Valentine's Day brought the sweet taste of meat back to me. You sick freak. I know what you were thinking, but alas the meat I write of is a Swenson's Galley Boy. For the sad fools who have never known the pleasure of a Galley Boy, it's an Akron delicacy: two patties of burger goodness topped off with the finest special sauce known to man. Normally, even a Galley Boy wouldn't have made me this loopy. But it ended a three-and-a-half week stretch of vegetarianism, the longest I've ever gone without consuming meat. I didn't go vegetarian because of my love for animals or for health reasons. In fact, I don't particularly like animals. I would enjoy life much more if all the cats, bats, and ferrets were slaughtered. My health actually deteriorated during my experiment. At one point, I was so weak I passed out in the library. I went vegetarian to see how the other side lives. A few friends are vegetarians, and I'm puzzled every time one of them orders a Big Mac without meat. You're at the top of the food chain for a reason, I tell them, so put those sharp teeth to use. Their adamance and the appearance of animal rights activists on my radio show drove me to the other team. The animal right folks were from Protecting Our Earth's Treasures, an umbrella group of Ohio State's Students for Animal Rights. POET and SAR are involved in activities like fighting animal testing on campus. According to the SAR Web site, 651 dogs, 106 primates, 215 cats, 490 pigs, 642 rabbits, 32,612 mice and rats, and 467 hamsters and guinea pigs were used in experiments here in 1996. Most would argue that animal testing has produced many medical breakthroughs for humans, so in the scheme of things the death of an animal is minimal. These activists contend many of these experiments have little medical value, and the extent of the slaughter is sickening. OSU's Chair of Animal Sciences, David Zartman, said last week in the Lantern, "To have everyone be a vegetarian makes no economic or nutritional sense." On the show, POET said the opposite. They believe the planet would be better served if everyone gave up meat. According to the Vegetarian Pages Web site, if the U.S. reduced its meat intake by ten percent, 100 million people could be fed using the land freed from grazing animals. Three times more fossil fuels are needed to produce a meat-centered diet than a meat-free one. Some 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared for crop land to produce meat. The reasons to go vegetarian are compelling. Practicing it can be a little trickier. With our prominent agriculture campus and the headquarters of several burger chains in town, not eating meat doesn't seem suited for Columbus. In reality, the campus area is home to several vegetarian restaurants. King Avenue Coffee House is the best, with spring rolls made with the meat substitute seitan that are incredible. On High Street, the Aardvark Cafe on the campus strip and Whole World in Clintonville are also good. Despite the presence of these places, Cowtown is undoubtedly a beef town. The meat-gorged mug of Dave Thomas is seen around the area in a manner not much different from the display of Sadaam Hussein's picture in Baghdad. And as Zartman's quote suggests, there's no love for vegetarians on the agriculture campus. So the temptation of meat always hung above my tofu delight. It was an old girlfriend's visit that sent me over the edge. When I told her over the phone about my conversion, she responded with insults. "Vegetarians are pussies," she said. "Real men eat meat." When she got to town, I couldn't let her down. It may not be a prerequisite for being a real man to eat meat, but why put it to chance? Besides, that burger was damn tasty.
Nathan Crabbe is a junior from Akron who thinks that Dave Thomas probably tastes like a Big Bacon Classic. His talk show can be heard online at 7 p.m. at kbux.ohio-state.edu/real.htm.
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