I am a former vegetarian. I have also taken philosophy classes, although my opinions on meat eating are informed purely by my personal story. I would never tell anyone else what they should or should not eat, as I believe individual human bodies differ too widely for one dietary "prescription" to fit all...which goes for LC as well!

As an ovo-lacto vegetarian for nine years, I gained 25 pounds and my well-being deteriorated to the point where I was depressed and listless most of the time, and beset with all sorts of nagging aches and pains. I was constantly hungry and bad-tempered from wildly fluctuating blood sugar levels. Physically, I was miserable, and I felt totally out of control of my body.

I vegetarian-LC'ed for about one month in 1999, before giving up and putting meat back in my LC diet. I almost couldn't believe the difference in how I felt. My energy levels went up immensely. I no longer felt the constant hunger that I had even on LC before re-introducing meat. My aches and pains vanished literally overnight. I didn't like working with raw meat in my kitchen (still don't), and I really had to get used to eating meat again (I didn't keel over though). But despite my squeamishness, I could not and would not ignore the blatantly obvious benefits of including meat in my eating plan. Although I went off LC dieting after a few months, due to lack of support at home, I never went back to being a veggie. I just felt much, much better as an omnivore.

Believe me, I tried every vegetarian option I could think of to get my protein up without having to eat meat. And nothing worked as well, not by a long shot. The unpleasant truth is that, for whatever reason, eating meat appears to be GOOD FOR MY HEALTH. These days, my energy has returned to what it was in my pre-veg incarnation...small wonder, I observe wryly, since my diet has pretty much returned to what it was in those days, as well.

Now, in my opinion, there was one animal who was made to suffer greatly, perhaps even--in a sense--tortured, during my vegetarian period.

ME.

Am I not a sentient being who deserves to be relieved of pain? Or should I have stuck with the veggie diet? What would have been the morally correct thing for me to do?

Or in other words, how much diminution to the quality of my own life should I be required to accept, in the name of not causing pain to or killing animals?

Or, in perfectly plain English, how much should I be expected to martyr myself on behalf of livestock, in order to be a morally good person?

Emily