Save the world. Go vegan.

I taught my body to digest meat in my 20's. It turns out that if you aren't fed animal proteins in meat as a kid, your body doesn't produce certain enzymes for doing the job. Meaning, the second I tried a hamburger, my intestines went into emergency evacuation mode and my "adventure" turned gnarly, pronto. 

I took this as a personal failing due to my religiously motivated upbringing as a vegetarian. Seventh-day Adventism had screwed me out of the enjoyment of travel through cuisine and I was upset. And motivated.

Bone broths and digestive enzyme supplements took over my home after college. I was willing to do whatever it took to reboot my poor, ethically vegetarianized guts. Slowly, my body began to accept meats without violent retaliation.

And then I started practicing yoga daily. In and of itself, this would have only supported my meat-quest, but like the questioner I am, I started delving into the philosophy behind the physical movement. For eating meat, this was the first of two silver bullets.

Ahimsa is a concept in yoga that teaches us to be nonviolent. The first and most obvious lifestyle choice this would encourage would be vegetarianism. This was hard. I wanted to be enlightened REAL BAD, but it was starting to look like I was being relegated to yoga as simple physical exercise because I didn't want to give up sausage. Lame.

But then my taste for meat began to shift. What once seemed like a sublime indulgence, say, chicken friend steak, began to sound nauseating.

Part of me was confused, part grateful. If I didn't WANT to eat meat, it would be much simpler to adopt a nonviolent eating strategy like vegetarianism.

But the other part of me wondered, "How the hell can I get the nutrients I need WITHOUT eating meat?"

And then I watched a documentary, Cowspiracy that details the immense environmental impact the meat and dairy industry have, particularly on greenhouse gasses. The footnotes detail that the single largest choice we can make to reduce greenhouse gasses is to go vegetarian or better yet, vegan.

Now, I've been ethically motivated to do things most of my life, but this was blowing my mind. The thought that not eating meat and dairy was more positively impacting the environment that my electric car, my recycled clothes and my energy efficient home lit a fuse in me.

And when I did more research into a balanced vegan diet and saw how many raw and organic options were available, it became clear. If I really want to save the world, I know what I need to do.

Kiss the cows goodbye and embrace the yoga lifestyle wholeheartedly.

My consolation for all that gut work, is that in a pinch, I'll be able to get by on bacon and steak exclusively without intestinal protest. You know, if and when the Cascadia Fault line goes and the only thing available to eat is canned animals.