After 10 years of vegetarianism, I ate meat again. It was disgusting and glorious

If you had asked me in my teens what my ideal dinner would be, it would have been a juicy steak, cooked medium to well done. Or maybe lamb chops and mint sauce, or a tender, slow-cooked beef stew. And I liked the occasional late-night McDonald’s chicken nugget. So I never expected that casually picking up a book about factory farming at the age of 23, while visiting a friend abroad, would turn me off meat so intensely that I would vow to be a vegetarian for the rest of my life to be.

Tonight the book by Jonathan Safran Foer Eating animals – an excellent investigative read on the extremely ugly business of mass meat production – turned my brain inside out and I couldn’t believe I had been so ignorant all this time.

I had always thought that you had to be an animal lover, or fundamentally against the idea of ​​people eating animals, to be a vegetarian. Yet I realized that it was the horrible way the animals were raised and killed, plus the pollution it caused to the planet, that disturbed me so much. I knew that if I lived on an organic farm and could eat the cows and lambs from the field, I would feel fine eating meat again, but this fantasy was far removed from my daily life in the city, that was dominated by the supermarket. So I was done with meat. Forever.

Well, not quite forever. For ten years I avoided meat, and I found it quite easy. I just didn’t want meat anymore, and couldn’t understand how anyone would do that. I ate lots of vegetables, legumes and sometimes meat substitutes like Quorn, thinking these fake meats were packed with protein and healthier than their meaty counterparts. The only thing I found difficult at times was that I felt uncomfortable going to friends or family (especially my Polish grandmother for whom vegetarianism was a cardinal sin) – before I would have eaten everything, and now I had to admit that I wouldn’t do could stomach the roast they had planned.

Then, the day after my grandmother’s funeral in the summer of 2022, as my family gathered around a campfire to roast pork sausages and share memories of her, I realized that I really wanted to eat a sausage.

I think it had to do with the sadness mixed with memories of all the meat she cooked for me as a child, plus a growing realization that I might be lacking iron and protein in my diet. And then the feeling grew that meat substitutes might not be so healthy after all.

Yes, a lot of red meat is not good for your health, but that certainly also applies to the highly processed meat alternatives, with their high sodium content and artificial colorings. The downsides of ultra-processed foods have received increasing attention in recent years, and it’s hard not to see many meat alternatives falling into this camp. I started to see that vegetarianism wasn’t a black and white case of always being healthier.

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I am far from the only one who has switched to meat again after a long time. Actor Martin Freeman this week, who said on the Dish podcast that he is done with vegetarianism after four decades. The 52 year old Sherlock Star said he stopped eating meat as a teenager because he “never felt comfortable” eating animals, but has now changed his mind after concerns that meat substitutes are “very highly processed”.

I wonder how Freeman will continue living as a meat eater after abstaining from it for most of his life. For me, even after just ten years, eating meat was a mixed bag.

The high-quality Polish sausage from a nearby farm was delicious, but I couldn’t immediately go back to a carnivorous life. A few months later I had my mother cook an organic roast lamb, and although the taste and smell were almost overwhelmingly grim at first, after a while I was able to enjoy small bites. A steak made me sick and gave me stomach upset for a day – too much for my stomach – but I also found the cutting of the meat and the bloody juice a bit much psychologically.

During a stop at a gas station on the way to a weekend getaway, I wondered if this wasn’t the time for a nostalgic chicken nugget, but when I stood at the counter I found the idea unpleasant, and I still do now. In general, it was strange to eat meat, and if I thought about it for a moment, I was terribly aware that I was chewing through an animal and mainly adhered to the safety of plants.

And since my decision, I’ve been ecstatically slurping down a lot of meaty meals – mostly ones that I know have high-quality meat, although a few pepperoni pizzas too – and a steak every few months is now a treat.

I admire people who stick to vegetarianism, I’m not proud that I’ve abandoned it, and I don’t think I’m now eating meat in the most climate- and animal-friendly way. But the balance I’ve tried to achieve is that when I buy meat to cook at home, like a chicken breast, it’s organic and of the highest quality as I can afford. Because I go for the best products I can find, I don’t end up buying much because I don’t rake in as much money as Jeff Bezos.

I still cook vegetarian most evenings. It has also meant that when I eat out, I will sometimes show my carnivorous side if the mood strikes. Since this switch – which I now realized that it sometimes gave me a stomach ache – I have not had any meat substitutes and I don’t miss them for a moment anymore.

Ultimately, it can be difficult to find the perfect balance between eating good for yourself, for the planet, and for the animals at every meal. Instead, I’ve made peace with everything in moderation, for better or worse, and I feel healthier overall for it. I have no problem with my mishmash of logic when it comes to my food choices, and at least I know my grandma will look down on me happily as I enjoy that stew tonight.