Even the Most Southern of Mommas Can Support Their Newly-Veggie Kids

Just to quickly explain, I am alternating from the environmental aspect of veggie-ness back to my personal stories of being a vegetarian. The back and forth style really express the dichotomy I have experienced becoming a vegetarian for environmental and personal reasons. I was raised in a small town in south Georgia called Douglas where vegetarianism and veganism are thought of as foreign ideas. If Americans are perceived as meat-centric, than Southerners are doubly or even triply so!

Growing up, my family was very Southern Baptist in a culinary sense. If you have never been acquainted with that type of family, then what I mean by culinarily Baptist is that we went home every Sunday after church to a fried chicken dinner with all the fixings. Now, my Momma is renowned for being an excellent cook throughout the community and cooked in the style in which she was raised. A typical post-church dinner meal was made in this manner:

Step One—Cut up and deep fry a whole chicken (or roast, cube steak, pork chop, etc.).

Step Two—Make a gravy with the remains of the oil that the meat is fried in by adding flour and water. This gravy should be poured over an accompanying starch like rice or taters (potatoes for the Yankees reading this).

Step Three—Vegetables are be prepared with a meat added to them for ‘seasoning’. One can use ham hock, turkey neck, bacon, or even bacon grease!

Step Four—Make biscuits (which are thankfully veggie-safe) or Jiffy corn bread (sadly non-veggie).

If you carefully observe this meal, even the vegetables are not vegetarian. This is the way I ate on a regular basis and I later learned to cook in this manner as well. Considering my family’s consumption history, I was nervous to tell them, and my Momma in particular, about my decision to cut meat from my daily diet. Surprisingly, Momma reacted in a completely different way than I thought she would. I had imagined there would be lots of laughter and scoffing when I ‘came out’ to her, but she had a grave look on her face. I can’t remember word-for-word what she said, but this is the general gist. “Jessie, anything you choose to do that improves yourself, I fully support. I need to eat more vegetables, too.” I was floored and grateful at the same time.

The Thanksgiving after I became a vegetarian was very different than I dreamed it would be. I envisioned my family gorging on a savory feast while I scrounged for cranberry sauce and rolls. Thankfully, Momma had been doing her research and was delighted to find a bouillon that contained no animal product. With this new item in her repertoire, she created her vegetarian versions of cornbread dressing and dumplings with veggie broth. I was so touched by both her open-mindedness and adoption of new ways to cook. Momma had always used her cuisine to express love, so I thought that would change when my eating habits changed. I love being wrong in this case!

Secretly, I think she believes I am nuts for giving up marshmallows. HA!

Eating Meat Contributes to Global Warming

Moving from a story of how I became a veggie to more hard-hitting material, global aspects of meat production and consumption are environmentally devastating. However, this situation did not evolve to this extent overnight. The global transition from a hunter-gatherer society into a stable and localized agriculture allowed human beings to build cities, increase populations, and thrive. This newfound food security further allowed human beings to develop individual professions rather than focus on food-gathering and hunting. A farming class emerged in this specialization and modern production of food has evolved due to increased demand and technologies. 

The logistics of mass-production of meat have spilled into other areas, mainly economic and environmental concerns. The problems of modern agricultural practices emerge from production and consumption patterns and the current utilization of crops and livestock will continue to dictate the agricultural process. In other words, the manner in which we as humans consume foods will dictate the manner in which the agricultural sector produces them. I was shocked to find out that world-wide meat production now accounts for about 20 percent of global carbon emissions and the agricultural industry is overtaking fossil-fuel burning as the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. With the United Nations predicting that meat consumption will double by 2020, the time to reexamine the world's agricultural practices and eating habits is NOW!

New studies show that methane gas causes more global warming that emissions from carbon dioxide. In regards to the damage from these greenhouse gases, methane is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. This means that cows raised on a mass, unsustainable scale are just as harmful as polluting vehicles. It is estimated that cutting meat consumption in half would slash more GHG emissions than if car use was cut in half. In 2008 alone, 56 billion animals were raised for human consumption globally. This number is expected to double by 2050 and greenhouse gas emissions are expected to rise in direct correlation with the number of animals raised.

The meat industry threatens us and the environment not just through the mass production of animals and emissions, but also what is being fed to these livestock. The practice of feeding animals an unnatural diet, as opposed to natural grass grazing, has become widespread and also results in further food insecurity for humans. More than 50 percent of the world’s corn crops and 80 percent of soybean crops go toward feedstock for farm animals while both are feeds that the animals would not eat in nature. Furthermore, crops like corn require large amounts of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers and this process is environmentally damaging due to its interruption of Earth’s natural nitrogen cycle and its reliance on fossil fuels.

I know this posting might seem like a lot of technical fact, but awareness of this problematic, yet correctable, situation must be raised! Watching Americans (and others) eating themselves into an unfit environment is sort of like seeing someone suffer from a preventable disease—senseless and frustrating (and in this case deadly). Let me be clear that I am not saying everyone should be vegetarian. I’m saying that those who aren’t can certainly afford to cut back on meat consumption for the collective sake of the Earth.