Cows
- Kimberly Winters
- Jul 8
- 2 min read
Yesterday, I had a brief conversation with a friend about cows. And, it got me thinking.
For as long as I can remember, cows were my favorite animal. As a girl, when all of my other friends were claiming dolphins as their favorite, I was going on about cows. My first 2 jobs were at card stores and I quickly became obsessed with collecting Mary Moo Moos. The wallpaper on my computer at college was a cow.
I absolutely loved these gentle giants. Their big gorgeous eyes and sweet faces made me melt. Yet, most days I was consuming things that had come from the bodies of cows. Of these animals I spoke so lovingly about. How I dreamed that one day I could pet a cow, only to eat a cheeseburger at my next meal.
It wasn't until 2001 when I went vegetarian (you can read a quick recount of my story in an earlier blog here) that I began to question how and why I was able to do that. It was quite a few years before I found out that someone had actually studied that very thing and had coined a term for It - Carnism.
Here Is a brief (7 minute) video from Dr. Melanie Joy discussing It.
Dr. Joy has a full hour long talk on this, if that interests you. You can find them on YouTube.
If you are vegan, I'd love to hear about that moment for you, when you started questioning things that led you to veganism. If you're not vegan, tell me about a time where you took a hard look at something you were doing and thought "what the heck am I doing?" and then changed.
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As I mentioned in another post, I'm not vegan, but I have paid more attention to how animals are treated than in the past. I have given up on cow's milk -- but I will admit that we do eat more eggs for protein and versatility.
I love your heart for animals. I'm not a vegan, but I do feel conflicted about eating meat. I'm trying to make more of an effort to make more meatless meals.
Two posts on Cows in a row! I love your story. Now I need to look up what Mary Moo Moos are! XO
This is such an important post Kimberly and Dr. Joy's video is great! Thank you for sharing it! As a vegan for over 8 years, this all seems obvious to me now. It didn't hit me until I was looking at vegan and whole-food plant-based eating for health reasons. As I was changing my diet a part of me started to feel wrong for eating animals. After two years of wanting to be vegan, I followed my heart and so grateful I did! Looking back it feels like such a contradiction. As we always talk about, we don't know what we don't know, but when we do we can do better. 💚