Tomatoes (2021)
In the beginning, when I started to eat meat again, it felt strange. I felt like I was doing something wrong.
BY JULIA ALEVATO
IMAGE BY PATSY WISNIEWSKI
I have always loved animals. Growing up, my dream was to become a veterinarian, and I spent a lot of time in nature and with animals. When I was two years old, my family and I lived in a house with a huge backyard, where I used to chase butterflies and play with my dog, a German Shepherd-Rottweiler mix that was double my size. By the age of 12, I got my second dog, Cristal, who shortly after became my best friend and inspired my love for animals to increase.
Growing up, my family’s diet included lots of meat. As a meat eater, my love for animals has made me develop a sense of guilt after some years. Soon, I started to question if I could love animals and be a meat lover at the same time. That's why in 2018, I made a goal to become a vegetarian. I knew it would be hard, and it could take time, but my love for animals was stronger than my love for eating meat.
To take things slow, I decided that each week I would stop eating a single type of meat. My first step was to stop eating chicken. I was never a chicken lover, so that was easy. In the next week, I stopped eating pork. I have always hated bacon, but I loved salami, ham, and prosciutto. It was hard to stop eating pork, but not impossible. Finally, I had to stop eating beef. I’m Brazilian, and Brazil is the world’s leading exporter of beef. Every Sunday, my family would host a barbecue in our house, so I knew that cutting out beef would be challenging.
I knew that I had to be patient throughout this journey and take my time so that it wouldn't feel like an obligation to me. It took me three weeks until I completely stopped eating beef, and I allowed myself to take this long. I kept repeating to myself that slow progress is still progress.
After I stopped eating beef, the only type of meat left was fish. I knew that this would be the hardest part because I have always loved seafood and used to eat sushi at least once a week. Every week, my mother and I would reunite together and go to our favourite restaurant or order in Japanese food. It was more than just a meal, it was our mother and daughter tradition, our moment. I spent some weeks trying to stop eating sushi, but it was hard to stop completely. I tried to convince myself that it was okay to eat sushi once a month or so, but a sense of guilt was always around me.
I spent more than a year without eating meat, and after some months, it became easier. Nowadays, many vegetarian meals can reproduce the meat flavour, which surely helps anyone who’s trying to become vegetarian now.
The hardest part for me was to be the only vegetarian in my family. I have a huge family, and everyone is obsessed with meat. I felt like a weirdo. During the holidays or special dates, everyone would eat the same food, except for me. On my sister’s birthday, she decided to celebrate at a famous French restaurant that served only one type of meal. It was an entrecôte (a French word for a beefsteak cut from between the ribs) and French fries. I had to eat at home before we went to the restaurant. When we arrived, I told the waiter that I was vegetarian and thankfully he was nice enough to give me a plate of fries for free.
Travelling was also a nightmare. My family and I went to New York in 2018, and they wanted to try typical American food and go to steakhouses, leaving me without many choices. Being a vegetarian, one thing I found is that many restaurants add one basic meatless meal to their menu, usually mac and cheese or some mushroom-based meal, so they can say they have vegetarian options. Even though I love pasta and started to tolerate mushrooms, they quickly lose their appeal when you have to eat them all the time.
I moved to the city of Toronto in the Summer of 2019. It was my first time living all by myself and having to do all of my chores. It was only then that I realized how hard it is to cook vegetarian meals. When I was in Brazil, my mother would always help me with my food, or even cook for me. I didn’t know how to cook that well, I only knew the basics, and it is way easier for me to prepare a non-vegetarian meal.
Most people will disagree with me here because it’s very simple to prepare a salad – of course, anyone can do that. But I don’t like salad, and I needed protein, soy protein. Besides not having a lot of experience in the kitchen, I also didn’t have a lot of free time, and it can take more than an hour to prepare soy protein. I still had to do my chores, attend my college classes and work on my assignments, so I started to get too overwhelmed and decided to go back to eating meat.
In the beginning, when I started to eat meat again, it felt strange. I felt like I was doing something wrong. It didn’t even taste as good as I remembered because I was feeling guilty again. When I enjoyed a meat-based meal, I felt guilty for liking it, even though I had always found that non-vegetarian meals tasted better.
It took me a few months to try to accept that I can be a meat lover and an animal lover at the same time. I realized that I don’t need to push myself too hard and that by spending one day a week without eating meat I am already helping animals and the environment. Once again, I had to remind myself that slow progress is still progress. I love beef, and seafood will always be my favourite type of food. I also love animals, I love my dog, and it’s okay to like eating meat too. That doesn't make me a bad person or a hypocrite. I realized that I don’t need to change and force myself to be something that I’m not. After all, I need to do what works better for me, and not feel guilty about my diet.
Julia Alevato is a Humber journalism student from Brazil. She loves to write, read, travel, and learn new things and languages. She came to Canada in 2019 to pursue her dream to live abroad.
Image: Patsy Wisniewski, Tomatoes, coloured pencils on sketching paper, 2021.
Edited for publication by Lorissa Davis, as part of the Creative Book Publishing Program.
HLR Spotlight is a collaboration between the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Innovative Learning at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario. This project is funded by Humber’s Office of Research & Innovation.