Turkey and ham are two staples in a Thanksgiving feast for most families. So when I joined my dad’s side of the family for Thanksgiving this year, they were a little taken aback by my admission that I’ve been a vegetarian for two years.
It’s fair to say I was a closeted vegetarian to my father’s side of the family. I felt I had to keep it hidden, lest more of my life choices be judged around the table for jest.
My family is composed of rural Southern folks from Texas, where sizzled bacon is eaten with most food and gravy douses what’s left. To not eat meat is to not eat at all.
The golden turkey sat in the middle of the table next to the sliced, tender-looking ham. My family began to pass them around, turkey going left and ham going right. When the turkey reached me, I smoothly said, “No, thank you.”
Then came the ham: “I’ll pass, thanks.”
I reached for the green beans and then cranberry sauce.
My nana, who had slaved over both meats all morning, stared in a way that only a grandmother can, with a gaze that conjured both guilt and defensiveness.
“I haven’t been eating meat,” I said.
It was like someone had slapped the pope. There was silence, stares, maybe even gasps.
“It’s actually been two years since I’ve had meat,” I said.
Someone may have fainted.
Much of the next 10 minutes was me explaining that I’d started being a vegetarian, because it was good for the environment.
No, not because I have an intolerance to anything. No, it’s not to lose weight. No, Nana, it’s not for a class.
No one cared to ask how vegetarianism serves the environment, though if they had, it may have gone something like this:
“How is not eating meat good for the environment?”
Vegetarianism is good for the environment in a number of ways, beginning with water.
According to a study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, it takes thousands of gallons of water to grow enough food to feed a single cow for slaughter. The meat that comes from the cow is fractional when compared to the amount of food created when that same amount of water is used to grow a vegetable crop for human consumption.
The need to grow enough food for cows also leads to increased deforestation, as additional room is needed to farm adequate soybean yield, thus causing corporations to dig further into forested areas.
The study estimated that about 70 percent of fresh water is used for agriculture, much of which is needed for cows, so not eating meat en masse saves exorbitant amounts of water.
A meat-free diet also reduces the amount of carbon emissions produced, for a couple reasons: Cows produce a lot of manure (everybody poops!), which produces methane and nitrous oxide, both of which contribute heavily to the total of greenhouse gases. Additionally, fossil fuels are used in helping to farm the crops to feed the cows, further increasing the amount of gases produced.
Cutting back on meat is to cut back on pollution and water consumption, among other environmental benefits.
Worry not, however, if you can’t give up meat. Giving up a meal of meat just once per week can contribute to saving upward of 80,000 gallons of water each year per person.
My family would have been stunned by the facts. They would have thrown the turkey at the wall, given the ham to the already obese dogs and they’d have joined the legion of vegetarians and vegans, who work one meal at a time to sustain the planet.
But alas, no one asked, and they all bit into their gravy-covered turkey and honey-baked ham, for which I cannot blame them.
Reach the columnist at kwrenick@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @kwrenick
