Aug 30 -

nutritionista: Interesting reflections from a vegetarian living in Africa: …When I got to Senegal, I decided to try life on the Planet Carnivore again, to put the pause on my vegetarianism so that I could live - -and eat — like the Senegalese. I wish I could say the journey was dramatic, but it turns out eating meat is a lot like eating anything else. Bite. Chew. Swallow. Repeat. And whatever qualms I had about where my food was coming from were absolved the day I came home from school to find a blasé-looking sheep munching a mound of grass outside my house. Four hours later, he was dinner. The abrupt nearness of the process was oddly comforting. […] …When we were eating, things were much simpler. My appetite could convey what my mouth constantly stumbled over: how grateful I was for the people who had welcomed me, for the kindness with which they had treated me and the magnanimous generosity they were endlessly displaying. And so I ate. And ate. And ate. Grilled fish and red rice. Beef with thick peanut sauce. Lamb and spiced couscous. Until it all started to taste comfortable, even familiar. [..] In the U.S. I was vegetarian because I could be, because food was an on-demand commodity in my life and I lived with the knowledge that for the most part I could eat what I wanted when I wanted — and stop eating whatever I decided I didn’t want. But … I remembered that for most people, that particular luxury does not exist. […] [After being] back in the U.S., and I had once again flipped off the meat-eating switch. But being vegetarian felt less ridiculous when it came weighted with the knowledge of exactly what it was: a choice. Vegetarianism wasn’t a matter of absolutely or an absolutely not. It is just the way I preferred to eat, a preference for which I tried to remember to say, not to Allah or anyone else in particular, but just the universe around me, thank you, thank you, thank you. This is a quite a beautiful story. If you have time, definitely read the whole article.