The Tuesday TED talk - Weekday Vegetarian

As some of you may know I watch two or three TED talks a week while I sit on my turbo trainer.

This week's talk is one I watched quite a while ago, but I have to admit it's one that has made quite a difference to the way I live my life. 

Something about it resonated with me. In fact, I had been thinking about going veggie for some time before I watched it. The main reason for my turn to vegetarianism, was not so much animal suffering, though that too played a role, or in fact the health benefits, though that too was in the a back of my mind. The biggest reason, by far, was the sustainable nature of a vegetarian over a meat-heavy diet.

This talk, alongside the MeatFree Mondays led to a huge paradigm shift in my mind. For years, I had thought, I guess like most of us, that you are either a vegetarian or a meat eater. These new initiatives read this false dichotomy, not all is black and white (and I am definitely a fan of shades of grey, as illustrated in this post). It just had not occurred to me that one could be both...

The idea was liberating. I started by cutting down on meat at home- we never really did eat all that much, maybe twice or three times a week. I then stopped buying meat in our weekly shops. D loves his meat, but as we eat out once or twice a week he reserves his meat eating for when we are out. 

I give myself the option of eating meat, after all, as Graham Hill says in his talk, it's more about cumulative effects: if all of us are vegetarian half of the time, then it' s like half of us are vegetarian all of the time. If I am completely honest with myself, I have been eating like this for about two months and I have had two occasions where I was craving meat. I ate it, no guilt, a lot of pleasure. 

But most of the time, I don't. I am excited by the possibilities of a newly-found veggie cookbook and I have become a lot more adventurous with both my ingredients and my recipes. 

I love the talk for creating the paradigm shift for me. I do feel better about my diet, for all the reasons I mentioned above plus some (check this link out). 

Bonus points: Our food bill seems to be lower too!