Eating Less Meat
25th January, 2010 - Posted by Scott - No Comments
After watching Food, Inc. our oldest daughter decided that she would like to know more about where her food is coming from, especially when it involves the death of an animal. As my wife and I are dedicated omnivores with wide ranging palates we committed to helping her explore this path. In doing so, we will also show her how life must change in order to seek this goal. Simply put, locally organically grown meat is expensive compared to industrial agri-business products. We are fortunate that we can afford to buy these items, but not without some changes.
We must eat less meat to do this.
To do so, our meat-centric diet needs to be curtailed. Initially, my thoughts were simply to reduce the amount of meat served at any given meal and up the starches and veggies, we are after all a stereo-typical meat and potatoes family. My wife recalls growing up in a family that served up a large portion of meat, some form of potato, and a vegetable. Though she left out one small detail about the vegetable portion that I have gotten to experience first hand with her mother’s cooking: there will be butter. After searching through our recipes and putting some thought into what to serve and how to par back while increasing other portions so that it is still balanced about the same, our conversation changed; the problem with these thoughts is that meat is still the main portion of the entree. Steak with potato gratin is still steak first regardless of the portion size.
I am looking at our meals in this new light and see that there will need to be more changes to our eating than just choosing to put less meat in. New recipes will need to be found and developed for our liking that have less meat to begin with. They will need to incorporate it so that it is not the focus. Eventually, we can change our family’s decades of eating habits to a new lifestyle that includes vegetarian meals and only a few servings of meat a week.
Has your family made this kind of change? How did you do so? What recipes are now staples that you wouldn’t have eaten before?