Adi Braun-week 2

After week 2 I find myself more convinced of the vegan diet. The deeper we go into the readings and discussions in class the more I come to realize that food is political. It's exciting to learn these things about food that I had never know or thought to even look up. I find myself encouraged to eat the way I do, excluding meat from my diet, the more I learn about the benefits of doing so. My picky eating may actually be benefiting me although my whole life I've been told that my picky eating is hurting my health. Its cool to realize that I have lowered my ecological footprint by being a picky eater. I've never understood why being a vegetarian/vegan is a good thing, why  people are so devoted to it. Now I get it. Just our presentation on nutrition convinced me that eating dairy and meat is not the best way to eat. I couldn't believe how bad it is for you and how my entire life I've been picked on for excluding these foods from my diet. It's crazy how our culture's idea of health is so skewed. How did this happen and why? Don't we want to be healthy and live long? Yet we're driving ourselves to unhealthiness by eating the food we do.
The hog article we read really opened my eyes to what's going on in the world of food. Although I don't like meat, I see everyone around me eating it and have never really thought about where it was coming from. Most of my family lives on farms in Montana and my best friend's dad owns a small slaughter house. From growing up knowing these people, I thought that animals for food are killed in somewhat of a humane way. I never realized that not everyone does this and huge corporations are ruining everything around them and forming a destructive path through our nation and our food. This information encourages me to stay away products and be more conscious about my food decisions.
As for the food in class, I'm really enjoying it. It's funny that people in the class keep commenting on my picky eating and asking if I like the food. I try to explain that this isn't the kind of food I don't like. I eat food like this regularly. The food I don't like is the average American diet: meat, cheese, and whole milk. I'm the person who hates Thanksgiving dinner because I don't like any of the traditional food served. It's funny because I'm basically the involuntary vegan. I never knew I was benefiting my body and the earth by eating this way, and I'm very pleased to find out that I actually am.