Jim here... Recently, a commenter on this blog, Lannette, mentioned being a cardiac rehab nurse. For some reason, reading this set my wheels spinning in various directions, among them onto the topic of meat consumption in the world. To begin, I'd like to recap something I'd said in response to her:

... it *astounds* me how people joke about heart health where I work. People around here routinely return from medical exams and actually adopt rather mischievous grins when they reveal how high their bad cholesterol levels are. It's like they're saying, "I know meat and dairy are bad for me, but I'm going to keep on eating it anyway. Isn't that funny ??!!!" Ummm, no. It's sad. They laugh it off as though there could be no possible future reckoning for them. It's reminiscent, IMHO, of Dr. Viktor Frankl's book "Man's Search for Meaning," in which he describes a psychological phenomenon he termed the "delusion of reprieve." For anyone unfamiliar w/ that, the term describes the phenomenon via which those faced with certain death (or near certain death) mentally construct some way out of it. They are deluded into believing that they'll have a reprieve from the inevitable. So, it's exactly the same to me -- these people see the heart attacks coming. They simply refuse to do anything about it, refuse to change their habits, deny what their blood work says to them. Why? Because they think "I'll be okay. Sure, this leads to heart disease in most people, but not in *me* because I'm a strong guy, I'm macho, I'm not as fat as some other person here, etc." Mostly, it's the meat, I think. It's got a powerful hold on our society...

So, today I wanted to write a little bit on the topic of meat consumption. This is an enormous issue, in my opinion. If you're reading this, it likely means you're already at least a vegetarian, so I do not need to quote you any saddening statistics on the horrors of the meat industry. In fact, before writing this, I decided to visit the PETA web site quickly in order to glean a few slaughterhouse facts. But, in no time, I became markedly depressed, so I'll largely avoid focusing on specific negative imagery here.

Meat consumption is particularly interesting to me because there are two major arguments against the practice: one scientific, one ethical. You can abstain from ingesting animal flesh because, for example, you understand the conclusions within The China Study (a famous study that clearly links meat and dairy consumption with chronic disease), or because you simply do not believe that humans should take the lives of animals (or for both of these reasons).

The only real argument supporting meat consumption, in my opinion, is simply that it's pleasurable; it tastes good (to, it's fair to say, a majority of people). Oh, sure, many tout the whole protein angle -- which is scientifically incorrect -- but, at the end of the day, I think they eat it because it's an agreeable sensation. I mean, people also "know" that tofu is packed with protein, yet the tofu industry pales in comparison to the beef industry, right? People rarely gather round barbecue pits salivating over tofu, dreaming of that first tender bite.

What's the recipe for this predicament? Well, you take something almost universally regarded as delicious (the cooked end product), couple it with "the system" -- the billions of promotional dollars and an extremely long and deep history of advertising, lobbying, government subsidies, etc. -- then swirl in the cultural addiction we have to it (which is reinforced by parents worldwide who have been previously programmed via the aforementioned system starting with family traditions, holiday traditions, social traditions, school lunch programs in our youth, fast food restaurants in our teens, the FDA's flawed food nutrition pyramid in their adulthood, etc.) coupled with the bizarre psychological disconnect that exists between the food on your plate and the previously living animal itself, and you wind up with an enormous super-size disaster that leads to widespread cardio-vascular disease, agricultural pollution nightmares, rampant deforestation, and, sadly, the puzzlingly least-cited aspect of them all -- the suffering experienced by millions of animals worldwide on a daily basis. All for our pleasure.

I should note that, within the general category of "raw foodists," there are numerous subsets. Among these are those that consume raw meats and/or unpasteurized dairy products. Here at Pure Jeevan, just for the record, we're all pretty much on the same page in terms of our beliefs on this issue -- which is to say that we espouse a raw vegan lifestyle in particular and, furthermore, that our reasons for such include both the scientific as well as the ethical reasons mentioned.

Well, that's how I feel now, anyway. I wasn't always like this, though. Here are the stages I went through:

1. Meat eater, by default. This lasted 19 years without any introspection whatsoever. You could fairly categorize me as following the Standard American Diet during this span -- the fast food cheeseburger being my near daily specialty.

2. Meat eater, but by choice. This is distinct from the prior category because, having met Wendi (the first vegetarian I'd ever met), I realized that not every person on the planet consumed meat. This lasted about another 19 years, though the amount of meat decreased steadily over time and, over the last several years of this span, tapered off to almost nothing.

3. Predominantly vegetarian. This overlaps with the prior category a good bit (many years). I included it mostly to show a transition period. Meat eating was usually relegated to work-related dinners and things like that at which steak or chicken would be served. I did still like the taste, and occasionally binged on various things like chicken wings. Looking back, I liked those things mostly for the texture and/or the sauces with which they were served. But, again, I would often go for months at a time as strictly vegetarian during these years.

