America's Effort, Individual Change, Uncategorized

Update on Pescetarian Diet

The Pescetarian Diet:Image result for pescetarian diet

In my last post I talked about how I was going to try the pescetarian diet. If you don’t remember, the pescetarian diet is when you are pretty much a vegetation but you still eat seafood for the omega 3’s. For the entire month of February I tried new recipes and stayed true to my values. I am going to be honest… I had one slip up. It was after a late night outing, one of of my friends made pizza rolls. I ate two pizza rolls which contained meat. I wasn’t all there in my head but I am sad that that was the only factor that caused me not to be meat free. I am happy to say that  I enjoyed the diet and will continue to follow through with it.

There are two things that I think I might try but I’m not sure yet. I might want to have meat once a month in case I want to go back to my normal ways. Going vegetation could mess up your digestive system if you go without meat for a certain amount of time and then all of sudden try to bring it back. Your digestive system gets used to not having meat. I have also heard of a weekday vegetation. Image result for eating less meatThis means during the week you continue to follow through with not eating meat but on the weekends you are allowed to have meat. This still follows my same values. You are still helping the environment, you are reducing your meat consumption, and it is a lot more healthier than eating meat everyday. It is something I am going to think of. One top of that, I still do enjoy some meals that contain meat. That is why with the weekday veggie or once a month meat eater, you can still enjoy that. I also don’t like to be an inconvenience for people. Not everyone provides a veggie option.

Somethings I learned while trying to go pescetarian:

It is not as hard as you think. When you do try it, make sure you don’t have any meat in your house because it could cause some temptations. Talk to people who support and talk about the struggles. I have also found out that it is not the meat that I love so much.

Image result for eating less meat

It is the seasoning. There is a substitute for almost everything. All you need to do is find a substitute for the meat or meal you are making and add that same seasonings. It also always taste very similar if not better in my opinion.

One example that I can think of is tacos. I love tacos but I can’t eat ground beef. A way I found to make this work was to use beans instead of meat. I am not talking about deep fried beans but actual beans like pinto or black beans. I then added tacos seasoning to the beans and a little bit a lemon and it was amazing! Of course I had cheese and tomatoes as well! Literally, I enjoy the tacos just as much as I did before and feel a little bit better about it as well. You just have to be creative.Image result for beans

I have also tried a lot of new fish recipes. I have never had fish until I came to college. My mom doesn’t like it so it wasn’t something that was never cooked in my house. I have actually have  grown a real love for fish and have now cooked it often.

One struggle I had was when the weather was nice, my friends had a cook out. They grilled up hamburgers. The hamburgers smelled and looked so good. I held my ground and didn’t have one although I wanted one. Later I found a substitute for hamburgers although I have not tried it yet. I am excited to see how that turns out.

I still challenge you to try the pescetarian diet, you might actually really enjoy it and it might change your life!! Good luck!

Individual Change

Changing your Diet Could Help the Environment

We have all heard of vegans and vegetarian, correct? Well their diet is actually really beneficial to the environment (along with pescetarian diet which I will get to later)! Let me tell you why…

One pound of beef requires 2,500 gallons of water, whereas one pound of soy requires only 250 gallons of water. Also a pound of wheat requires only 25 gallons. Cutting meat from your diet saves water. That’s not all… Image result for beef requires alot of water

Deforestation (cutting down trees) happens because of the need to create space to raise livestock. 1/3 of the planet’s land is used for livestock and the demand is only rising!

Image result for 1/3 of planet used for livestock

Not only that, but you have to think of the food that these livestock eat! That means we need more food to feed these animals and more land to grow the food! An ecologist from Cornell says,”If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the United States were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million.” On top of that the grains and corn that are wastefully fed to the livestock in the United States, when it could instead be fed to the 60 million human beings who die of starvation every year all over the world.

Finally, the livestock in the Unites States also creates A LOT of waste and toxic emission! Livestock only raised for slaughter produce 130 times the excrement of the entire human population! That’s a lot of shi…poop!

Basically, it takes a lot of land and food to produce meat. Not only that but in the process, a lot of toxic emission is added to the environment! Plant based diets really do help. That’s I am going to try the diet pescetarian, which is basically a vegetarian expect you get to eat sea food. The reason for that is you need your omega 3 acids. This is a bigger change to my life but I can’t say no until I have tried it. I will make another post about how I felt about it and my thoughts. I challenge you to try one of these three diets, you might actually like it!

These are the foods that you can still eat on the pescatarion diet but can’t on the vegan or veggie!