Meaning, Impact, and Happiness - For a better life

How can I find more meaning in my life? 
How can I have a greater impact on the world?
How can I be happier?

In this article we've collected our favorite quotes and stories to attempt to answer those questions. These aren't bumper sticker quotes that sparkle and then wear off after a few days. These are banks of wisdom that endure over decades precisely because they are applicable to friendships, relationships, career choices, and many other pieces that determine the quality of our lives. These are quotes that apply every day for a lifetime. 

Every quote is linked to more information about the corresponding book. Given the feud between Amazon and Stephen Colbert/other writers, we changed the usual Amazon linking habit and instead directed them to Powell's Books of Portland's website. 

For a better life, Hug the Rhino.

1. How can I find more meaning in my life?

Purpose 

“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things that they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”

Mitch Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie

"I am only so beautiful as the character of my relationships, only so rich as I enrich those around me, only so alive as I enliven those I greet  ... We are inseparable from all other beings in the universe”

Derrick Jensen - A Language Older than Words

Depth

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments."

Oriah Mountain Dreamer - The Invitation

"There is a language older by far and deeper than words. It is the language of bodies, of body on body, wind on snow, rain on trees, wave on stone. It is the language of dream, gesture, symbol, memory. We have forgotten this language. We do not even remember that it exists."

Derrick Jensen - A Language Older than Words

2. How can I have a greater impact on the world?

Empathy
“The typical cage for egg-laying hens allows each sixty-seven square inches of floor space — somewhere between the size of this page and a sheet of printer paper. Such cages are stacked between three and nine tiers high … in windowless sheds.

Step your mind into a crowded elevator, an elevator so crowded you cannot turn around without bumping into (and aggravating) your neighbor. The elevator is so crowded you are often held aloft.

This is a kind of blessing, as the slanted floor is made of wire, which cuts into your feet.

After some time, those in the elevator will lose their ability to work in the interest of the group. Some will become violent; others will go mad. A few, deprived of food and hope, will become cannibalistic.

There is no respite, no relief. No elevator repairman is coming. The doors will open once, at the end of your life, for your journey to the only place worse (see: processing ).”

Jonathan Safran Foer -  Eating Animals

"She shook my hand, loosely, like Indians do, using only her fingers. Not like those tight grips the white people use to prove something. She touched my hand like she was glad to see me, not like she wanted to break bones."

Sherman Alexei - The Lone Ranger and Tanto Fistfight in Heaven

Defiance

“Chuang-tse was sitting on the banks of the P'ue river when he was approached by two representatives of the Prince of Ch'u. They offered him a position at court. Chuang-tse looked at the water, ignoring the question. Finally he spoke, “I am told that the Prince has a sacred tortoise, over two thousand years old, which is kept in a box, wrapped in silk and brocade.” “ That is true,” the officials replied.” Chuang-tse continued: “If the tortoise had been given a choice, which do you think he would have liked better – to have been alive in the mud, or dead in the palace?” “To have been alive in the mud, of course,” the men answered. “I too prefer the mud” said Chuang-tse. “Good-bye”.

Benjamin Hoff - The Tao of Pooh

An Inuit elder ... “The family took away all of his weapons and all his tools, hoping that would force him into the settlement. Did it? No. In the middle of an Arctic night with a blizzard blowing, the old man slipped out of the igloo into the darkness and simply pulled down his caribou hide and sealskin trousers and defecated into his hand. As the shit took shape he put a spray of saliva along one leading edge to create a sharp edge. When the implement was finally created from the cold, he used it to kill a dog. He skinned the dog and used the skin of the dog to improvise a harness and used the rib cage of the dead dog to improvise the sled, harnessed an adjacent dog, and then with shit-knife in belt disappeared over the ice flow.' The elder returned alive and well in the spring. Forty years later, the Canadian government relented and returned the Inuit lands, creating Nunavut, a territory the size of Western Europe."

 - Paul Hawken, Blessed Unrest

Crazy Horse - "Even the most basic outline of his life shows how great he was, because he remained himself from the moment of his birth to the moment he died; because he knew exactly where he wanted to live, and never left; because he may have surrendered, but he was never defeated in battle; because, although he was killed, even the Army admitted he was never captured; because he was so free that he didn't know what a jail looked like. His dislike of the oncoming civilization was prophetic. He never met the President, never rode on a train, slept in a boarding house, or ate at a table and unlike many people all over the world, when he met white men he was not diminished by the encounter."

