When You Can't (B)eat Em', Change Yourself

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

Leo Tolstoy

Last week I began doing research on world hunger for a blog post I intended to write on the importance of personal consumption. One of the first articles I came across was Five things would happen if everyone stopped eating meat written by Mimi Bekhechi for Independent.co.uk website. In lieu of summarizing the article (you can read it here) I have decided to meditate on a rather important personal question: What can I do better and HOW can I do it?

Being reminded that “850 million people do not have enough to eat” and learning that “it takes roughly six pounds of grain to produce one pound of pork” helped lead me to question my own choices and their resulting effects on our rapidly dwindling planet.  One of the five things that would happen if everyone stopped eating meat, Bekhechi claims, is that world hunger could be eradicated. It comes down to simple math. It takes a lot of food (about 800 million tons per year) to feed our food, or more specifically our livestock, which eventually become meat products for human consumption. However it would only take an estimated “40 million tons of food to eliminate our most extreme cases of world hunger.” Hence if we stopped eating meat, and stopped having to feed all our grains (97%) to our livestock, we could feed every human being on the planet. Put simply, it takes an enormous amount of vegetarian grub to produce a very little amount of meat. Hashtag Wastefulness.


I am no fool. I know this is merely theoretical and I know better than to expect every red-blooded carnivore to give up his or her juicy steaks and beer battered wings. Let’s not even mention the word bacon (oops too late). In a perfect world where salad tastes like salami and lions cuddle with chimpanzees, I might expect people to overcome their desires and rise up to be that better man, the better woman. But let’s get real, we don’t live in that world, and I get it, I really do. I happen to love a tender cut of Filet mignon as much as the next bloodthirsty gal, which is why I immediately began to question the legitimacy of such a bold claim.

Can world hunger really be defeated? What would happen to all our livestock? Don’t people need meat to be healthy? Is this a peer-reviewed legitimate website?!?! A part of me really wanted to do away with what this article was telling me, not because it was absurd or wrong, necessarily, but because I might be and I didn’t want to admit that.

So for arguments sake, let’s say world hunger was fixable with an elegant solution such as this, and let’s throw in that we would all possess the dewy skin of a cherub and abs once belonging to Attis the Greek god of rebirth, why not? Assuming all this was indisputable, would you do it? Would I? Obviously it is disputable and here in reality there are stipulations, complications, doubts and fears, so many obstacles to achieving what could very well be achievable. But if we knew beyond a doubt that changing ourselves meant changing the world for the better, would we be able to summon our strength and transcend the shackles of our own being?

I only ask because I realize that it’s not a concern of validity or truth that keeps me from changing, it’s something much smaller, much deeper that keeps me bound within myself; it’s the simple truth that this is easier. I never say that. I repeat what the convincing voice inside says: This is better. What’s the point? I am happier this way. But those are mere justifications and maybe even downright lies. The truth is my comfort, my laziness lies at the center of my torpidity.

So perhaps world hunger will always exist, perhaps even if we gave up meat, we would find another crisis on our hands, something we hadn’t anticipated. Perhaps there is no solution and there never will be. Perhaps my laziness is actually allowing me to make the right decision after all. This could be. But even if it is, I’m wrong. I’m wrong because without trying I have no way of knowing the absolute “right” answer, if there is one. And unfortunately for my slothful little voice that every minute, every moment tries to persuade me otherwise, trying takes real effort, every day. Well, most days.

So while my first reaction to the article was that of cynicism, my second was to be cynical of my own cynicism and question the foundation on which my questioning rests. I believe I answered that here. I was cynical not because I had sincere doubts about the legitimacy of what I was learning, but because I was too lazy to find out for myself and it’s easier to deny. My third reaction, which I’m still contemplating, deals with how to combat that laziness. I need to choose a path that is at once proactive and sustainable. Like I mentioned earlier, I love steak, and I don’t necessarily think giving up steak is my solution, but it might be. I don’t know.

In the spirit of learning, I’ve appealed to one of my long time idols, the Buddha, for direction and guidance. And in accordance with the middle way that the Buddha taught, I’m working out a moderate solution; one that I hope will generate wisdom and change. Rather than give up meat all together, I’ll minimize my meat consumption gradually and consciously. As it stands, I eat meat roughly once per week, not counting eggs, milk and other dairy products. Beginning next month (just in time to turn 29) I will attempt to eat meat only once throughout the entire month (I can sustain on birthday cake). Maybe this moderate action will eventually lead to no meat at all, or even full on "veganism", or not. Either way, I’ve taken my first steps towards change, and not just any change, change growing from the seed of experience, change that is free from the smothering apathy of cynicism.

Did you know that elephants are herbivores that survive on virtually no meat whatsoever? They are also some of the world's most intelligent beings.

And for the record, I read of a lioness cuddling an abandoned baby baboon (without eating it) on National Geographic, so anything is possible.

Ignorance is always afraid of change.

Jawaharlal Nehru