Beef: It's what used to be for dinner

I have not eaten any cow in 10 days. After KA convention that seems like a long time. It's difficult to describe my relationship with beef over the years. I guess the love affair began when I was around 8 or 9 and my dad introduced me to Chicken Fried Steak. This is ironic because he is a pescatarian (sp?)( it means his only meat is fish). Anyhow, every week my mom and dad would take me out to a restaraunt and order me a CFS with lots o' gravy. Needlessly to say, I fell in love with the thing. It was what I looked forward to every week over a period of almost a year. After I got well versed with that dish I moved onto bigger and better things. Premium, aged, well cut steaks became my dish of choice. After about a year of weekly fried/red meat consumption I gained around 10 pounds. You'll notice this if you look at any of my 5th grade pictures. That was not baby fat people...it was more like grease and cream gravy. Also, I imagine my heart was taking about as much as a beating as any 11 year old's could. I suppose things could not go on like that much longer.
So around that time I came to a fork in the road. I was entering Junior High and realized that girls were not going to find my portly self very attractive. Kids are cruel, and I did not want to give them extra fodder. I was also starting to worry a little bit about my overall health. Therefore I realized I had a decision to make: eat better and suffer cravings or be fat, unhealthy and lonely. I attempted to do the former by trying to limit my fried and red meat consumption. I remember one year I gave up fried foods entirely for lent. That is a pretty impressive feat for a pre pubescent kid. And sure enough I grew, lost the fat, and turned into a fairly handsome chap by the time high school rolled around. During high school my metabolism was so fast I could pretty much eat whatever I wanted. So red meat returned as a fairly regular item on my menu. Not near as regular as it was before junior high, but still pretty often. Gradually my intake of beef was reduced due to my love of chicken and fish, which provide a much lighter and healthier alternative to the cow.
Over the past six months I have taken to eating less and less beef because it is more expensive, harder to cook, and I just feel like shit after I eat too much of it. That last reason is a big one. "Feeling like shit" after eating too much cow or even pork usually involves symptoms like feeling groggy, constipation, and slight chest/stomach pain. Whenever I have those feelings I begin to think my body is sending me some red flags. After I returned home from my 5 day vacation with the men of the Order, the flags started to feel like sirens. I was tired, sickly, lazy, and felt heavier and thicker all around. So when I got back home I promised myself I would say goodbye to cow indefinately.
And so here I am. 10 whole days, approximately 30 meals without any bovine in the system. Fittingly, I read an article about the horrors of the cattle industry today. The article I read gave some daunting facts. For instance, did you know that cattle are pumped full of estrogen before slaughter in order to increase bulk? This may be leading to early puberty in girls and decreased sperm count in men. Furthermore, cows are fed an unnatural combo of corn and protein that doesn't work well with their digestive tracts. In order to prevent the cattle from getting sick becuase of the fucked up diet, ranchers must pump them with anti-biotics. Also apparently it takes 284 gallons of oil to keep a cow fed and healthy for 14 months. Considering the fact that one slaughterhouse shuffles through hundreds per day it's easy to say that the auto industry is not the only business dependent on foreign oil. And I have been an ignorant, die hard supporter all these years.
From now on I will never be able to eat beef without thinking of how awful I felt last week and all the gross facts I read about in the article. Hopefully, this will lead to a healthier and more guilt free me. I pray that I will avoid late night cravings for Whataburger. Please wish me the best of luck. And please, if you have any bad information on chicken please save it for now. It is hard enough breaking up with one animal.

More to come soon.

Still Beefless,

Tim