From the beginning of October through the beginning of November, I chose to give up meat and become vegetarian. I thought it would be challenging because, as a busy student, I stop by a drive-thru and just grab a cheeseburger; my parents also make a lot of dinners that include meat.

The first couple of days were more difficult than I had anticipated due to the fact that I didn’t realize how much meat I was actually eating each day. I found myself automatically ordering things off menus that included meat and then having to reorder something that didn’t. I found that as the days wore on, I was getting into a routine of simply not thinking about eating meat as a meal. Until one day when my mom made my favorite dinner which included chicken, and all I could say was “ I can’t eat that.” But as I started eating my own meatless dinner I found that I didn’t care all that much that I didn’t get to eat it.

I realized that I had been eating much more meat than I had expected and that the majority of my meals were meat. The average American eats more than 200 hundred pounds of meat each year, which is twice the global average. There are many more things to eat such as vegetables, fruits, and grains that most Americans do not eat enough of.

Now that I have found that cutting out meat completely isn’t as bad as it seems, I plan to reduce my meat intake. I don’t plan to remove meat from my food groups, but I will try to make sure that I am also eating things from other food groups as well.

So ask yourself: How much meat do you eat? Are there other things that you could or should be eating as well?