Since a while I have stopped eating meat. First I had to really think when I was doing groceries: so many foods I eat contain meat! The chicken bapao, the chicken teriyaki sandwich at Subway, the Hawaii pizza with ham.. Lot of chicken, but I can’t eat it anymore. At first that was difficult, cause you really have to think carefully about your options and you really have to take a few weeks to say goodbye to meat.

I especially noticed it when I was in the airport to go from Berlin back to Amsterdam. I was walking around on IFA all day, and I was tired and hungry, all I wanted was a hamburger. But obviously I can’t eat that. So I was standing in line at BurgerKing, thinking: hmm, there is not really something I would eat here. Their veggie patties must be horrible, as the process so much meat, so even though my turn was coming up, I stepped out of the queue, back to sandwichplace I passed on my hamburger-eyed way to BK.

Are sandwiches boring? Often they are, but for some reason this sandwichplace had fresh baked bread, mozzarella, tomato and pesto, so I was happy. I have been eating a lot of mozzarella and cheeses ever since I turned fully vegetarian, but that is okay. What I am extremely happy about though, is that I make healthier choices because of being veggie. I could have been eating a hamburger so chemical it would still be in great shape after one year in some sack in a corner, but now I chose fresh ingredients and a much lighter meal.

I never realised that that could happen. Even though sometimes it bums me out (especially when going out to dinner) that the choices for vegetarians are always so limited, I am pretty happy I don’t constipate my body with just fries and a huge steak. I am not judging people that do by the way, I am not lecturing people about being a vegetarian, and I would not, even if I was a vegetarian for ten years, but it has become very clear to me that being a vegetarian really is right for me.

Will I have a hard time when it is winter and I am making my favorite wintery Dutch dish which should include a smoked sausage? Yes! Will I nearly be crying out of wanting a piece of the Christmas turkey so badly? Yes! But I know what I am doing it for, I know that I will not be eating dead animals, I will be taking better care of my body that did not deal with meat very well and I expand my horizon by eating veggies I would normally not think of trying. The real challenge though, is in recognizing which dead animal products are used in candy, cheese et cetera, but for now I am just focussing on the meat, so at least I got that covered.