— Ian Frazier, Great Plains

Priorities
“There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, "Business as usual." But they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.”

“These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart.” 

Yann Martel - Life of Pi

3. How can I be happier?

Simplicity

“To the Taoist, Nothing is something, and something – at least the sort of things that many consider to be important – is really nothing at all." 

"The surest way to become tense, awkward, and confused is to develop a mind that tries too hard – one that thinks too much. The animals in the forest don’t think too much, they just are. To misquote an old philosopher, “I think, therefore I am confused.”

Benjamin Hoff - The Tao of Pooh

"More is good, more is good. We repeat it and have it repeated until nobody thinks otherwise. The average person is so fogged up by all of this, he has no perspective on what’s really important anymore. These people are so hungry for love that they were accepting substitutes. They were embracing material things and expecting a sort of hug back. But it never works. Neither money nor power will give you the feeling you are looking for, no matter how much of it that you have."

Mitch Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie

Presence

“I believe in being fully present. That means you should be with the person you are with. When I’m talking to you now, Mitch, I try to keep focused only on what is going on between us. I’m not thinking about something we said last week. I’m not thinking about what is coming up next Friday.”

Mitch Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie

"To be truly charming and socially effective you have to understand people, and to understand people you have to get outside yourself and immerse your mind in their world."

"The ability to connect deeply to your environment is the most primal and in many ways the most powerful form of mastery the brain can bring us." 

Robert Greene, Mastery

"Step away from the isolation. There is a whole world waiting for us, ready to welcome us home. It has missed us sorely and we have missed it. And it is time to return.”

Derrick Jensen - A Language Older than Words

"You think this is just another day in your life – it’s not just another day. It’s the one day that is given to you today. It’s given to you. It’s a gift. It’s the only gift that you have right now, and the only appropriate response is gratefulness. If you do nothing else but to cultivate that response to the great gift that this unique day is, if you learn to respond as if it were the first day in your life, and the very last day, then you will have spent this day very well."

Louie Schwartzberg - Gratitude (Meant to be watched)

Now take these ideas, these phrases and stories, these kernels of wisdom and give them meaning. Apply them to your life, share them with others, and think of them often. It's an investment in yourself and your life with a guaranteed positive return. 

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Hug The Rhino Team
edited by:Kurt Berning

If you'd like to read more but are limited on time, we recommend “Tuesdays With Morrie”by Mitch Albom and “The Tao of Pooh” by Benjamin Hoff. Both are short, fantastic reads

For a better life, Hug The Rhino

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A Year Without Meat: 7 Lessons I've Learned From Being A Vegetarian

(Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes 45 seconds)

For the last year I've tried out a vegetarian diet. I never thought I could give up meat, mostly because it is so delicious and was an extremely important part of my life. But I started reducing my meat intake after learning about the impacts of factory farming (read more about that journey here), and eventually figured I'd try out being vegetarian.

It was pretty fantastic. And very visible. Before I had been a flexitarian, meaning I'd eat meat whenever I had no other choice. Now I was forced to alert friends of my diet, refuse food at times, and publicly declare my convictions. It went a lot better than I thought it might. If you are thinking about giving up meat, lessening your meat intake, or if you just want to read more about the experience, here are the top 7 lessons I learned from being vegetarian last year. 

1. It was a lot easier than I expected

Doing my own cooking and shopping made it easy to avoid meat, and around 99% of restaurants I visited had a vegetarian option (so many veggie burgers). Initially I was worried about being a burden on friends or hosts, but people were more than happy to accommodate my diet if I gave them advance notice. My friends and family all had different opinions, mostly thinking I was crazy, but overall they supported my choices. 

Part of that ease came from experience and preparation. I’d spent six months eating meat once or twice a month, then six months before eating meat once a week. With this gradual decline in my meat eating I didn’t really crave meat and knew how to make vegetarian meals and supplement my protein. If you want to try being vegetarian, I'd start by gradually removing meat from your diet over a period of 1-6 months.

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2. I saved a lot of money 

Total savings: $750. I saved about $1 every lunch and dinner from skipping the meat, and benefited from cheaper prices for vegetarian dishes at restaurants. Lentils=Money in the bank. 

I'd never thought about being vegetarian to save money. Plant proteins just turn out to be cheaper than animal proteins. Lentils, dried beans, garbanzo beans are all less expensive than the cheapest, lowest grade meat. Just check your local grocery store.

