…total breeze. I’ve enjoyed pastas, veggie pizzas and all sorts of food. I could maintain at this pace indefinitely. If the entire month could be this easy, I will have totally overestimated the challenge.
Day Seven
Cooked up Stouffers Stuffed Peppers today, thinking they would be a nice little veggie option. Set the oven to 350, waited an hour while they cooked, and sat down to eat. Only then did I realize that there is ground beef in Stouffers Stuffed Peppers. Disappointment sinks in, as my hour of prep time resulted in dog food.
Day Eight.
The challenge is on now. I have been craving a Café Agora beef and lamb kebab. So much so that I spent an hour reading Yelp reviews about their sweet, tasty meats. If you've never been, go. Kebabs are top notch. The owner spoon fed me a bite, which was weird, but also somehow charming.
Thought about a secret visit…no one would have to know. Thought about stopping in for a road kebab on the way home. Thought about a lot of things, all related to kebab meat, and clandestine consumption. I now know that I can go seven days without a bite of meat, but by the eighth day, I will have secretive meat fantasies.
I have been interested lately by the sorts of people that take things all the way. I’ve read about a guy who won’t ride in a car for a whole year, a woman who is not going to purchase anything at all for a year, and a guy existing exclusively off Groupons. I watched that Super Size Me documentarian consume McDonalds all day, every day for a month, and watched the same proposition turned to marijuana in another documentary. Both seemed like bad ideas in advance of the films, and after watching, I found the point sufficiently made that an individual cannot subsist on either McDonalds or marijuana alone. Both ideas were confirmed as, indeed, unintelligent lifestyles.
While many of the challenges I’ve encountered are done to raise awareness for a specific cause (heathly eating, green living, carbons emissions, etc), or as a publicity stunt for a particular company (Groupon), I don’t believe that the cause is the most interesting part. I read these challenge based blogs and watch these challenge based documentaries because it’s interesting to see people struggle with just about anything. Ask yourself a question in the following format, and I’ll tune in for the details of what you found: “Can I really (X, where X is something hard as hell to do) for (Y, where Y is a Time Frame)?
As in,
Can I really (Sleep No More Than 2 Hrs at a time) for a (Week)?
Can I really (Drink Only Water) for a (Month)?
Etc…..
So, I asked myself, why don’t I try one of these challenges out? Maybe I will enjoy undertaking them as much as I enjoy seeing others take a crack. With that, the first challenge was born:
Can I really give up meat for a month? Because starting Sep. 1, there will be no hot wings and beer for dinner (beer remains intact, luckily), nor any Chick-Fil-A Spicy Chicken Sandwiches for lunch. No bacon for breakfast, and I still don’t know what to do about my midnight filet mignon milkshake.
I love meat very much, to the tune of 2.5 meals per day, 7 days per week. And I also, in conjuction with my carnivorous tendancies, absolutely hate most vegetables. Sure, I'll eat a little corn here and some broccoli there, maybe a salad from time to time, but not much else. Pre-challenge conversations with a few of my vegetarian friends suggested that there are a number of vegetable centric recepies, and meat substitution options that will easily fill my month with delcious alternatives. I think they underestimate my contempt for vegetables.
Much more to come, but the Kincaid vs. Meat challenge begins tomorrow.
The movie Food, Inc. has ruined what was once a healthy relationship between myself and meat.
As a direct result of that documentary, I am now officially grossed out by the conditions under which chickens are raised and processed, and I'm fearful of the collateral damage to my body as a result of beef consumption.
The ConAgra’s of the world say “let’s create the biggest fat cows as cheaply as possible. Also, it would cost us less if they grew up faster...pump them full of hormones! Time is money, right?”
The corn based feed programs implemented to fatten cows inexpensively, as well as the hormone therapy they are given to grow rapidly, is all done in the name of profit over consumer health. There are many resources outlining the problematic relationship between corn-fed cattle, hormone therapy, and human consumption. Bottom line: gross.
I truly believe we had it right 100 years ago, where local family farms provided for the neighborhood. See: Europe. By allowing giant corporations to control food production, we may have unintentionally stepped on one of nature’s land mines. Where natural processes once stood, scientific alterations now reign. What happens to your ‘natural’ chemical composition when you ingest a lifetime of gene splicing and bovine growth hormone? I bet many of the health problems of today and tomorrow prove related to what we’ve been eating.
The argument goes, “Modern Agricultural Livestock production is needed to feed a growing global population." Well, yes. We do need livestock production that matches our demand for food. But that doesn't mean we need massive food conglomerates producing edible toxic mutants in the name of profit.
Food production should be a sacred act, free from the encumbrances of corporate greed. We are consuming this product in the most literal sense, and if your term "modern livestock production" is a euphemism for all of the practices outlined above, then no...we don't need it. What we need is safe, healthy, natural production of livestock which mirrors or better yet provides a natural habitat for their growth.
Enter: Whole Foods. For just $375 a week, you too can have an all natural diet! I love that it exists, and I hate that I can’t always afford it. Shopping at Whole Foods for a month left a pretty bitter taste in my mouth the next time I was buying cancer meat from the Wal-Mart butcher. Whole Foods: The girl I can’t afford to marry. Yet.
So, yeah...Food, Inc. really kind of messed me up about all that. If you haven't seen it, you really probably should. But it will be the last day you ever crave KFC in your life.
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