Eating meat

This, dear reader, is not meant to be a funny article nor an easy one to digest. This is written for all you animal lovers out there, who may understand some of the things I’m going through.

Everybody who knows me, knows that I love animals, from cats to ducks, from whales to horses, from lambs to lions and from foxes to flamingos. I rescued 23 cats in my life, a couple of dogs, one pigeon and a sparrow. Not all cases were fortunate, but I didn’t add those to my list.

All my life I wanted to live in a place where animals didn’t need to get rescued and my wish came true. First, living in the desert sure had that advantage, no animals wandering about, not even a fly in sight for a whole year. Second, moving from Dubai to Zürich, Switzerland, was again fortunate for me. Living in one of the most civilized countries in the world, surely has many perks, one of them being: no abandoned animals anywhere. All of them are happy, fat and clean, wearing collars around their necks. No dogs or cats run over by mad drivers, no abandoned kittens screaming in the hallway of my apartment building, no dogs whimpering around with broken legs and starved to death. So I would say this is my personal heaven from this point of view.

What I’m struggling with though has nothing to do with the outside world, just with my inner personal one: eating meat. Because I do and I’m not happy about it. I can’t seem to manage to refrain from it. I’ve been struggling with guilt for at least 20 years. I find this a hypocrisy on my part and I always beat myself up for it. The problem is that I enjoy eating it: sausages on Christmas or crispy oven baked chicken wings, some bacon sprinkled on my omelette, salami or prosciutto in my sandwich, or liver pate…(I’m the worst also for eating organs, what must my American friends think of me?!). How about the skin on the poor pig?! A delicacy! I reduced the quantity of meat over the years a lot and I focused more on fish and seafood, as if it would be better because they don’t have hot blood flowing through their veins. Another hypocrisy on my part.

The worst part is that I love cooking all kinds of dishes, many of them containing meat, my husband being a meat lover. I struggle with having to prepare the meat, a lot of times ending up in tears when boning a chicken. The worst is when I am preparing my delicious chicken heart soup, counting the hearts of the unfortunate souls that have laid their lives for my dish. I know that, if hadn’t bought that pack with chicken hearts, someone else would have done so and that the chickens did not die for me personally. But I did buy that pack…does that not make me an awful person? Because it makes me feel that way.

My principle was always that people should eat what makes them happy, if it’s not a danger to one’s health. My dilemma, though, is: finding meat delicious makes me unhappy. So how do I fight the craving? The replacement of meat is just depressing and unsavory. It doesn’t work for me, it’s just a sad reminder of the original. It’s either a veal schnitzel or not. There’s nothing in between taste wise. Some soy disguised as a meatball is just offensive. Not touching meat at all works better for me than replacing it with imposters.

I tried to be a vegetarian a couple of times, but I always fail and end up eating a juicy burger or having a bite of my husband’s steak. It’s a continuous struggle with weakness, but I hope that in time I end up being successful in eliminating the meat completely.

Perhaps many of you, readers, will laugh reading this article, thinking this woman does not know what real problems are and has to invent some so she can keep things interesting. Well, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but conflict in the human brain, no matter the reason, can create much discomfort and leaving things unsolved can lead to other issues. Problems are subjective, and people are different, each with their own values, background and education. So comparing problems does not fix anything really. Difficulties, big or small, are meant to be resolved. Any advice on giving meat up? Or bearing the guilt easily?

Photos from Flamingo‘s archive.