remembering the happy meat

Its taken a while to eliminate a lot of my old habits but I have noticed over the last 6 months or so that my unconscious brain has moved over into accepting full happy meat consciousness. I now remember to search out the vegetarian dishes when Im dining out; no proscuittto on my pizzas, no chicken in my past sauce, no prawns, not a lot of fish. Its taken a while to accept this as I am definitely a meat lover by nature but i just cant do it anymore. Not from a happy meat point of view or a human population health point of view. Its happy meat or its the vegetarian option. Actually if I was a vegetarian it would have been alot easier to remember; the full monty would be with you always. So i have found that the trick is to pick the right place for anticipated failure. Japanese is good, so is Italian and Indian, well Thai too. All the eating out vegetarian options are really tasty if they dont do happy meals. As a meat eater, doing veg when Im out has been very very difficult but its really just taken a shift in how i think about it. No longer do i go 'nooo' carbonara is what i want! i reframe from 'Im missing out' to 'i can do this', be Big and do the right thing and retrain my brain to think it can all be delicious without the meat. Anchovies have been known to save me from despair!

As I have become more diliget about it, the BBQ chicken pizza loving B1 has been known to object, not taking to it to well (especially when olives are present to ruin the WHOLE thing) but she is coping and she understands the reasons. It sounds fanatical , I cant quite believe Im 'one of them', Im usually all for putting the stomach first but Im finding that harder and harder to do as my knowledge has increased over the years. Ive been good for a long time on buying happy meat for home consumption but eating out has always been my downfall. So what's next for me is to start asking if the chicken/pork is free range or if there is a free range option when Im out. I have resisted this tactic as i know damn well its not, but its like the whole smoking in public places thing. If people didnt start asking to sit in non-smoking sections in restaurants, societies attitudes would have taken a lot longer to change. You have to market the idea, one individual at a time and at all points of sale, not just the butcher. Remember life before real vegetarian options? A pineapple ring, a half a canned peach and some ricotta cheese set in the abyss. That used to be the veetarian dining out alternative. It had to start somewhere. Self as one-woman happy meat consciousness raising and marketing campaign.
Sigh. Then there's the unhappy cheese on the pizza...no wonder we dont eat out often!

I came across this blog postyesterday, its easy to read and informative so I thought a cross post would be simplest( my brain is otherwise occupied). or you can cut straight to the Farmacology article here. Anyone out there still eating intensively farmed meat? Thinking about switiching? Why? Why not?