None of us exist in a vacuum

This article is the latest in a series of articles that I’ve read or stories I’ve been told (my friend went fishing with his friend, who is a fisherman. They caught a fish and my friend says, “You can’t sell that fish, it’s sick.” And his friend says, “all the fish are sick. I sell fish sicker than this all the time.”)  that stop me and make me really see that we are all interconnected, that nothing stands alone in this world and that our actions ripple out and affect everything.

The descriptions in this article, of the absence of bird calls, of the interminable mire of floating garbage, of fishermen trawling reefs of everything living make me really stop and think about my food choices. Last night, I made fish tacos and they were delicious. But if the oceans are dead, and much other meat we get in this country so polluted, the current trend towards veganism begins to make so much more sense to me. I was a vegetarian for ten years and have been a rapacious meat-eater for the past ten but over the past few months, I keep coming back to the idea that maybe, right now, with the environment clogged with chemicals, meat stuffed with antibiotics and fed who knows what and the oceans and rivers and streams dying, perhaps it is time to change what and how I eat.

The obvious reason would be, if the fish that I can get are indeed sick (and farmed fish are dirtier than anything) and I am working my way out of a long bout with chronic Lyme, why would I eat it? As a nutritionist once told me, what I eat literally becomes me on a molecular level so eating polluted food just adds another layer of crud for my immune system to deal with. There is this: choosing not to eat animals or animal products for my own personal health. And there is recognizing that, in changing my choices, I change my impact on the world around me. 

I'm not sure what I am going to do; I used to believe that I could eat consciously raised meat infrequently and not negatively affect the environment but reading "The Ocean is Broken" hit home for me more than anything else that we are nearing (or at) the breaking point. Over the past years, I have weeded out anything processed and moved towards mostly organic eating but we're long past that being enough now. Especially since Fukushima, I have been pretty careful about the fish I eat (nothing from the Pacific) but now I am going to stop eating it altogether. Food choice, I realize, is not enough alone, but it is a starting point and already, my perspective shifts.