Article on CNN - reformatted to make it easier to read.

After 30 years of not eating meat, I’ve made some unexpected discoveries.

Essay by David G. Allan
Wed November 27, 2024

At a Thanksgiving gathering three decades ago, I went cold turkey on eating meat. When I look back at that meal, I’m embarrassed by my gleeful, holier-than-thou pronouncement at the dinner table.

My father solemnly shook his head as I made a toast. “To quote George Bernard Shaw,” I announced, “‘Animals are my friends, and I don’t eat my friends.’”

No one else made a toast.

A college course on nonviolence had inspired me months earlier, so my family wasn’t surprised. More than family, my poor roommates at the time got the worst of my newfound sanctimonious zeal.

“Do you know how they treated the cow you’re eating? What his last hours were like?” I had asked my friends as they bit into a burger, winning no hearts or minds with my approach. They fruitlessly reminded me that as recently as the day before Thanksgiving, I ate meat, too.

Thirty years later I’m still at it. The vegetarianism, that is, not the ethical soapbox speeches. And while I continue to believe it’s the right choice for me, I have made unexpected discoveries about myself, others, and the world.

Making others defensive is unhelpful.

At first, challenging others about their food choices was something I obnoxiously enjoyed about being vegetarian. “Except for the mass slaughter of millions of helpless birds, it’s a very nice holiday,” I wrote in my college newspaper column ahead of my first Thanksgiving anniversary of vegetarianism.

But I eventually learned that putting people on their heels is a highly ineffective way to convince someone to think differently. I went from poking people with a sharp stick to avoiding the subject altogether, especially over meals. “Vegetarianism is a terrible topic of dinner conversation with nonvegetarians,” I’m more likely to say now when someone asks me about it.

After all these years, I don’t know of a single person I convinced to give up meat. And that’s fine. I do it for my own reasons. But if someone is truly veg-curious, I’m still happy to engage, gingerly.

Where we draw ethical lines around eating is largely arbitrary

No one has the high moral ground for ethical eating, except maybe the Jains, followers of a nonviolent religion that includes the wearing of masks to avoid accidentally swallowing bugs.

No sooner had I bragged that I don’t contribute to the slaughter of animals than vegans asked me uncomfortable questions about my awareness of dairy and egg farming treatment of cows and chickens. And vegans are ethical bottom feeders compared with fruitarians, who don’t even kill plants for their sustenance. (It should be noted that fruitarianism is generally considered nutritionally unsustainable.)

Then there is the matter of being able to afford a healthy diet that eschews readily available (and yes, subsidized) meat and dairy options. Are any of us who are lucky enough to have enough food in a position to judge those who struggle with food insecurity?

The bottom line is that most of us make choices about how much animal and animal-sourced products we eat, whether for environmental, health or ethical reasons, or for cost and availability, or simply for taste preference.

Consuming less meat and animal products generally means less animal suffering and less of a burden on the planet and maybe one’s personal health. Those are facts, but no one can say where the personal line of consumption should be drawn.

Going meatless wasn’t the big sacrifice I imagined.

While I liked to think of myself as a meatless martyr when I first went vegetarian, the truth is that I was largely subsisting on a college diet of pizza, fries and beer anyway. And over the past three decades, vegetarian options on restaurant menus have grown alongside my palate.

Even extensive travel abroad hasn’t been that difficult. Twenty years ago, I lived abroad and traveled around the world for a couple of years, and my culinary choices did not compromise my adventures, with the slight exception of Mongolia.

Science on my plate is delicious

What I really love now is all the fake meat and nondairy milk available today. I’m still waiting for the vegetarian substitute for crab cakes (I grew up in Maryland). But I don’t miss hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken nuggets and meatballs now that there are multiple options available in most grocery stores that taste exactly like (I remember) the real thing.

When I crave meat, which I do, I have many options to satisfy that craving without harming animals in the process.

The world is getting more culinarily progressive

Before I got married, my in-laws thought I was a little odd for not eating meat. Now they mainly eat vegetarian themselves. (They still think I’m odd for other reasons.)

This is a trend I hear all the time when I don’t get in anyone’s face about what they choose to eat. “I eat very little meat,” I’ve heard thousands of times after I say I’m vegetarian.

The propaganda is working. And it’s not actually propaganda. The research backs me up. The more we’re aware, and the more delicious alternatives become available, the more people are happy to convert themselves. And partial conversion still helps our hearts, our planet and mostly its nonhuman animals.

As someone who joined the club 30 years ago, let me say: Welcome to the right side of history, everyone, no matter where you choose to draw your line.

The turkeys thank you, too.

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