Meat Makes Me Sick
But I do love a big, juicy hamburger
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I have quite a few reasons to give up meat. Don’t get me wrong — I love meat, maybe too much if you look at my girth. But, I know personally, meat is terrible for me.
I have a condition — diagnosed as IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) by frustrated doctors, and even though IBS is a catch-all condition for all the symptoms that these doctors couldn’t figure out, I know there is something going on with my digestive system.
My bowels give me terrible problems when I eat meat, especially if it’s greasy — which is most times (you know the kind of problems — do I have to say it?). I’ve known my whole life that if I stopped eating meat, my stomach issues would go away — but in my stupidity — I kept forcing it in my face because I couldn’t bear the thought of never eating another Quarter-Pounder with cheese again.
The days when I don’t eat meat, or when I fast intermittently, I never get sick to my stomach. At all. I know without a doubt that meat is what is causing my issues. I can eat vegetables, eggs, and tofu with no trouble.
Don’t get me started on dairy, though — two words: explosive diarrhea.
Over the past few years, I’ve learned about other problems with meat and dairy.
In the United States, 42 percent of agricultural emissions come from animal agriculture. Two-thirds of those gases are directly emitted by ruminants: animals like cows, buffalo and sheep that use bacteria in their stomachs to ferment food.
Worldwide, livestock accounts for between 14.5 percent and 18 percent of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. — NYtimes.com
I could go on, but the sad fact is that livestock farming is responsible for a whole lot of destruction of the earth, from methane in the atmosphere to the clear-cutting of our forest land for use in raising cattle. Remember the burning of the rainforest? They do that so they have land for cattle.
Our greediness and obsession with meat are causing global warming. Is it worth it?
