Growing up on a farm, slaughtering rabbits and chickens was routine and cows and sheep seasonal. But when I was around 12 I actually looked at us and what we were doing, I couldn’t help but think it was wrong. I remember the exact moment, holding a headless chicken that I was about to put through the plucker and thinking “This was just alive, I fed it and felt it’s feathers and now it’s dead and disgusting and it will never be alive again.” In junior high, I started researching the environmental benefits (mostly for school reports) and finally took the plunge into vegetarianism. After I stopped eating meat, I lost a lot of weight and started to see some of the health benefits but it wasn’t until after college that I actually started eating a HEALTHY vegetarian diet. Growing up, we ate a lot of meat, at every meal and I do still want that comfort food feeling. So sometimes I do make (or buy, less frequently) meat substitutes like burgers and chicken patties. But mainly I make do with things like the “ham” and beans I made the other day:
http://corgipants.blogspot.com/2010/02/weight-loss-wednesday.html

Now that I know there is something called Fib Ribs I need to try them!!

I think its awesome that you are challenging yourself to be a vegetarian for a week! Plus it’s great to learn all this information you are sharing. I have to say I’m not a HUGE believer about a vegetarian necessarily being a healthy diet. I know studies have shown that people who are vegan are more likely to be healthy, but don’t you think that the type of person who would CHOOSE to be vegan may also be more concerned about their health than say…the guy who buys mcdonalds 3 days a week? I think if you picked people who were truly concerned about their health and healthy eaters and measured them against each other, you may not see such a big difference. Does that make sense? I don’t eat red meat really ever, but I think my occasional chicken and relatively frequent fish habit is probably more healthy than unhealthy, for me anyway. That being said, there are certainly environmental concerns and concerns for the animals that I can definitely see. Thanks for teaching us all about this!