Phobia!

I feel it only fair to warn you that I have developed a phobia over the past several months. I have not only developed the phobia but am embracing it and even encouraging it in myself and my family. I have developed a fear of meat. I would not go so far as to say that I have gone vegetarian. Let us not get crazy!

Even though I stumbled upon the information concerning factory farming and the health implications some fifteen years ago, I consider that I lived in denial over all those years. It has only been in facing the consequences of my own health decisions and in teaching my children about health that I have begun to realize that we do not have the luxury of sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that all will be well. I do not need hundreds of pages of scientific study laid out before me to be able to determine that injecting animals intended for food full of antibiotics, hormones, and vaccines is not good for the product that ends up on our tables. Nor do I need someone to tell me that animals kept in confinement areas so small that they begin to kill and eat one another cannot possibly be at optimum health. Frankly, I do not care what acceptable agriculture practice is in place. If that practice does not meet the sniff test when it comes to good animal husbandry then it is, in my humble opinion, not a sound agricultural practice. For the record, in addition to not having become a vegetarian I have also not become a member of PETA or any crazy animal rights activist group.

I digress. Lost weight. That is what we have gained from the phobia. My husband has lost twenty five pounds. I have lost twelve.......without trying. At forty-seven any weight I can lose without trying is sheer perfection!