3. Vegetarian does not automatically equal healthy

You can still eat lots of cookies. Just the act of removing meat doesn't mean replacing it with plant protein, fruits, and vegetables. Knowing this, I used being vegetarian as part of an intentional overhaul in what I eat and consider “desirable” food. 

Luckily, the process was helped by how great I felt. After about a month of effort I settled into a groove of healthy eating that was self-reinforcing. It worked something like this - I ate lots of vegetables and fruits, which made my body feel great, which made me want to eat more good food, which made me feel even better, and so on.  I still indulge in the finer things in life - dark chocolate, craft beer, coconut milk ice cream, but now I enjoy the food I "should be eating" just as much if not more than the food that I shouldn't. To really eat healthy, you have to start loving the experience of wholesome food, which takes time. 

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4. Be ready for lots of questions

Most people and quite curious about someone not choosing to eat meat. Here are some of the questions I get all of the time, along with my responses. 

Why?

Again, here is the link to last year’s blog on going vegetarian for a more in depth explanation, but the elevator pitch is simple.

• Health – Eating more fruits and vegetables makes me feel physically and mentally better.
• Sustainability – Factory Farming of animals does an unbelievable amount of damage to the environment, with more greenhouse emission than the entire transportation sector (planes, cars, trains, etc.) See this infographic for more details
• Ethics – I can eat and be healthy without killing animals or causing them suffering. 

How do you get protein?

My meals are a combination of vegetables (fresh tomatoes, broccoli, carrots, etc. etc. etc.) , protein packed beans, lentils and quinoa, spinach, lots of nuts, and other scrumptious ingredients. Veggies and hummus, carrots and peanut butter, and trail mix are go to/can’t miss/live for snacks.

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Humans have been eating meat forever. Why stop now?

Just because something has been happening for a long time does not mean it should persist into perpetuity. We have to evaluate the positives and negatives of any tradition to assess if we want it to continue. 

Do you feel weak? 

While being vegetarian I trained six days a week in swimming, biking, and running, raced two triathlons, ran a half-marathon, and felt physically and mentally sharper than ever. So I feel great!  In fact there have been a slew of vegetarian Olympians and great athletes. 

People will always love meat, so why care? 

I love meat too. But as I've discovered, meat eating habits can change. Americans eat 150 times more chicken then we did 80 years ago (Source: Eating Animals). 150 times! We could go in the opposite direction. Everyone could easily become a weekday vegetarian (only meat on the weekends, described in this video), or eat meat for one meal a day. 

If we are going to kill animals and eat them, why not revere the practice, instead of making it another forgettable part of our day? 

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5. It's off limits to ask questions in return

Such as why do you eat meat? While it's not actually illegal, this question comes with some social stigma. And that's frustrating because a double standard is applied to conversations about meat. I get asked every question in the book, but asking back is stepping over the line and becoming an overly-righteous vegetarian. Mostly I just let people ask, and hope that my answers stir an interest in the topic.

 

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6. The ethics of killing animals is very complicated

These are the kind of questions I’ve been struggling with other the past year.

• If the death of an animal is unnecessary for my survival and health, is it morally ok to kill it? 
• Is death different than a life of suffering and imprisonment to harvest the byproducts of a cow or chicken (eggs or milk)?
• Dying is a natural part of life, animals die in nature and all animals will die eventually. Does this give us the right to raise animals specifically to die?

Every person will have a different answer to the above questions. You might be unhappy with the inhumane treatment of animals and environmental impact of factory farming, and decide to pay more and buy your meat from local farmers. You might decide you don't want to cause any animal deaths, but needs eggs and dairy products in your diet. Regardless of the ending point, everyone should begin the journey and start thinking deeply about the food that you consume. 

7. Being vegetarian is only one piece of the solution

The simple act of choosing to care more about the food that I consume has led an interest in broader food topics. Childhood obesity, urban gardens, food deserts, farmers markets, fish farms, cooking, GMOs, processed food, etc. Here are a few of my favorite TED videos that discuss these wider topics. 

Jamie Oliver: Teaching every child about food. 

Roger Doiron - On how Americans need to start growing our own gardens again. 

Dan Barber - How he fell in love with a sustainable fish farm.

Along with eating less meat I'm interested in how we can help a generation of Americans learn to cook, care about food, avoid diet-related health problems and pass on that knowledge to their children. 

