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To start this off, my decision to stop consuming meat has been rather haphazard. It all started when, in my dorm room this January, I was about to dig into a delectable and long awaited chicken taco salad as thoughts began to enter my head of whether this chicken was tortured before becoming my food....all of the horror stories I have read and seen from petitions I have signed against animal mistreatment by workers in chicken production warehouses for KFC, Church's Chicken, and Popeye's flashed through my mind. Needless to say, it was the worst (and last) chicken taco salad I have eaten. I didn't get through a quarter of it. As I threw it in the trash I felt remorseful for buying it, eating some, and also wasting my money.
Since that day, I have been committed to only eating properly treated, sustainably sourced meats.
I simply can't feel spiritually and morally okay by eating an animal that hadn’t been given a decent life to begin with, and most likely did not ever truly see the light of day. Some people may think I am being ridiculous, but I have decided to roll with it. In college, I am broke and responsibly sourced meats are expensive (other than canned Tuna), so I adopted the diet of a vegetarian. The less I eat meat…. The less I like it. This came blaringly apparent in Buenos Aires.
Fresh meat shops are very common here and Argentines love their meat. It is almost unheard of to be vegetarian, and very few restaurants have vegetarian options, but it is growing. I had meat a few times here in Argentina and it wasn’t bad or not good, I just rather would have not eaten it. For example, the milanesa I had my first day in Buenos Aires was good, my Dad would have been in a seventh heaven, but I felt heavy after eating it and the texture and flavor just wasn’t … satisfying. Additionally, the smell of freshly cut, raw meat is disgusting to say the least. Thus, I officially decided to stop eating meat. And hence began my quest to add protein to my diet without meat in a city where beans are almost unheard of. I have tried tofu (it was actually pretty lit), eaten more eggs and seeds than I usually do in the States, and relied on yogurt and lactose reduced milk to get my protein in. My diet is far from perfect, it is filled with sugar (Porteños know how to do sweet perfectly), but I am getting into a groove. Last week, I finally found a good (or finally took the time to shop at) a good organic store with various vegetarian and vegan protein options (rare for Buenos Aires). Located in Barrio Chino, they had it all: tofu, beans, black bean burgers, soy-based proteins, you name it. I ended up stocking up on vegetables, bought some seeds, and black bean burgers. With what I bought, I- for the first time ever- made fried rice. And praise God, it turned out AMAZING.