Week 3... I'm still a vegetarian (for 5 days a week) yay! But now, I just do not eat meat for 2 days of the week instead of the weekend, so I guess I kind of messed up? Other than that, I still need to work on finding organic, local foods to eat instead of just the nicest vegetables I see. I need to READ LABELS. So my week 4 is going to be just that. Because I want to be as sustainably impactful as possible during this project and I want to be a more sustainable person, I want to accomplish my goals as much as possible.
Also, remember in week 1 where I said I was going to compost or finish my food? Well I have been doing that, but only for the days I'm vegetarian (whoops). But those have mainly been when I go out to get, so I guess I need to actually stop going out to eat because it causes various other problems for this project too (like not knowing if food is organic or local).
If the project ended today, I think I would have a hard time to actually be a vegetarian. I would eat vegetables more, but would not be able to convert to fully be a vegetarian because I find meat more tasteful than vegetables. But, I have been consistent in eating meat only 2 days a week. It is difficult to make this a habit though because whenever I see like chicken, it seems much more appealing than like salad. Besides my personal opinion, did you know it takes about 66 days to form a habit (1)? 3 weeks of being vegetarian are not enough time for me to be a full-fledged one. Though it does take a minimum of 21 days (which is 3 weeks) to get a habit (1), and despite not me constantly eating vegetables, I have started to notice that I eat more green. Despite being difficult to become a vegetarian, people should know the time frame to develop a habit so maybe they can be better at being sustainable (or being a better vegetarian than I am).
Expanding from just out of my life and into America itself, there is so much land just being used for animals for meat and its food! Looking at the map (2), literally, most of middle America is used just for livestock. About half of the land used for food for livestock is what we have for vegetables. It made me rethink how often I should eat meat because farming livestock takes up so much land that can be used for other things.
References:
- Clear, J. (2014, April 10). How long does it actually take to form a new habit? (backed by science). Retrieved from https://tinyurl.com/buildahabit Merrill, Dave, and Lauren Leatherby.
- “Here’s How America Uses Its Land.” Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg, 31 July 2018, www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/?fbclid=IwAR2sY87CdO9iLhiKCbkFJcRVrcOYOWHM8mW_AGex1V7nMpnbeioQw1ieUD8.
Your post was really clear, organized, and to the point, I liked it! And I can really relate to the fact that after the project it's hard to get enough motivation to follow through with the habit.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Sabrina, it is really organized. I really liked that you were honest about the fact that you struggled with temptations of meats like chicken when you had to choose between that or a salad. Here is an article that explains why you may be experiencing that in case you were wonering. https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2018/03/30/why-humans-started-eating-meat-critical-diet/
DeleteIt's interesting that you feel you'd eat more vegetables even if you weren't vegetarian. I definitely can relate to that idea and think it could be due to your huge change in diet. Knowing this, do you think if more Americans took up a diet similar to yours we'd see less land being used for livestock? or possibly less pollution?
ReplyDeleteI think if Americans took a similar diet as Natalie, the amount of livestock land would decrease as American demand would be less because there would be money that would be lost for the farmers if they still kept breeding more livestock and the American people are not buying their meat products.
DeleteI totally think that if people ate less meat there would be less land used for livestock since I believe that there is only that much land being used because food industries need to meet the demand that people want. Also in an article I read ( http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/) livestock creates up to 7.1 gigatonnes of CO2 per year, so if we lessened the demand, the supply would lessen and so should the about of pollution created by them.
DeleteI like the fact that you are attempting to start small by only eating meat twice a week instead of trying to commit to something huge. Do you think it would be easier If the days you ate meat were spread out instead of two consecutive days? For example if you only ate meat on Wednesday and Saturday.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you think this is going to change anything?
ReplyDeleteWhat's the impact of transporting food from other states, say... California? Why is eating local and organic better for our planet than eating shipped foods?
ReplyDelete