My vegetarian benefits, and disadvantages

 

            I have been a vegetarian for a little over 6 years now. I guess people think it's difficult because people are always saying “oh, I could never do that. I love my steak to much”. It's a fun little joke I suppose, but in reality being a vegetarian is really not that hard. My brothers often rather eat my vegetarian meals because they look better than their meat filled meals. I think more people should try meatless Mondays more often because it's healthier, cheaper, and sometimes tastier! But I’m not here to try to convert people to vegetarianism. I just want to talk about my experience and shed some light on what it is like being a vegetarian.

 

I wanted to be a vegetarian since I was a child. My mother told me vegetarians ate chicken, so I failed as a child. However, a few years ago I seriously considered becoming a vegetarian. I then became one and never looked backed. I feel like I have been a vegetarian my whole life because when I smell people cooking meat it makes me gag. It used to be that I didn’t support the way slaughtering houses dealt with the animals they slaughtered. I believed if animals have to die because people want to eat them, that the poor creatures could at least be executed humanly. I still believe that today but I also look at the meat people eat as being bloody pieces of flesh and it grosses me out!

Growing up in an old fashioned Mexican family house hold I got a lot of questions and not many of my family members approved. They didn’t even know the facts about vegetarianism but it wasn’t long before they started telling things like “it's not healthy”, and “why do you think God put animals here for?”. My cousins even tried to sneak in meat into my dishes from time to time. I thought that was extremely rude of them to do, and this vegetarian diet wasn’t just a phase for me. Often I see people who are only vegetarians for a year or even a couple of weeks. Which isn’t a bad thing, but my family thought that was going to be me. This vegetarian diet was a lifestyle and not a phase. It was a strong belief system I now lived by, it really upset me that they tried to get me to eat meat by accident because they thought it was “funny”. However, as time passed my family forgot about the fact that I didn’t eat meat and life became easier.

Restaurants are becoming much more vegetarian friendly these days. Still, I have those times that I go out to eat with a group of friends and the restaurants have very little options for a vegetarian. I live in the El Paso TX area, so that means we have a lot of Mexican food, and southern steakhouses. I love Mexican food; I guess because I am Mexican. With Mexican food I have a lot of options in foods I can eat. However, when I have to go to steakhouses with people I am lucky if I find a salad or baked potato that’s not covered in bacon on the menu.

In talking to some male friends of mine, I also discovered something to put on my dating resume. I am a “cheap date”. My male friends said I would be a great date because I wouldn’t ask for expensive dishes like the steak and lobster. They were right, I am a cheap date, I don’t pay very much when I go to restaurants because my salads or French fries are much cheaper than everything else on the menu. Score! Meat is a little pricier, I guess that’s just another cool benefit about being a vegetarian!