In Which Vegetarianism Is Considered As an Important Life Decision

I have been toying with the notion of vegetarianism for a few years now.  I am not ready to take the plunge, and even thinking about it is not something I approach lightly.  There is rabid anti-vegetarianism in my family.  My mother once told me and my siblings that the only unacceptable significant others we could ever present to her would be religious types or vegetarians.  A vegetarian Jehovah's Witness  daughter-in-law would probably make her face melt. 

I can only guess as to the basis for my mom's anti-vegetarianism.  As far as I know she was never beat up by a vegetarian when she was a little girl, or molested by a vegan uncle, or some other past trauma.  I think that the likeliest explanation is a kind of reaction to what she sees as an aggressive form of hippy feel-goodery.  A bunch of tree-hugging idiots telling her not to eat some furry little animals?  FORGET IT!  I should point out, lest you get the wrong opinion of her, that my mom is a Baby Boomer, and marched on Washington against the Vietnam War; if there is a side of the Culture War that she is on, it is firmly the left.  Nonetheless, she is definitely a proponent of a kind of rampant consumerism, so a lifestyle philosophy that involves not buying and consuming something delicious is completely anathema to her.  The added bit of extremely dismissive, derisive vitriol that she holds for it… that's just my mom.

Pissing off my mom is, of course, part of what appeals to me about the idea of being a vegetarian, but it mostly acts as a deterrent, which is to be expected—I have always been "a good kid," after all.  When I try to take my family history out of the equation, the answer becomes no less murky.  If I were to make a list of pros and cons… actually, I think I will make a list right now. 

PROS AND CONS OF VEGETARIANISM

PROS: 

• Sustainability: factory farming of animals as it exists today is not sustainable and is terrible for the environment. 
• Healthiness: assuming you do it right, vegetarianism is just healthier, plain and simple. 
• Animal Rights, &c.: I wrote this down because it is an issue for many people, but I have crossed it out because it is not so much of an issue for me. I am not in favor of torturing animals, and I do believe that we can raise our food more humanely.  However, I don't think animals have an inherent right not to be our food, and in the end there is no way to raise an animal just to kill it whilst giving it all the rights you might ideally like to.  I'm okay with that. 

CONS: 

• Deliciousness: I like the taste and texture of meat.  Simple as that. 
• Dietary Changes: being a vegetarian means taking a little more care about the scope of your diet, lest you forget to eat important sources of protein, vitamins D, B2, B12, and iron. 
• Availability: meat is everywhere. Vegetarians are more prevalent than they used to be, so more and more restaurants offer vegetarian options, but it is often a very small part of the menu.  Also, if you go to someone's place for dinner, you are placing an extra burden (however small it might actually be) on their ability to provide for you. 

That's all I can think of off the top of my head, but I am sure there are many, many more points to be made both for and against.  Those are the many things that concern me, though, at least for now.  Sometimes that list of cons seems small and petty compared to the list of pros, but sometimes the thought of implementing such a dramatic change in lifestyle seems overwhelming.  And the pro that is most important to me, sustainability, seems like something that I alone cannot fix, even though I know that is self-serving logic designed to absolve me of responsibility.  And the farming of many non-meat products, particularly grains and corn, is done in a profoundly unsustainable way, which means the best way to eat, environmentally-speaking, is to eat exclusively organic food, which is both difficult and expensive, adding more cons to the list. 

I'm not sure what I will do, when all is said and done.  I am not on a time limit, so far as I know, and I am capable of choosing one path and then changing my mind should it not work.  Maybe I will be a vegetarian some day and stay that way for the rest of my life, or maybe I will vacillate for years, or maybe I will never be a vegetarian.  I'm not sure it's a debate that is likely to get truly settled by the rest of the human population, so in the end it has to be a fairly personal decision, and at that moment I have some chicken marinating in the refrigerator.