31-Day Food Revolution by Ocean Robbins

Author:Ocean Robbins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2019-02-04T16:00:00+00:00

MY BITE OF STEAK

My dad, who’d raised me as a vegetarian and who always encouraged me to respect animals and to cherish their right to life, was increasingly concerned about my fanaticism.

One day, he told me that he had a request—and he knew it might be hard for me.

I had no idea what was coming next. I imagined that maybe my dad wanted me to join in his daily yoga practice, starting at the crack of dawn.

But it was worse. A lot worse.

He wanted to take me out to dinner at one of the fanciest steakhouses in town. It sat on top of an 18-story building. The waiters dressed in suits, and the ambience was elegant. My dad planned to order me a grass-fed filet mignon.

He explained that he wanted to give me a better sense of connection to the masses of humanity for whom meat was a part of life. And since he’d raised me as a vegetarian, he also felt it was important for me to be the author of my own choices rather than blindly following in his footsteps.

I felt horrified. I think I might have been happier if my dad had asked me to sleep on a bed of nails.

Now, keep in mind that my dad was someone who would become one of the world’s leading spokespeople for a more humane world. He was a passionate vegetarian. What he was requesting of me had to be incredibly hard for him. But it was also born of a deep conviction that this would help me develop in important ways—while perhaps salvaging what was left of my social life.

When the fateful night came, and my order of steak arrived, I looked at it with disgust. “Meat is murder,” I fumed.

My dad smiled patiently. “It’s true,” he said, “that every piece of meat is the flesh of an animal that once drew breath from the same source as we do. I’m glad you recognize that, and I hope that you never forget it. But if you want to connect with people, you need to understand their viewpoint. And most people, when they look at meat, see food—and a highly desirable one, at that. All I ask is that you take a single bite. If you take one bite, I’ll be satisfied, and won’t ever ask you to do this again.”

So I did. And as repulsed as I was to be eating the flesh of a sentient animal, I had to admit that the taste was pretty… interesting.

I didn’t finish that steak. I didn’t even take another bite. My dad asked the server to bring me some pasta. But something had changed in my life.

I had challenged my belief system in which there were sharp lines of right and wrong, good and bad, dark and light. And after that moment, slowly but surely, my judgment and sense of moral superiority faded away. I kept my deep conviction about respect for all life, which has persisted to this day. But I’d discovered that there’s a world of difference between dedication and dogmatism.

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