Ramblings From Justin Penney

Maybe not. I'm wrestling with this choice quite a bit. I've been vegetarian off and on since I was 15. I've been solidly on the veggie side since late 1999.

My biggest reason for being vegetarian is the inefficiency of the whole deal. We grow plants to feed to animals that we then eat. I read that there were 16 pounds of vegetation that go in to creating one pound of beef. That just doesn't make any sense to me. Especially on the gigantic scale that most people eat meat.

I used to be pretty strict about it. I didn't purchase leather. I avoided anything that touched meat or meat by products. Slowly, I have relaxed those. I buy leather shoes for example.

I have recently eaten things that I knew contained meat based ingredients: the pad thai that Ryan made with fish sauce and the potatoes that my aunt cooked with a ham. Now I'm contemplating taking the next step and just eating meat. I don't think that there is any way that I could eat meat in the quantities and with the frequency that most people do, but I'm pretty sure that every once in a while it might be a good thing.

# posted by Justin @ 10:42 PM