Okay, anybody who's been reading these posts for a while will notice that I've used this photo before. I'm sorry. I couldn't face putting in a bloody meat photo. Yuck. I decided to go with what I do like, carbs.
Photo aside, the first answer to this question people sometimes ask me is, I don't like it. Meat-loving people guess that I'm making a sacrifice for the good of the planet or for my health, but they've over-estimating my moral-physical goodness.
Anybody who's still reading might want a longer answer. Here it is. I became a pescatarian at age nine when I first arrived at Camp Thoreau-in-Vermont (an amazing place that no longer exists) when I found out that the food for vegetarians was better than the food for omnivores. When I heard that the cook, a vegetarian, used her favorite family recipes for the twenty-ish people who didn't want meat and made vast quantities of flavorless stew for those who did, I raised my hand to proclaim myself a vegetarian.
At our return home (My sister had also gone vegetarian at camp.), rather than encourage us to go back on the meat wagon, my dad joined us as a vegetarian. We pretty much stopped having any meat in our house.
Flash forward to when I was twenty-eight and pregnant with my first baby, I thought I should probably get more protein into my body to help her (I thought his, but that's a different story.) development. After all those years, I started eating meat again. I didn't get sick from it, but I didn't like most meats' texture or flavor. I could choke down plain chicken and I thought bacon was pretty yummy, but eating any other meats felt like work. I kept eating meat until I had my second daughter, three years, two months, and a day later. In the hospital, when I weighed in at 199.5 pounds, I decided that the bacon wasn't doing me any favors.
So I've been back to a pescatarian life for the past seventeen years.
Anybody else out there have a non-moral, non-health story about not eating meat? Or about other foods? I'd love to read your stories in the comments.