by LightBody Mon Nov 16, 2009 2:08 pm
The first time I became Vegetarian was in 1993. At that time, I had moved into the San Francisco Zen Center as a resident monk. The foods prepared for us were always vegetarian, and after some time I managed to fully convert to vegetarianism. That lasted until 1999, partly because I was gaining too much weight and largely because I was less involved in the Zen practice.
The other year I entered college, and our English instructor required us to read a book by Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma. The book explores vegetarian eating, organic farms, meat eating, and slaughter houses. During my time in Zen, I was vegetarian largely because of peer pressure to be compassionate and moral to all living beings, but that peer pressure faded as I grew further away from that community. While reading Omnivore's Dilemma, I was given a new reason to return to the vegetarian lifestyle: growth hormones and antibiotics. I think it may be somewhat common knowledge that growth hormones are injected into cattle because I knew it prior to reading Pollan's book, but I didn't know that antibiotics were used and had become necessary to keep the animal alive. Antibiotics are now necessary to keep these animals alive because we have destroyed their natural immune system.
Growth hormones in meat was always a mild concern for me, but knowledge of the antibiotics being used not to help an animal through an illness but to keep it alive was the factor that completely changed my mind and caused me to return to vegetarianism.
This time, I approached vegetarianism with patience. I made gradual changes to my diet, and as some years had passed since the 1990's, I began purchasing additional books about the topic.
One of the books that was recommended to me by one of my Reiki students was The China Study by Drs. Campbell. Through that book, I learned a lot of useful information about nutrition, which has allowed me to balance the nutrition of my meals to a much greater degree than I was ever able to do in the past.
Today, three of my favorite cooking books are:
1,000 Vegan Recipes and
Vegan Fire & Spice: 200 Sultry and Savory Global Recipes by Robin Robertson, and
Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero.
I recently received The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone and think it is an excellent book, too.
Overall, I feel much better on the vegetarian diet, especially since that now enough nutritional information is available that allows vegetarians to eat healthy portions in the right combination.