I’m cutting cow out of my diet because I want to. A couple Lenten seasons ago, my family went cold turkey and abstained the full forty days and nights, plus some more, from meats; including but not limited to the cow, the pig and the chicken. Since then, it’s been our Lenten tradition.
I am not a nutritionist, but I do love food. And the one thing I’m missing the most is Spam– I’m sure there’s some chemistry behind the benefits (if at all any) of Spam, but don’t ask me about it– I nearly failed that class.
My choice to cut cow out of my daily routine extends beyond meat, and so, I started choosing dairy alternatives such as almond and oat milk. Luckily, I never added cow juice to my smoothies and so adapting to plant-based alternatives for it wasn’t a challenge.
If we want to talk about the true cost of getting rid of cows from my diet, I’ve first got to talk about what replaced cows– and the short answer is more chicken and including plant-based meats. My intention is to cut more meats out of my lifestyle and eventually phase out their by-products– living out the true reducetarian diet. I already stopped eating processed meats like Vienna sausages, burgers and hotdogs. So, it’s only a matter of time before I eat my last hardboiled egg.
When talking about being a reducetarian, I factor in the environmental costs such decreasing the emissions from fattening and transporting cows, the personal health benefits and the feeling of knowing that I’m doing what I can to transition towards a more environmentally friendly lifestyle.
With that said, we cannot turn a blind eye in acknowledging that current systems out price healthy eating from being accessible and normalized, but the greatest thing about being a reducetarian is the emphasis on gradual change from heavy meat-eating towards plant-based alternatives. Eventually, we’ll get there.
