The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined. If beef is your idea of “real food for real people,” you’d better live real close to a real good hospital.
—Neal D. Barnard, MD, President, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
I was raised on a meat and potatoes diet, by WWII era
parents who knew how to stretch a dollar and waste-not-want-not. We ate meat daily: pot roast, liver and
onions, steak and kidney pies and puddings, the occasional sweetbreads (brains)
and tongues, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, traditional holiday turkeys and
hams. Preparing for rural Alberta
winters we stocked the freezer with cows and sheep and baby pigs from the
neighbouring Hutterites. We didn’t
indulge in junk food or sodapop, our “food” was always fresh, never processed,
and it was all considered very normal.
When we talked about it we were never accused of preaching, or trying to
convert anyone, it was just conversation.
At college, with
perpetual acne and with weight that fluctuated by 10 lbs (which I’d heard is
unhealthy), I began to question this tradition. I was studying (among other things) human health, and I was
active in the Green Future Club. We had organized a Rainforest Awareness Week
and one of our guests spoke about the benefits of a plant based diet.
