It was a long process until I really decided to act and become vegetarian. Well, almost, I’m more « flexitarian », because I’m weak and I can’t renounce to some guilty pleasure, I eat meat for a special occasion, like feast, good restaurant or family dinner, so approximately 3 times a month, and it’s a lot less than I used to.

It all begins with milk, when my sister told me, as I was drinking a huge glass of this beverage: « you know there is sometimes blood in your milk because cows bleed if there are too exploited and they filter it? »
After that, I tried to picturise it and I stop drinking milk when I came to London. I now drink soy and almond milk. That was the first step.

And since I’m in London, I’m more sensitive of a vegetarian meal, in a restaurant or even at Tesco because it’s always written wherever it’s suitable for vegan or vegetarian. In France, we don’t have that and maybe it’s part of the reason why I didn’t notice there is meat everywhere (especially in ready meals). I’ve already started to reduce my meat consumption since I was cooking for myself, but it wasn’t enough.

I kind of knew it was not so good to eat meat (and fish) but I never thought of my action when I was eating it or buying it, I didn’t know it was really bad for our health and extremely bad for our planet. I heard cows pollute the air when they fart, but it was more a joke than a real fact.

It’s when I saw Rachel talking about the documentary « What the health » on Facebook, right after I ate a good typical English breakfast with bacon, eggs, and sausage, that I decided to watch it.

After that, it was clear, we have to stop eating meat. It was extremely well explained, with real facts and studies, and how the population is misinformed. In question, NGO wasn’t doing their job because of powerful lobbies.

I was ready to act, I wanted to, but I finally thought « oh it’s ok some meat from time to time » and I’ve been less careful and finished to eat meat once a day or once every 2 days… systematically eating meat at a restaurant or in ready meals, also, seeing my boyfriend eating meat wasn’t helping.

Then again, I saw an Instagram story of a friend, saying everyone should watch « Cowspiracy ».
It was my second chock. From the same director as « What the health », it explained and demonstrated the devastation caused by livestock.

« What the health » was more focused on the impact on our health, but « Cowspiracy » approach this matter from a different perspective.
How we damaged the Earth by JUST eating meat and fish and how we can reduce a lot our gas emission, deforestation, water pollution… by JUST stopping producing meat and fishing.

(«Cowspiracy: the sustainability secret» was the first realised, so I recommend starting watching this one).

Here again, we are facing lobbies. People aren’t aware of the huge damaged they cause. And nobody wants to do the dirty job: telling people to fundamentally change their habits. It’s a really delicate subject and no one wants to hear a hurting truth.

It’s crazy knowing that livestock is responsible for 51% of the global greenhouse gas emission against 13% due to transport (all transports), the meat and dairy use 1/3 of earth’s fresh water… and many more, go check this infographic :

http://www.cowspiracy.com/infographic/

Some will say that those documentaries are extreme, that they come from a vegan lobby, or the facts are false or exaggerated, and human need protein for a healthy diet… but hey! First, you can find protein in plants too, and ok let’s imagine it’s extreme and it’s a vegan lobby…

I will just respond: what’s wrong with not killing and eating animals?

And now it’s your turn to find out how much it’s important to « reduce » your meat and fish consumption. Reducing is really vague, but that’s the first step for a better world. This week I saw the first Greenpeace’s ad, denouncing what I learnt. It’s amusing because they pointed out Greenpeace in this documentary because this NGO (as many others) didn’t say a thing about livestock. And now I saw this (3 years after the documentary) :

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6bjxzr

It’s a French ad and at the end, it says « it’s urgent to reduce our meat consumption ».

I don’t think the message is really well communicated and it’s not really impacting, the end is too fast, there is not fact and they only talk about meat… but they say it’s « urgent ».

And that’s an improvement.