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From here on out

Change is a strange process. It’s a combination of articles, books, movies, and influential relationships that have changed my dietary habits over the course of three years. It takes time, and without some of those pieces I wouldn’t be writing about being a vegetarian. 

My journey to learn more about what I eat, where it comes from, and how it is produced has transformed my life for the better. I'm a more thoughtful, caring, and appreciate person now that I've taken the time to deeply explore my eating habits, and it's an adventure that's just beginning.  

I can't wait for my next meal. 

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Kurt Berning

Hug the Rhino
For a better life


Appendix

Articles/Books/Movies on Food

Books

• Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma"
• Michael Pollan's "Food Rules"
• Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food"

These books are all great intro's to start thinking more about the food that you eat, the time it takes to prepare a meal, and the path of food from farm to plate. 

• Peter Singer's "Animal Liberation"
• Jonathan Safran Foer's "Eating Animals" 

These books focus on the ethics of eating animals, with Singer's deep questions about the ethics of eating animals, and Foer's exploration of the suffering present in modern factory farming. 

Movies/Documentaries

• Forks Over Knives (The Priority)
• Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead
• TED Videos (all the ones listed in the article)

Forks Over Knives is about eating yourself to health, instead of being cut open on the operating table. Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead is similar, without being as well done. The TED videos are all great intros to caring about food issues. 

One Last Question
Thought I'd save this question for extremely dedicated readers, since it's only come from my family. 

Your grandpa was a dairy farmer, how can you not eat beef or drink milk? 

My grandfather had a dairy farm 50 years ago. Today the pigs and sheep are gone, and the dairy farm has been out of business for 40+ years. 

It’s easy to see why. In the last 50 years, the average cost of a new house has climbed nearly 1500 percent, new cars have climbed 1400 percent, but milk is only up 350%, and eggs and chicken meat haven’t even doubled. Taking inflation into account, animal protein costs less today than at any point in human history (Source: Eating Animals). With such a low price point, quality suffers, and so do the animals.

No one in my Grandpa’s family raises cows anymore.

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How to Like Foods You Hate (And Not Be a Picky Eater)

(Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes, 45 seconds)

I lived to 14 without strawberries, 19 without Indian food, and 21 without hummus. Through luck, peer pressure, and experimentation, I've managed to right my picky habits and develop a strategy for liking both new cuisines and individuals foods. 

Tired of being a picky eater? I’ve teaming up with Sherly Li, Registered Dietitian and currently undertaking a PhD Nutritional Genomics to explain the science behind being picky, and to offer some strategies for changing your habits.  I’ll provide the life stories and Sherly will follow up with scientific evidence on taste and diet. Find her data and input in blue Science section. 

Major Takeaway #1:  Our food preferences are learned, and therefore changeable. 
Major Takeaway #2:  Changing your diet can lead to other lifestyle improvements. 

Learning food preferences

Experience
I drank apple juice instead of water as a child, but now can’t stand sweet processed juice or cordial. I often drink IPAs or eat beets and grapefruits, all of which were disgusting only five years hence.

Science
Humans have an innate preference for sweet and salty and rejection of sour and bitter taste. When you ask children what their favorite food is, often the answer is lollies and cakes (sweetness) and the answer to foods they hate probably is a vegetable of some sort (bitterness). Using facial expressions, studies involving infants have shown that they preferred sweet solutions to water, possibly because one of the first tastes infants are exposed to and therefore prefer is of breastmilk, which is composed significantly of carbohydrates to create a sense of sweetness.  But by 6 months of age, preference for sweetness was associated with the infant’s dietary experience and ‘learned’ experiences as scientists have found that foods of other tastes were increasingly preferred. This indicates that our experience can easily change our taste preferences.

Overcoming food-phobia

Experience
Just because they are learned does not me it is an easy process. I never used to like trying new foods. For me, most foods were in the category of “I’ve tried it once and didn’t like it”, and trying it once was traumatic. I still remember the first time I tried sauerkraut. I’d never tasted something so vile, and I avoided vigorously it for the next decade. Now I’ve tried so many new foods that the experience is almost always positive and rewarding.

Science 
Food neophobia, meaning ‘fear of the new foods’ explains avoidance of new foods. Scientists believe that this is a predisposition that served to protect us from consuming potentially toxic and lethal items back in the day. However,  with experience we can change an initial rejection of a new food into a preference. This may explain why despite disliking a certain food on initial trial (eg. Chili, coffee, dark chocolate, etc) when we try it over and over, we can develop a liking for it, which some may have coined it as an ‘acquired taste’. Studies have shown that when 2 year olds were given different numbers of opportunities to taste new fruits and cheeses, their preferences increased with frequency of exposure. This agrees with the idea that neophobia is only reduced as we learn that the food is safe to eat. How? With more and more trials of that food.  

