Fewer and fewer

Food has always been the centerpiece of my life. Be it eating at least 5-6 meals on a regular workday or planning beforehand what to eat and where on a holiday, I think of food even in crisis situations. As a pre-teen, when I got stuck in a lift all by myself after pressing the wrong button/s in a moving elevator, while nearly reliving the scenes from the first half of the 1994 action film “Speed,” the first thought that struck me was what I was going to eat, and drink, as I shouted for help (mobile phones weren’t as popular in those times as now).

Growing up, much to my parents’ embarrassment (especially dad’s), I put them in situations where, at all-you-can-eat buffet restaurants, he felt tempted to sit away from me and pretend not to know me considering the way I piled my plate with food, especially meat. Gorging like that had its perks. The staff of some of the restaurants I frequented began recognizing me. Not that I was looking for any recognition for this seemingly easily achievable feat anyway.

Stuffing my face a few times a week for years on end had its obvious downsides too besides just my growing waistline. At one point, as a teenager, it wasn’t only difficult for me to tie my shoelaces, but every time I used stairs at my parents’ house, I was out of breath. And it was only after more than just some medical advice (including from my mom), did I change course.

Lately, after having eaten meat almost every day, sometimes twice a day, for over 30 years, I have begun cutting down on my animal protein intake. Given my love of animals of all kinds, in addition to reading up on how cruelly most of them are treated before parts of them end up on our local supermarket shelves, it was easy to cut eating meat drastically.

According to a report, meat consumption has been steadily declining in the US — by 10% per capita since 2007. In 2014, the US raised and killed 9.5 billion land animals for food, but 400 million (almost 4%) were saved simply because people skipped a few meaty meals.

And while the Bengali in me still loves his staple fish and the pescatarian diet, and while I may still eat meat when I explore a new country and its food culture through its own lens, going ahead, I mean to use fewer and fewer animal products – SD