4. Largely vegan. Again, this overlaps quite a bit with the prior stage.

5. Predominantly raw vegan. After Wendi switched to raw, I very slowly followed her down this road. Well, I very slowly followed her after a period of a few months or so during which I thought she was crazy. So, let's pause a bit before the final stage...

Do you remember Evel Knievel? Sometimes I view raw foodies as Evel reincarnates. This is especially true if you've made all of the "jumps" described above. Maybe you've "crashed" a few times along the way. Maybe you tried, for example, to go from being a vegetarian to a vegan, but found yourself sitting in a pizza parlor one day. Hey, that's okay. Evel crashed many, many times during his career. I'm fairly certain the man broke nearly every bone in his body at one point or another.

But, if the jump between vegetarian and vegan is equivalent to Evel jumping a bunch of Greyhound buses, then the jump between cooked and raw is like Evel's infamous Snake River Canyon jump; it's a major chasm. This reminds me of that old saying about making bold moves. It goes something like, "Don't be afraid to make big changes; you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps."

Even Evel Knievel didn't make it across. If you recall the infamous attempt, his parachute opened early, and he fell short of his goal. He lived, of course. But, he never made it across that chasm.

Chasm jumps are tough! This is why we have web sites like Pure Jeevan's blog. This is why we have the All Raw Directory. This is why online raw communities are so important. Of course, no one can make that jump for you. But, they can support you, inspire you, and serve as a resource for information. And in time, you hit that final major stage:

6. Raw vegan. Where I'm at now.

I would say there are sub-stages, as well, such as when you learn about various nuances or sub-types within the raw world. You might, for example, be drawn to a particular type of raw diet (e.g., 80-10-10, Rainbow Green, etc.). Recalling this, I'm reminded of David Rainoshek's ideas on the "Spectrum of Diet" as he described in Kevin Gianni's Rawkathon last year. I remember thinking, "Wow, I went through pretty much all of those stages he described!"

Okay, back to the topic du jour: meat. As I was implying above, meat was, for me, an enormous chasm. When I met Wendi 20+ years ago, I'd never encountered anyone who didn't like meat. I do recall one time, in my youth, actively thinking about what meat was, though only momentarily. I'd been at the dinner table with some farmers once when they began talking about the specific cow we were eating. The experience always struck me as uncomfortable, though I never really plumbed the depths of it for more than a few minutes.

I compartmentalized it, I suppose. I mean, I was never a hunter, as some of my friends were. So, I think a certain aversion to killing was always present in me. Yet, I remained able to not think about the slaughterhouse while eating meat for so long. On some shallow level, I'm sure I would have admitted that I wasn't crazy about the idea of animals being killed for me. But, what can I say, for whatever reason, I never felt it to my core.

And then I went raw. Tough to explain that... I simply went 100% raw on September 18, 2008. I leaped across that chasm, and some other personal chasms of my life, on pure faith. And, soon after that, all sorts of strange things began to happen to me. Most notably, I began to be able to experience feelings that, looking back, maybe cooked foods had held deep within me my entire life. After all, I'd been with Wendi, a lifelong vegetarian, for 20 years by then. It would be painfully ridiculous to suggest that, during those two decades, she had never expressed to me her feelings on meat eating, including her numerous objections to the practice. Of course she did.

But, again, something had changed inside me. And, as it concerns meat, I began to experience various tangible/scientific and ethereal/philosophical considerations as though for the first time ever. I'd set out to be raw, without having developed any particular conscious aversion or stance against ingesting flesh. But, unconsciously, it had emerged. It took only exposure to the right words to seal it into my psyche. I recall the date, as well.

It was just past one month into my raw existence -- October 19, 2008. I was viewing Dr. Gabriel Cousens on Kevin's Rawkathon program. He spoke of the last moments of a cow's life, how fear overcomes the animal in its final moments, causing its brain to produce chemicals that saturate its flesh like a desperate adrenaline rush. Whether I'd heard and/or considered that before, I couldn't say. But, it sunk it. I had no cooked insulators in my body any longer to hide the truth any longer. I remember thinking, "Oh my god. When we eat flesh, we're literally eating fear."

You could say I'm thinking in metaphor, above, or that I'm anthropomorphizing. But, I meant all of that quite literally. For some time after that, I thought of how today's society (esp. post-9-11) uses fear to its advantage, how fear is a marketing device. I wondered if there could be a link to meat -- hundreds of millions of people worldwide literally consuming fear each day. I felt a real sense of compassion, wisdom, and understanding settle upon me that day. I don't think I've yet attempted to distill it into language, but that's at least the beginning of it.

Anyway, so that's one guy's story (told as briefly as I could) of a 38-year transition from meat eater to ethical vegan. What are your stories of this particular transition