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42. Why I Don’t Eat Meat

Posted on October 23, 2019November 17, 2019 by caritagardiner
Bagels

Okay, anybody who's been reading these posts for a while will notice that I've used this photo before. I'm sorry. I couldn't face putting in a bloody meat photo. Yuck. I decided to go with what I do like, carbs.

Photo aside, the first answer to this question people sometimes ask me is, I don't like it. Meat-loving people guess that I'm making a sacrifice for the good of the planet or for my health, but they've over-estimating my moral-physical goodness.

Anybody who's still reading might want a longer answer. Here it is. I became a pescatarian at age nine when I first arrived at Camp Thoreau-in-Vermont (an amazing place that no longer exists) when I found out that the food for vegetarians was better than the food for omnivores. When I heard that the cook, a vegetarian, used her favorite family recipes for the twenty-ish people who didn't want meat and made vast quantities of flavorless stew for those who did, I raised my hand to proclaim myself a vegetarian.

At our return home (My sister had also gone vegetarian at camp.), rather than encourage us to go back on the meat wagon, my dad joined us as a vegetarian. We pretty much stopped having any meat in our house.

Flash forward to when I was twenty-eight and pregnant with my first baby, I thought I should probably get more protein into my body to help her (I thought his, but that's a different story.) development. After all those years, I started eating meat again. I didn't get sick from it, but I didn't like most meats' texture or flavor. I could choke down plain chicken and I thought bacon was pretty yummy, but eating any other meats felt like work. I kept eating meat until I had my second daughter, three years, two months, and a day later. In the hospital, when I weighed in at 199.5 pounds, I decided that the bacon wasn't doing me any favors.

So I've been back to a pescatarian life for the past seventeen years.

Anybody else out there have a non-moral, non-health story about not eating meat? Or about other foods? I'd love to read your stories in the comments.

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WHAT I DO

I teach English to high schoolers at a boarding school in Connecticut. I read AP English Literature and Composition exams and serve as a teacher mentor for the University of Pennsylvania Teaching Fellows program. I’m working on earning a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing.

As a writer, I hope to capture the complexity and joy of life in the New England boarding school world. On this site, I share what I know about trying to write fiction while teaching English, coaching, and doing the other tasks associated with helping to raise over six hundred other people’s children.

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Read my recent “Why I” Wednesday Blog Posts

  • 106. Why I Don’t Need to Hear Your Plans
  • 105. Why GSD
  • 104. Why I’m Done with Guilty Pleasures
  • 103. Why We Were Broke (for 45 minutes)
  • 102. Why Climb the Mountain
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