Recently, I started pursuing a lifestyle that allowed me to be as indecisive as my little heart desired: flexitarianism. See, the thing is, I am the type of person that all those relationship memes describe. You know, the ones where the two cannot come to a conclusion on the plan.
Partner 1: “What do you wanna do?”
Partner 2: “I don’t know, what do you want to do?”
Partner 1: “I don’t care, what did you have in mind?”
*phrases repeat for some time with just enough change in wording, tone and inflection to be considered a conversation rather than a model repeat exercise in a language class.*
This decision-making deficit can impact one’s quality of living, but I have made no progress towards changing and opportunities that make it easier to maintain my anti-deciding ways keep presenting themselves to me. One of these opportunities is the lifestyle of being Flexitarian; it is relatively new to the health and wellness scene.
Here’s my story:
As she sat, with horrible posture, in Liberty Dining Hall, Maddy was giving a detailed account to a friend of what she had consumed in the last few days. It was a Wednesday and, as she was sharing, she realized that she had not eaten any meat since Sunday and, just as surprising, had consumed a large quantity of milk chocolate. Overlooking the latter, Maddy’s friend, who is vegetarian, asked why. It turned out that Maddy was not avoiding meat, but just enjoyed the other options in the dining hall more that week. With that, Maddy’s friend gave her a “vegetarian score” of 4. Being competitive, she could not except this 4 and asked for ways to achieve a 10 on this completely subjective, arbitrary scale of vegetarianism. It was explained that a perfect score would be awarded if she could make it until Saturday being meat-free. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!
*flash-forward to Saturday*
Maddy made it to Saturday without eating any meat and felt no regret and admitted that with all the options on campus, it was not difficult! Without any concrete reasoning or motives, Maddy declared to be Flexitarian and only eat meat on weekends! With this declaration, Maddy’s friend said “That’s one small step for Maddy and one slightly larger half-step for the vegetarian community!”
Basically, Flexitarian is a semi-vegetarian diet that consists mostly of fruits, vegetables, legumes and carbs (and my favorite food group desserts) and limited meat consumption. The ins and outs of the “diet” gained popularity after Jamie Oliver encouraged people to participate in “Meat Free Monday” as a way to explore all the variety of fruits and vegetables.
Despite the cool title that comes along with this lifestyle, the Flexitarian diet studies have shown that chances of diabetes, cancer and heart disease decrease. Additionally, being Flexitarian improves the planet; livestock production and the meat consumption industry produce large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions (less meat in diet = less meat produced = less bad gas emitted). Hold on to that double cheeseburger stacked high with bacon, chicken critters and sausage crumble (I’m not sure if this type of hamburger exists, but I know multiple people who travel to China to eat it) because if you’re Flexitarian you can enjoy the tasty carnivore diet of lions AND the, equally tasty, herbivore diet of a gentle antelope.
