Why I don’t eat meat

8 reasons to give up eating meat today

I was a meat eater all my life.

I was born and raised in Kazakhstan, where all Kazakh people are huge meat eaters, with horse meat being a traditional meat. Kazakh and Russian cultures were mixed in Kazakhstan in the course of history giving access to meat delicacies of Russian cuisine as well.

I came to Korea in 2013, to discover that Koreans are huge meat eaters too. Unlike Kazakhstan where pork is not so popular among Kazakh people since they are mostly Muslims, in Korea people show no mercy to poor piggies. Neither did I when I first arrived in Korea. Seduced by the new range of tastes, I went nuts for a meat-eating fiesta and in two weeks in Korea I gained 5 kilograms.

I was crazy about meat and consumed everything from famous Korean grilled pork in the restaurants to frozen processed burgers in the student dormitory. I can clearly remember, that whenever I ate those burgers I literally had nightmares. At that time, I was just starting to make correlations.

But I was studying. Since I was so interested in working out, I was doing my research on how to increase my performance as an athlete, and to my big surprise I found out that there are many athletes who were once meat eaters and switched to mostly plant-based diet, and increased their performance in the gym.

After many hours of reading and watching countless videos on YouTube, I told myself: “You are a goddamn experimentalist. Make an experiment. 30 days without meat. You are definitely not going to die because of this, and you can always return to eating meat if you want.” So, my experiment started on April 30, 2014.

I don’t eat meat since then. Now it has been about 3.5 years and I feel really well. Soon after I stopped eating meat, I started to see changes.

• The recovery time after my workouts decreased.
• My performance and my endurance increased. With a constant progression, I reached my goal of 200 kg deadlift in several months, with my body weight of 86 kg. It is not a high standard by any means, but that’s something for me.
• My meditations and my sleep improved significantly. My mind became calmer, I became more mindful, and my anxiety decreased. Overall, I reached a higher degree of inner peace, and that was a very satisfying result.
• I cut my expenses because meat dishes are usually more pricey than vegetarian dishes.

I kept educating myself and formulated all of the reasons in case someone is interested what those could be for a person who gave up consuming meat.

Here are my 8 reasons that keep me away from meat.

1. Spiritual reason.

After giving up meat your meditations skyrocket. Eating meat is “grounding” you. Without meat, it becomes much easier to reach the state of inner silence. Your meditative state becomes more stable and you can stay still for longer periods of time.

When you eat meat, you consume the fear and the anxiety of animal which it experienced prior to death. This is not some metaphysics, it is biophysics. The existence of biofields, so-called “aura” has been proven long time ago.

We have nerves that are essentially wires transferring electrical signals. Correspondingly, the presence of the electricity in our bodies implies the existence of electromagnetic fields, and even the exact mechanisms behind those fields are still not known well, there is no doubt that the flesh conserves some energy attached to it even after death of the brain and can affect humans’ internal states when it is consumed.

2. Health reason.

Eating meat is not healthy. Multiple types of research show that the meat consumption is associated with certain health risks. In particular, meat has to be found increasing bad cholesterol, which in its turn is directly related to a range of cardiovascular diseases.

Of course, people will be saying that eating meat in moderation has no harm, but we are humans, moderation was never our strongest trait, wasn’t it? I am having a hard time estimating the risks from smoking or drinking moderately.

3. Physical reason.

Meat is a very dense tissue, it takes a huge amount of energy to break it down. Energy in your body is finite, the same energy resources could be spent for regeneration, detoxification, and recovery after intense physical activity.

Plant-based meals are very easy to digest, and with wise planning, such diet can provide enough proteins for stable muscle growth. The recovery times after workouts get shorter, and stamina increases.

4. Physiological reason.

Everything is about hormones. When you have a juicy steak on your plate, do you know if it was a male or female? It might be an interesting topic for those who argue about the phytoestrogens in soy products, but don’t question the effect of animal estrogen which is much closer to human one.

Another side of the fun is that your body, specifically your stomach, increases acidity in order to break down the piece of meat. Dog’s stomach can increase the acidity of the stomach juice 5–6 fold, which allows it to dissolve bones. But we ain’t dogs, are we?

The acidic media is a media where all carcinogenic processes and pathogenic bacteria proliferate. So what keeps us more alkaline then? Good question. Plants.

5. Biological reason.

We are not predators. We don’t have claws, we don’t have fangs, we are not strong enough to kill an animal barehanded.

If you will look at the intestinal system of carnivores and omnivores, their intestines are 2–4 times the length of their body. Why is that so?

If you leave an apple on the ground it dries and even may grow into a tree, if you leave a piece of meat on the ground it rots. So what do you think happens to the meat if it stays inside you for long periods of time?

The intestinal system of a carnivore is designed to absorb all of the valuable nutrients from the meat and get rid of all of the toxic remains.

Humans intestines are 10–12 meters long, as one can imagine, it is a quite a journey for a piece of meat to do inside you.

6. Ecological reason.

It takes 10 kg of grain to grow 1 kg of meat. What is the resulted ecological footprint? How many people can you feed with 1 kg of meat? How about 1 kg of grain? You can do the math.

7. Ethical reason.

Did you watch “Earthlings”? That’s a movie to sober you up. Put a #mustwatch hashtag here.

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.

Paul McCartney

8. Taste evolution.

There is only one taste that is programmed into you by nature in the moment of your birth. Do you know what is this? Take a wild guess.

It is a taste of mother’s milk.

All of the other tastes are conditioned externally, and for the most part by society and cultural environment.

By the way, we are the only one species that consumes the milk of another species. Speaking about what is natural.

Another taste that comes very natural to us is a taste of fruits. When you eat these juicy fruits or berries, all your senses tell you that you do the right thing. When it hangs on the tree, its shape, its color — everything tells you: “Come and tear me off the tree!”. Your teeth are specifically designed to bite through the hard shell, and back teeth to mill the pulp.

Now, these are my 8 reasons.

I keep studying, and my understanding of the of the nutrition keeps evolving with me. I am convinced that the ultimate purpose of any human is health and longevity. Everything I know up to date tells me that the meat is not part of this equation. You don’t have to listen to me. This is just my opinion on the matter.

I hope it will inspire you to do your own research. Food is the closest way of the interaction between us and outside world. Knowledge makes life more complicated, but application easier. Educate yourself.

Peace!

❓ Do you have a question? Ask me! I answer daily on Quora.