Open Your Heart Meat Eaters!

In the heat of the holidays we are surrounded by traditional meals which usually are centered around meat. If you are a vegetarian this time of year can be a struggle. I am writing this for my  mother. My mother has been a vegetarian for 25 years and vegan for the last 3 years. For her it was not a choice made to save the animals but for health reasons. In her early 30s meat started causing painful gout like symptoms. Back then vegetarians were not as socially accepted as they are today. She was made fun of by family and struggled to find anything other than a pile of iceberg lettuce at restaurants. In more recent years it has become much more accepted, especially here in the Pacific Northwest where we have whole restaurants dedicated to vegetarian cuisine.

Even with this recent acceptance of vegetarians there is still an attitude carried by meat eaters that they are somehow superior to the vegetarians. Some people, men in particular, I have found seem to think that eating meat makes them more of a man. Some of the men I have encountered are so proud of it that you might think they killed that grocery store bought steak themselves! Some meat eaters seem to think that vegetarians are out to take their meat away! Most vegetarians do not belong to PETA in case you were worried about that.

I personally eat some meat but prefer less meat in my diet. I actually enjoy the taste of Field Roast Sausage (a vegetarian sausage alternative). My husband eats a modified Paleo diet for health reasons so he consumes more meat than I am comfortable eating myself. He is supportive of my eating habits and has no problem throwing some Field Roast on the BBQ alongside some beef patties. I still always hear someone open their mouth about how stupid it is that vegetarians eat something that looks like meat but isn't. My response to this is to just look at what you call meat. Sausage in general is stuff in a tube that in no way resembles natural meat of any kind. I am also pretty certain that vegetable patties existed well before ground meat patties. If I wanted to copy meat I would have to figure out how to get bean curds to look like a cow and frankly I don't have that kind of time.

For some people eating meatless is a choice and for others it is medically essential. Whatever the reason is think in the holiday spirit and enjoy the company of those around you and not what is on everyone's plate. At our family meals we now commodate meat eaters, vegans, gluten allergies, nightshade allergies and low sodium diets. Why do we try so hard? Because regardless of these people's personal choices or allergies they are my family and I love them all! For that I can live with a little less here and there.