Changing picky habits 

Some tips we've put together for changing eating habits:

• Enlist the help of a friend (preferably who likes the food you don’t or haven’t tried). Make meals together, try new restaurants and new food types. Introduce one another to new foods.
• Eat a substantial amount of the food you want to like. Don't eat only one olive, eat ten. Then repeat at least once a month. 
• Eat new food with people you like, and at happy times in your life. (see appendix on food and emotion)
• Visit new restaurants, and ask the waiter about a good “beginning dish”. Korma curry for Indian food (not spicy), falafel and hummus for Mediterranean cuisine, etc. 

And lastly, persevere! The goal doesn’t have to be to love this food plain and uncooked, or to love all of the dishes in a certain restaurant. The goal is to never again have to pick the food out of a certain salad or meal.

From Pickles to Push-ups

The benefits of eating a wider range of food extend beyond greater variety, more flavors and textures, and a greater nutrient diversity. For me, learning to change my eating habits has opened a path for greater personal change.
 
It all starts with the self control and drive needed to develop a taste for new/distasteful food. Following the steps of learning to like a new food can be applied to almost any personal change, and changing a few tastes can also help you gain confidence and momentum for other changes. It’s much harder to quit smoking or lose weight than it is to like mushrooms. And trying new food varieties could lead to trying other new things, like new exercises, new vacation destinations, etc. It’s all connected. I’m a more open-minded and accepting person today because I opened my mouth to new foods and food types.

"There isn’t a magic overnight effect, it’s often a long process of learning to like the tastes that aren’t particularly innately preferred." - BBC Doc  on Taste

So start that process, experiment with new foods, and add some flavor to your life. 

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Kurt Berning & Sherly Li

Seize the Day
Hug the Rhino


Appendix

Here is some research that didn't make it into the body of the article, but it still worth knowing for those interested. 

The Taste Process

Experience

I’ve had a cold the past week, and eating food has seldom been drearier. Even with this minor sickness the flavors I sense have narrowed to subtle sweetness and bitterness. Without the nose, my tongue’s ability to sense flavor is almost negligible.

Science

Flavor is created through the combined taste and smell sensation. A loss of one can impact on our perception of a food’s flavor! Whilst your taste buds can detect chemicals that differentiate the basic tastes (ie. Salty, sweet, sour, bitter and umami), it is your nose that picks up volatile compounds within foods and combines them with taste in your brain to evoke a unique flavor. Someone who loses a sense of smell can taste sweetness from ice cream but is not able to tell which ice cream is strawberry and which is vanilla. Bizarre but true…your senses (taste, smell, touch, sight) all play a role in forming a special flavor from the foods you eat.

Are you picky because you're a Supertaster?

Experience
I always felt like how I ate was unchangable, and that certain things I liked and disliked were predetermined. Parts of how we experience food have been determined since we were born, embedded in our genetic code.

Science
Recent advancements in genetics research demonstrate that genetics can influence our perception of taste. Using a chemical to stimulate bitterness, scientists have discovered that differences in a specific gene  may be responsible for taste sensitivity. A study of 59 healthy individuals found that people with a particular version on the gene were more sensitive to bitterness. Those who were categorized as ‘Supertasters’ have a higher average number of taste buds and therefore experience tastes (salty, sweet, bitter, sour and umami) more vibrantly. The individuals also consumed fewer vegetables in their normal diet because vegetables have been associated with bitterness. This finding demonstrates that the reason some people can’t tolerate bitter foods may in part be because they are Supertasters and therefore more sensitive to taste sensations such as bitterness.

Food and Emotion

Experience
When I was six I ate a pack of skittles while watching the movie Fievel Goes West and lounging in our living room bean bag. Don’t ask me how or why I remember this.  But since then I’ve had a strong affinity for that round, sugary fruit candy.  I seldom eat skittles, but when I do I associate it with home, youth,  relaxation and enjoyment.

Science
Quite rightly so, science has revealed that we associate difference emotions and experiences with certain foods. Another reason why most of us love sweets and cakes is that these are often the foods consumed at memorable and happy times of our lives (eg. Birthdays, celebrations, etc). It makes sense that eating these foods can trigger happy memories. Some may even consume more of these foods during times of sadness to counter-act this negative emotion with happier ones associated with the food.

