'For a Nebraskan, going vegetarian means going against the grain
With friends and family in the land of Omaha steaks, it's hard to
explain that you're no longer a carnivore.
By Brad Dickson, Special to The Times
February 18, 2008
FIVE years ago I made the most difficult, painful decision of
my life. I converted from a carnivore to a vegetarian.
A bit of back story. I moved to L.A. in 1992 after growing up
in Nebraska, where beef is sacrosanct. Enough Nebraskans
are consumed with meat that gristle is classified as a vegetable.
They eat pork rinds for dessert. To succumb to "mad cow"
disease is considered a natural death. There's a steakhouse in
Omaha that serves a 32-ounce noontime T-Bone. In pre-meal
rituals, restaurant diners swallow enormous cheese- and
lard-laden bovine hunks half their body weight and call them
"appetizers."
Let me put it this way: There's one Whole Foods store in all
of Nebraska, and when I'm back, I never have trouble finding
a parking spot.
It wasn't easy telling my Cornhusker relatives, several of
whom still farm, that I'd gone vegetarian. They'd have been
less disgusted if I had joined the Taliban.
Even now when I'm visiting, my mother speaks to relatives
in hushed tones. "You know he's a vegetarian." (Said with
the same inflection as the word "communist" in the '50s.)
The vegetarian contempt is rooted in the fact that at one time
eastern Nebraska was proud home to the Omaha stockyards,
second only to Chicago as the nation's largest. Many locals
come from families that earn their livelihoods from
meatpacking and related activities. Omaha Steaks employs
thousands. If enough Americans turn vegetarian, there will be
an ill wind blowing across the local economy. You wanna
talk recession. . . .
Thus the decision to stop eating meat wasn't easy. I made the
switch after I read several books by cardiologist Dr. Dean
Ornish and took to heart his argument that vegetarianism wards
off coronary artery disease, an illness that runs in my family. I
have avoided statins out of my natural bias toward holistic
health practices. Already a runner and on-and-off health fanatic,
I embraced a dietary sea change that led me to permanently just
say no to beef.
The good news is that, according to some experts, I'm adding
years to my life. The bad news is five years later I still miss
meat so much I sometimes park outside Sizzler and watch
people leaving with doggy bags, tempted to swap my car for
half a gnawed-on chicken-fried steak.
But mostly I have an overall feeling of well-being. My running
times have improved since I'm essentially doing carbo loading
every day. I wake up clear-headed and feeling like I'm 15 years
old, and that's not bad -- to feel 15, only with some money in
the bank and a rudimentary knowledge of how the world works.
To paraphrase Thomas Wolfe, I just don't go home often. But
when I do, I'm greeted by some wonderfully warm, ingratiating
people who think that gristle is a vegetable.
Brad Dickson is a former writer for "The Tonight Show With
Jay Leno" and co-author of "Race You to the Fountain of Youth."
http://www.latimes.com/features/heal...ck=1&cset=true