What would happen if you just stopped buying meat?

Not a carnivore, not a vegetarian, but a secret third thing.

“What would happen if you just called Taylor up?”

One of the many memetic gifts given to us by Keeping Up With the Kardashians (stay with me, here) was this question from Kris Jenner during the Kanye/Kim/Taylor Swift beef.¹

The question captured the familiar refrain of a parent’s well-meaning but naive advice—what if you just dropped off a paper resume and asked it to be handed to the hiring manager? What if you just emailed the CEO and asked for a meeting?

Like any meme, it took on a life of its own, but in context, Kris is right. If anyone could “just call Taylor up,” it would be Kim Kardashian. She could have behaved like an accountable adult (well, either could), but unfortunately, they didn’t, and now we have to hear that thanK you aIMee song.

I think about the contextual sentiment of that question when I’m resisting an apparent, but undesirable solution. What if I just did the obvious thing, even if it required some friction?

What would happen if you just… stopped buying meat?

The meat problem

Meat and dairy are killing the Earth.

I know what you’ll say: effective climate change mitigation must come from corporations and governments—the scale is beyond individual decisions and consumer habits blah blah blah. But that’s… not happening right now. And who is eating all this meat?

The problem with ecosystems is that everything is connected.

I will repeat what many of you know.

Global food systems are responsible for one-third of greenhouse gas emissions on Earth, with the meat and dairy industries accounting for much of it.

Forests, particularly in Brazil and Argentina, are being actively deforested for cattle grazing and monocultures of animal feed. Forests are massive carbon sinks, and when they are razed, carbon is released into the atmosphere. And the soil, no longer protected by root systems and native ground cover, literally blows or washes away. The soil quickly becomes overworked and untenable, and farmers push further into the forest to find more land.

Grazing cattle are tough on land—they need to be moved to new areas often, lest they overgraze. This method of livestock management isn’t cheap and is no longer common. For grain-fed cattle and livestock (most of the meat we eat), monocultured crops are grown to feed vast amounts of cattle, chicken, and pigs. Monoculture is the agricultural practice of planting fields with a single crop (in this case, corn, grain, and soy) every year. The issue with this style of farming is that these crops require huge amounts of “inputs”—synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. These are expensive for farmers and awful for the ecosystem. The fertilizers and pesticides weaken the soil microbiome, kill beneficial native insects and animals, infiltrate the water system, and sicken farmworkers.

Ecosystems are delicate, interdependent, and, when disrupted, prone to collapse.

On these monoculture farms, the soil is tilled and left bare in between plantings. Bare dirt is not healthy dirt. Soil erosion has knock-on effects. Eroded soil washes away, making climate change-induced flooding even more catastrophic. It also means that soil cannot hold onto rainfall, making irrigation more necessary, putting pressure on freshwater systems, and increasing the likelihood of crop failures.

Cattle and sheep emit methane as they digest, and their waste generates nitrous oxide. Sometimes their poop (and the fertilizers, pesticides, and antibiotics) flow into irrigated water, and then onto your Arizona-grown romaine, which gives you E. coli. If you’re elderly, or a child, or unlucky, the E. coli kills you.

Then, discarded meat, spoiled cheese, and forgotten bags of spinach are put into plastic bags, which are picked up from hundreds of millions of homes once or twice a week and taken to a landfill. There, the organics—the meat and uneaten vegetables—literally turn into methane, poisoning the soil, atmosphere, and neighboring communities.

All of this makes climate change worse. The wildfires, catastrophic floods, and the unbearable heat indexes—all for a burger patty.

And there, of course, are animal rights. The cruel breeding and suffering of intelligent animals that aren’t that unlike the domesticated pets that live in your home. On the surface, I don’t believe eating animals is morally wrong. But the vegans are right about the facts—factory farms and industrial meat processing facilities are hell on earth, to the sick and overcrowded animals and the disenfranchised workers who do the tough, bloody work of conveyor belt slaughter.

In the Global North, we have a responsibility (an imperative!) to change our appetite. This means fewer December strawberries and way, way less meat.

An idea

I understand firsthand how difficult, socially and practically, it can be not to eat meat.

Navigating a meat-focused meal at a dinner party and fielding comments at family barbeques is irritating at best and deflating at worst. You’ll find yourself loading up on carbs and eying bar nuts ravenously, maybe even going hungry at a wedding. As much as people complain about vegans, not eating meat is not normal, and it’s not always easy.

But what would happen if you just…. stopped buying meat? Just buying it.

Eat meat if it’s given to you. Someone orders a shrimp cocktail for the table, have one. Your mom makes an Easter ham, have a slice. The restaurant messes up and gives you a carnitas burrito instead of the bean and cheese you ordered, sure! It’s fine! This isn’t a purity test. But, don’t order it anymore and don’t buy it.

My version of this, as a 15-year vegetarian, is: what if I stopped buying dairy from the grocery store? What if I only bought eggs and dairy from purveyors who care about the lives of their livestock and the ecosystem that makes everything possible? What if I ate half as much dairy as I do now? What if I just called Taylor up?

Why, eventually, a label might help you

I’m a full-on vegetarian. I won’t eat the carnitas burrito if it ends up on my plate by accident. I haven’t digested meat in decades; it’s not the journey I want to go on, and, plus, I find meat disturbing. Not everyone will, not everyone should feel this way; it’s just that as time goes on, it’s very obviously flesh to me.²

I am a vegetarian, and I find the label important. It puts things in context for me and gives me an ethos for seeing and experiencing the world. It also helps me navigate menus, cookbooks, and recipe apps.

Not eating (or buying) meat is one part of a climate-informed diet and lifestyle. These ethics seep (how could they not?) into how I experience the rest of the world—how I burn fossil fuels, buy clothing, and navigate being a dairy eater while aware of everything above.

Being a vegetarian is why I compost, why I shop organic, and why I write this newsletter. Like the ecosystem we all care very much about—everything and everyone are connected. To take care of it, you might just have to call Taylor up.

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Next on Home Food, how to become a vegetarian, or maybe just a person who doesn’t buy meat.

1. hehe

2. I feel differently, for whatever reason, about fish. But overfishing and farmed fish have many of the same problems as other industrial meat production, so I don’t eat it in my day-to-day. I will eat locally caught seafood when traveling, especially when other vegetarian protein sources are scarce. One reason I will eat fish is that I think I could stomach catching a fish, deboning it, and cooking it myself. I do not feel that way about a chicken or a cow, and I think if you eat meat, you should feel like you could raise, hunt, or slaughter the animals you eat.