Secret: Vegetarianism Really Isn't A Big Deal. At All.

No, seriously, it isn't.

Why such a simple statement from me? Well, it seems every time I talk to someone about being vegetarian, if they're not being assholes about it, then I usually get a response similar to "I would  go vegetarian, but it's so hard.  I mean, NO meat? No way, I love hamburgers/chicken/steak/etc. And how do you get protein  and blah blah etc."

Now I seem like I'm making fun of people who say these things, and I'll admit that I pretty much am. Because now I find that ridiculous. And I'll talk more about that later. But now, I feel like I need to confess: I used to think that way too.

There seems to be this perception that simply stopping eating meat is this monumental hurdle to scale - some massive life event where it's survival of the fittest...or something. In general, going vegetarian is seen as both difficult and a BIG DEAL.

But really...it's not. At all. Oh sure, it'll seem like it the first few months. You're so used to eating meat that all you think about when eating is trying to avoid  meat. I was a little paranoid - I started to fear eating out, because a little nagging voice at the back of my head was saying "But what if they used chicken stock in the sauce?!?" for pretty much everything I ate. At that point, vegetarianism seems like it's about what you can't  eat.

But the truth is, vegetarianism quickly becomes about what you can  eat. The amount of diversity in my diet multiplied exponentially when I stopped looking at meat and seafood as default meals. I gained appreciations for unique and interesting foods. I tried things that, before, I wouldn't have even looked at, because then I would have simply eaten a simple meat/fish dish.

And here's the thing: Eventually, you easily forget that you're a vegetarian. I have gone through weeks where I don't even think about what I'm eating, and the only time that my mind registers the fact that "Oh yeah, I don't eat meat or fish" was when I started absentmindedly skimming the steak section of a menu.

And you don't worry about what you're eating. What people just need to recognize is that there's nothing difficult intrinsically about going vegetarian - the difficulty comes from other people. People thinking they can insult you for your choice, "helpful" people insisting that "you'll never get enough protein blah blah", school cafeterias that seem to think meat, not grain, is at the bottom of the food pyramid. And if, like me, you're a child who decides to be the only vegetarian in a meat-eating family, you'll most likely have to deal with some initially unsupportive parents. (Don't worry, they get better. Because soon they, too, realize that your diet is not a BIG DEAL.)

But really, there is the simple truth: Unless you have economic circumstances which inhibit access to good foods (and I know that many people do), vegetarianism is really a very simple, and small, deal.