ones that are gentle and life mates. All the plants and the vegetables and the fruits. The beans and the grains and the sugars. All the insects and soil and the water and air and other planets. All the solid things and the liquid things and the visible things and the invisible things. All these things ultimately being connected as ONE thing. One existence. I know that someday, hopefully in many, many, countless decades, centuries from now, I will perish from this human existence. But I will reunite with the energy of all things included my loved ones passed like Dad and Mitch. Like my kitty cat from New Mexico who was meaninglessly murdered after I left her with my dear old friend Floyd who informed me on a phone call after I moved back to my hometown that someone had killed her out in a field! :(
This sweet kitty I will rejoin. And my mom’s parents. My dad’s parents. With the moon and the stars and the Sun. And I won’t know my human self, or maybe I will. Maybe I will know all the previous human selves I’ve been. All the life forms I have taken. I believe that my energy and my parent’s energy, and my children’s energy are all intricately connected and infinitely banded together. I will ever be their mother and my parents will ever be my parents. I will reconnect energy with them in a way not completely possible now because of the limitations of my human self and my human senses of perception.
But I can perceive that animals are enlightened far beyond humans usually realize. They have found how to live and survive and maintain society’s and families and communities and food supplies in infinite various ways. Some species are far gentler than others and some are exceedingly brutal. Compared to Lions and Sharks, who chose their prey based on injured and weakened individuals, which keeps the rest of the herds with their stronger, healthier members who continue to live and grow strong and healthy. Some babies are eaten because they are easier to prey on too, but these species are violent and live off killing. Marabou storks violently devour baby flamingos while their helpless parents look on. They eat their fill at will but always leave most of them alive. Without a healthy flock of flamingos to grow and mostly survive, their would be no more life for the marabou either.
Humans in comparison are insurmountably the most indiscriminate and bountiful killers of all the other species. Not merely preying on the weaker, easier targets, but breeding and slaughtering more animals a year globally than there are humans on the entire planet. We do not eat our fill and leave the rest to flourish. No. We farm them by the billions and kill them ALL.
The majority of humans seem to be more like vultures than lions or sharks though. The fact that, instead of actually having the instincts to prey on and kill their own animals, they eat the remains of dead animals killed by others. Yes I also realize there is also the killing type of humans.
Not all, but the majority of meat and dairy consumers are completely removed from the source of the animals they ingest. They are living and surviving on something I likened to the Wizard of Oz, operating behind a magic, yet unseen curtain where all the truths of reality are hidden from view while at the same time the truths of this Wizard and lifestyle are tauted across the board in the mainstream society as the only obvious truth.
Eating in restaurants or others’ homes, as a person who choses to cause and contribute the least harm to myself, other beings, earth, and everything else, yet I am confronted with the assertion that my way and point of view is, in fact, somehow offensive, at fault for causing distress and misery in the world, or in the very least in my meal companions.
After a discussion/argument with my meat-eating brother, I decided to learn the truth, whatever that might be, that the internet could show me. As a person who will never watch horror movies because I consider it brain poison, I don't even watch violent movies or TV shows of any kind because I just don't like violence.
I couldn’t stand to watch my mother cooking meat as a child and would flee in horror from the kitchen when I stumbled upon her and some meat. It was such an issue that whenever my mom had meat of some kind in a dish in the fridge, she would yell at me as soon as I went near it because she knew that I would be fleeing and screaming in horror the moment I saw it. She never even bothered to try to teach me to cook and would yell at me to "get away from her kitchen!" because my intense aversion and horror at all things dead made it impossible for me to be anywhere near it while she cooked, handled or prepared any meat of any kind.
This strong aversion too gory things was part of what enabled me to separate myself from the truth of the dairy and egg industries for so long. Paired with the blatant lies coming from the industry that’s hooked and convinced millions of people. Something clicked inside me and made me want to witness with my own eyes [from the safe distance of my computer monitor] what “organic cage free egg” places look like, or how much better grass fed beef actually is. And I forced myself to watch, through streaming tears and genuine compassionate, sobbing, and saw the things I needed to see for that final push into truly trying to live 100% vegan.
6 years of “80 to 95%” veganism {somehow I calculated} but always giving myself that little percent of "treats", allowance of dairy. But not anymore. I found in my heart peace in knowing that I will never willingly or knowingly ingest or enjoy a product of other beings’ suffering.
In searching for answers to the question, “Why can compassionate animals lovers love dogs, but eat cows and pigs?” I stumbled upon Melanie Joy and her studies of the same exact topic. In fact I was mind boggled when I found her presentation she called “Carnism - Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows” Dr Melanie Joy talks about CARNISM - the system of thought that allows some animals to be beloved companions and others to be abused and slaughtered for food, clothing, and other uses.
This was an extremely informative talk and I learned a lot about my fellow humans who I love and adore, yet truly can not understand in this aspect.
Further researching I found this TED Talk by her which was also very interesting and educational. As someone trying practice a life of compassion and of causing the least harm others, I need to apply this to how I relate to my beloved humans who continue to see things through the lens of “carnism”, and who may always believe in this way of life. I understand that just as there are still people who take advantage of slavery in today’s world, [possibly myself, unknowingly, through uneducated purchases I make] there will always be people who believe animal consumption is the way it’s supposed to be.
I know that when someone’s beliefs are aligned with a certain philosophy, trying to get them to see my perspective can be impossible. Especially when my perspective points at abuse and cruel practices that are very hard to consider oneself the cause of, or proponent of. Most people do not like to think of themselves as promoting cruelty such as rape, murder, suffering, torture, child abduction and slaughter of billions of living breathing creatures whose lives have value outside of being the property of humans to mutilate and capitalize on. But believing they don’t matter is a justification, although a false one, to continue supporting these things.