Mind blown. The connection of emotion to food can also help us learn to try new foods.

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From Skeptic to Steward: Why I Changed My Mind on Climate Change

(Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes, 16 seconds)

Seven years ago I was a devout climate skeptic. I hated Al Gore and his "An Inconvenient Truth" (though I'd never seen it), I often repeated the line about scientists in the 70-80's thinking we were experiencing global cooling, and I had a general distaste for the climate change doomsayers of the environmental movement and scientific community. And then I read actual science about the issue. 

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Why We Should All Eat Less Meat

Estimated Reading Time: 4 Minutes

If you'd asked me four years ago I would have laughed at the idea of becoming vegetarian, saying something like:

"I love meat, how could I give that up?"

Three years ago, I'd probably laugh again, draw upon college experience and say

"Human teeth were shaped by evolution to eat both meat and plants. Being a vegetarian is against human nature."

Yet for the last two years I've consciously made the decision to eat less and less meat. At first it was meat two or three times a week, then it dropped to once a week, once every two weeks, and then to about once a month. How could this happen?

Turns out I have a girl to blame. And science. The usual suspects.

Flexitarians

Although it sounds a bit like a yoga expert, a flexitarian is someone who chooses not to eat meat when possible, but will eat meat on special occasions (when it's already prepared by friends, or a goat is slaughtered in your honor, etc). The frequency of meat eating is really up to the person, but it's normally pretty infrequent. When I started dating a flexitarian, I was intrigued by this idea, but didn't really have any good reasons for reducing my meat consumption. I love meat! Why would I eat less of something I love?

Then I read Michael Pollan's "Omnivores Dilemma" and started thinking about not only what I ate but the conditions in which it was produced. 

Learning that eating less meat would have a positive impact on my health, and less meat production would be better for the environment (data here), I made the decision to start reducing my meat consumption.

Life without Meat*

*Almost without meat.

For two years, things have been wonderful. I've been able to eat meat when needed and abstain when possible. I thought I'd miss meat a lot more than I actually do. I was also worried about supplementing the protein in my diet, which has turned out to be easy (beans, lentils, soy, quinoa, spinach, eggs, lots of nuts). 

Currently I'm working out around 1 hour per day, six days a week,  and eating meat once a month. I'm in the best all-around shape of my life and have never eaten healthier. Up until two weeks ago, I figured this would go on for the rest of my life. Meat when necessary, but 99% without.

The Ethical Component

As explained,  my decision was entirely personally and environmentally oriented. Better for me, and better for the planet. Easy. And the animals killed to make meat? Pssh, they aren't important. As I'd told people, 

"I'm not one of those people doing it for the animals" 

To tell you the truth, I had never really thought about the animals involved in the meat industry. I only knew that factory farms were awful for the environment, and yes, animals were held in terrible conditions. But when I realized the truth, it rocked the foundations of my former certainty.

Please watch this documentary, "Earthlings", which offers a uncompromising view of human relations with animals.  It's tough to get through, but worth it. I guess like most things. It's split into five parts, Pets, Food, Clothes, Entertainment, Scientific Research, and talks about treatment of animals in each industry. I had to take an emotional break halfway though. It's powerful, and startling.

WARNING: This video is extremely graphic in it's depiction of the state of animals in various industries.

So What Now?
 
Well I'm torn. And shocked. And saddened. Now that I've seen the suffering of such animals, it only adds to the evidence about the health and environmental impact of meat.  Should I become a full vegetarian, forever? Should I eat meat once or twice a year? Can I eat meat again? (I haven't since watching the documentary, and won't for a while). I've still got many things to puzzle out. But one thing is clear. 

"And if you've come this far, maybe you're willing to come a little further."
-Shawshank Redemption

It's time for our society to make a change. It's time that we all take action to eat significantly less meat. 

Progress Update - 2015

I decided to try out being Vegetarian for all of 2013. Read about that experience here "A Year Without Meat" Given that the same problems with meat are inherent to cheese, eggs, and dairy, I decided to try out a Vegan diet for 2014. I'm planning to stay Vegan for the foreseeable future. 

New inspiration from Jonathan Safran Foer with his book Eating Animals, and his NY Times article.

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Kurt Berning

Hug the Rhino
For a better life

Also check out another documentary, "Forks Over Knives", which covers the quest to eat healthier through a plant based diet. 

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