OK. I'm gonna tell you something, but you've got to promise not to laugh. I just became a vegetarian. It's not a spiritual or moral thing, or me showing a more sensitive side. It's not a plea to save the animals, or the enviroment, or to stop world hunger, either. It's not that they are bad reasons, in fact they're a motivating factor for this decision of mine.

I've got a few vegetarian friends. I used to pick on them, saying "Humans are built to be omnivores," or worse, "If we're not supposed to eat meat, then how come this steak tastes so goddamned good?" Well, someone convinced me to give it a shot. I was planning on being kind of half-hearted about the whole thing, and eventually lapse back into eating meat.

I had all these preconceptions about vegetarians being treehugging wimps who couldn't handle the thought of an animal dying to feed them. I thought it couldn't possibly be as healthy as eating vegetables and meat. And, after all, aren't these animals bred specifically to feed us? I realized that I had opinions, but no evidence to back it up. I was ignorant on the matter. So, I read into it.

I read that it takes 17 pounds of edible plant material to produce one pound of meat. Meaning, if everyone were a vegetarian, we'd have 17 times the amount of food to eat, which would practically solve the world hunger problem on it's own. Not that I expect that to happen. I'm a realist, not a moron. I also read that 40% of South American rainforests have been destroyed in order to make pastures for cattle, and that 400 million acres of topsoil are lost each year due to erosion solely from livestock pastures. That's a lot of land lost forever, just for some fucking burgers.

I also found out that although we have the teeth of animals that ought to be omnivores, we don't have the digestive tract to match. Carnivorous and omnivorous animals typically have a short digestive tract, so that meat is expelled before it has the chance to putrify and release toxins into the blood stream. Well, as it turns out, we have a rather long digestive tract, which is intended to slowly absorb nutrients as food passes through the body, a system ordinarily found animals with strictly vegetarian diets.

But what got me the most was a list of famous vegetarians. Of course, it listed a lot of celebrities who are vegetarian, like Moby and Alicia Silverstone. It also listed a lot of people I wouldn't expect, such as Weird "Al" Yankovich, Hank Aaron, and Michael Jackson. I don't idolize celebrities. My idols are long dead: Socrates, Buddha, Da Vinci, the people we should really look up to. Well, guess who's names were on the list? Yup. All of the above. Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Thomas Edison, too. Virtually all of the minds that I respect the most were on the list of vegetarians. There has got to be something to that.

So, I'm going to give it a serious try. So far, it's been pretty easy. I hardly ever ate beef to begin with, except for an occasional hamburger. I never cared much for pork. I will definitely miss seafood, shrimp in particular, although it was a pretty occasional thing for me anyway. Chicken is going to the hardest, since it's always kind of been a staple for me.

Hehe...that's two things I've quit in a month. What's next?