Pescatarian, Vegetarian, or Vegan..oh my?!?!?!

When I decided to stop eating cow, pig, chicken, or any other warm blooded animal last January it was for several reasons which i will explain briefly a little later in this blog. It wasn't really hard for me to give those things up because I was never much of a meat eater prior anyway. I never really labeled what i was doing because it was just sort of a personal decision and i didnt want anyone to question or judge what i was doing. It wasnt until i went to Panera (my friend Natalie is obsessed and often makes me go there) and asked if they had any sort of fish i could add to salad rather than chicken that i learned the term "pescatarian". The girl taking my order said, "oh sure, we have salmon...are you a pescatarian?" I looked at her really confused and so she then explained to me that a pescatarian is someone that only eats fish, not read meat or chicken. So, from then on i was a pescatarian...

As time has gone on i have continued my pescatarian lifestyle but after reading several books and blogs i am strongly thinking about taking this a step further and becoming vegetarian or even vegan!!!! For those of you that dont know a vegetarian is someone that doesnt eat meat at all...no fish or red meat, or chicken or anything...and a vegan is someone that doesnt eat anything that comes from an animal, so on top of not eating any meat they also have no eggs, milk, cheese, etc. Why am i even thinking about doing this you may be asking yourself...well i would love to answer that :)

The first reason I even began living this lifestyle was because of a book called Skinny Bitch. It is great book explaining alot of things dealing with animal based food and all sorts of unhealthy things you probably didnt even realize about food. This book was both fascinating and highly disturbing to me. Especially the chapter on factory farming...I have decided to not go in to very much detail about all of this but i strongly recommend everyone read this book because the things that go on for us to eat are horrific!!!

The second reason I decided to continue this lifestyle is because of another book my mom gave me to read called Eating Animals. This book is equally amazing but I actually found it to be even more of a motivation to not eat animals (hence the name) than the other book. This author had a child and decided he wanted to really investigate where the food he could be feeding his son came from. Throughout this authors life he had been both vegetarian and a meat eater, but he really wanted research about what the best option was for his family. I admired him because he looked at all angles of the food industry. he visited the factory farms with horrible, gut wrenching (literally) things happening...and also visited organic, wonderful farms where animals are slaughtered in the most humane way possible. Unfortunately a HUGE percentage of the meat we purchase is from factory farms...again, i won't go in to the gory details, but i encourage you to read this book as well because it will change your opinion about eating animals.

I have also come across several blogs from some wonderful women that live healthy vegan lifestyles...and it has really inspired me to think more about what i am eating and to possible become a vegan. Time will tell because being vegan is a lot of work starting off...learning new recipes, buying alot of new kitchen staples, etc. But if it is something that really means alot to you then i suppose those are just excuses and i should probably just go for it. I will keep you posted, but i really would encourage anyone that ever thinks about where their food is coming from to read these books!!!

ps...the blogs i was just talking about that are super excellent are:

www.thefrontburnerblog.com

http://peasandthankyou.com