Hey Guys!
We hope you all had a wonderful holiday and are as excited about the New Year as we are.
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Today we have another writing post to share with you guys about something besides photography and travel that we are also very passionate about. For the last two years, the two of us have decided to follow what most people would call a Pescatarian diet, which means that we don’t eat red meat, pork, poultry, or any type of meat besides fish, although we do still eat dairy and eggs which obviously come from cows and chickens :). Some people consider fish meat, some people don’t, so to some people this might be considered being vegetarian, but ultimately it doesn’t really matter what you call it, what’s more important, is why we do it.
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About two years ago, Scott heard about a documentary from his friend, and the two of us decided to sit down and watch it. The documentary was called “Cowspiracy”, and the information it presented was incredibly eye opening for both of us. The two of us had always had some reservations about meat’s impact on our health and had always had some issue with the idea of animals being killed or treated inhumanely, but these topics had never driven us to the point where we were prepared to change our diet and our lives because of the problem. However, this documentary, “Cowspiracy”, presented a whole new argument about the meat industry that we were previously unaware of, which was the massive impact that it has on the environment. While we would highly recommend everyone watching the film and conducting some research of their own, what the film tries to get across to its viewers is the idea that the meat that we eat every day has a much, much larger and much more negative impact on the environment than the industries that everyone thinks about when they think of Climate Change, such as the automobile/transportation industry or domestic water use. While neither of us are scientists or experts on the topic, the numbers and the facts that can be found about the issue just by looking it up on Google are seriously unbelievable. The amount of water and resources used to make a single pound of red meat are mind-blowing, not to mention the negative effect that livestock’s waste has on the atmosphere and the environment all around it. Along with this information, what the documentary really emphasizes, is the fact that this topic is rarely ever covered in the media compared to the other industries I mentioned before, who’s impact is just a fraction of the meat and agricultural systems we have grown accustomed to.
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So after watching the film, doing some research of our own, and discussing the issue, we decided the next day to make a change and cut meat out of our diets completely. Now this was definitely not an easy decision, both of us had been meat eaters our entire lives and we both love meat. Scott was one of those people that would order a cheeseburger at literally every restaurant he went to, so at first, the idea of cutting out meat was like an experiment for ourselves to see how long we could go and how hard it would actually be. After a week or two of basically adopting the mindset that there was no other option, that meat just simply wasn’t a part of our lives anymore, we realized that we were never going back. What we were happily surprised to find early on in our diet change was just how many substitutes and meat free options were available everywhere we looked. While neither of us would try to argue that a veggie patty tastes the same as a meat patty, veggie burgers and other vegetarian options have completely filled the void of where meat used to reside in our diets. Just like with everything else we have talked about so far, we strongly encourage everyone to conduct research of their own and to be as informed as possible about the topic because taking meat out of your diet and simply eating soy and tofu for every meal is not a healthy option. Ultimately, the point we are trying to emphasize with this whole issue it to be informed, and to understand whats going on in the world and in your body when you choose to eat meat. And while this is not meant to be some propaganda post trying to convert every reader to a meat free diet, we believe that this is a topic that everyone should know about and be able to make their own decision about.
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If you’re curious about learning more about this issue or are just curious about the documentary that we mentioned, you can check it out HERE. As always, thanks for reading and we hope that this encourages you to become as aware as possible about the world around you 🙂