Tal Gilboa - Glass Walls
I, the ignorant vegetarian, spent 17 years not eating “meat” but not learning anything much. Never wanting to say bad things about what was on other people’s plates. Like my father said, despite himself, hating broccoli so much, would occasionally tell my sister and I to, “Go eat that shit in the bathroom.” Instead I took the meat I was served into the bathroom, hidden inside a crumpled napkin, and flushed it down the toilet. Or sat there staring at meat on my plate I was expected to eat for so long, everyone else had left the table, and I would scrap it into the garbage and try to cover it up.
About 8 years ago while living in Venice, CA, a co-worker mentioned he was vegan. I very rudely shut him down with the remark I fancied so pithy, “I don’t eat with my morals.” Ignorant and pompous. I may have even pointed my nose skyward. Ceilingward.
mor·al
ΛmΓ΄rΙl/
noun
plural noun: morals
- 1.a lesson, especially one concerning what is right or prudent, that can be derived from a story, a piece of information, or an experience.
- "the moral of this story was that one must see the beauty in what one has"
|
- a person's standards of behavior or beliefs concerning what is and is not acceptable for them to do.
- "the corruption of public morals"
|
moral code, code of ethics, (moral) values, principles, standards,(sense of) morality, scruples
"he has no morals"
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I don’t honestly remember my mindset at the time. Other than a vague idea that whatever he said about being vegan translated into, standing outside with protest signs was not my meal ticket. I wish I could remember who he was or what he said. I feel embarrassed and ashamed of my previous ignorant vegetarian self. In my mind, I wasn’t vegetarian because I thought about “animal rights”, I just thought eating dead animals was Gross! And I had no interest or compassion for “animal activists.” For some reason, I can not explain, or clearly understand, I used to think animal activists were, questionable? Like these weird pointless complainers who had nothing better to do?
[insert sheepish hangdog expression~ animal references intentional]
But fuck. I do eat with my morals. And I think somewhere deep inside this ignorant vegetarian who was guided only by the “yuck factor” to avoid meat, I have evolved into the ever learning vegan guided by my intention to live nonviolently in all ways. Each day is another day to practice and learn more ways to live peacefully, to bring joy to life and to cause no harm. Ahimsa.
Melanie Joy’s Carnism - Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows
Carnism - Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows
Dr Melanie Joy talks about CARNISM - the system of thought that allows some animals to be beloved companions and others to be abused and slaughtered for food, clothing, and other uses.
https://youtu.be/qLuFlvG3HxI
Melanie Joy - Carnism: The Psychology of Eating Meat
Beyond carnism and toward rational, authentic food choices | Melanie Joy | TEDxMΓΌnchen
Partial Transcription:
“Eating animals was just a given. So I never thought about how strange it was that I could pet my dog with one hand while I ate a pork chop with the other. A pork chop that had once been an animal who was at least as sentient and intelligent as my dog. And frankly I didn’t want to think about this contradiction; it was just easier not too. It wasn’t until 1989 that I started asking why. I had been hospitalized after eating what would be my very last hamburger. A burger that was contaminated with the dangerous bacteria Campylobacter. After being so sick I swore off meat. And then something interesting happened. When I stopped eating animals, I had a paradigm shift. In other words, I didn’t see different things, I saw the same things differently. Beef stew seemed no different than Golden Retriever stew. And everywhere I turned I saw people putting the bodies of dead animals in their mouths as though nothing at all where wrong. So I became very curious as to how rational caring people, like myself, could just stop thinking and feeling. Well two advanced degrees later I had my answer. And this is what I discovered.”
“2 minute video of animal factories which can be difficult to watch. So I want to remind you that my intention is to raise awareness. So I have to make the invisible visible...I know it can be painful to see that. [This footage focuses on standard industry practices including in so-called “humane/bio facilities]. I also want to point out there is a gift in our pain. Our pain is the mirror in which we can see the reflection of our humanity. So clearly the animals pay for our carnism. But we are also victims of the system. We pay for our carnism with our health, as eating an animal-based diet can lead to serious disease, while eating a plant-based or vegan diet can optimize health. And we pay for our carnism with our hearts and with our minds, with our dampened empathy and diminished objectivity. But of course, invisibility alone cannot maintain this system. Hints of the truth surround us. So another defense is necessary: Justification. And the way that we learn to justify eating animals is by learning to believe that the myths of meat, eggs and dairy are the facts of meat, eggs and dairy. These myths are expressly largely as what I refer to as; The 3 N’s of Justification. Eating animals is normal, natural, and necessary. And haven’t we heard this somewhere before? Slavery is normal, natural and necessary. Male dominance is normal, natural and necessary. Heterosexual Supremacy is normal, natural and necessary. And as with other dominant violent ideologies, they myths of carnism are institutionalized. So carnistic bias is embedded within the very foundation of the system. (Business, Finance, Education, Government, Law, Religion, Medicine). And when we are born into an institutionalized system, such as carnism, we inevitably internalize it, we learn to look at the world through the lens of carnism. And carnism uses a set of defenses that distort our perception of farmed animals (cognitive distortions). For instance carnism teaches us to see farmed animals as abstractions, as lacking any individuality or personality of their own. A pig is a pig and all pigs are the same. And carnism blinds us to the absurdities of the system.” ~ Melanie Joy
