Do you think about your food before or while you eat it?

I think a lot about my food before I eat it, as I often make it.
I do think about the taste and how it looks whilst eating too. But what you just described doesn’t happen to me. For example, if I’m making prawns ( shrimps ) it won’t put me off seeing their eyes or shelling them before I cook them. To me, it’s just food.

Sometimes it freaks me out if I think about it. I have vegetarians in my family who don’t eat meat because of humane reasons, amd so I often here conversations or am aware of people being unhappy with the idea of people eating other animals.

It is very common for young people especially to be upset by the idea of eating animals once they discover that the chicken fingers they are eating was once a chicken. In modern day many many kids and adults can dissasociate themselves from the reality, because everything is already cut up and in packages at the market.

People who live on farms and who hunt are more in touch with the reality of it. For them seeing the eyes of the animal, or eating fish that is whole rather than fileted is less traumatic. Not that it isntraumatic for everyone, that is kind of a overblown word in most instances, but I am not sure what otherbword to use.

Eewww, I can’t eat anything if the eyes are still there!! I try to not think about where my food came from while I’m eating, and a dish that still has the head, the eyes, any of that….. <shudder>!!!

When I was little my mother handed me some potatoes and told me to take out the eyes. I cried and cried until she took them away from me. I thought they really were eyes, and it traumatized me. True story.

I have similar issues with lobster, and still prefer to just get a lobster tail rather than a whole lobster, so I won’t have to see its eyes. I remember getting a shrimp with its head still on it… it was ‘hiding’ in a big pile of steamed shrimp, and it freaked me out!

I’ve accepted the fact that I’m eating animals, at this point in my life, but it still does cause me some guilt sometimes.

I think it’s important to think about where the food we eat comes from. I want to remember that a steak was once a cow, and a slice of bacon was once a pig.

Yes, I do think about my food. Just made some french bread, spinach dip and bean salad with some pineapple OJ. No eyes on my snack plate, it’s all good.

I think about it before, during, after, and I even think about one food while I’m busy eating another.

I don’t give a fuck if there are eyeballs, ball balls (you know), or pinballs on my plate. I’m going to try the shit before I dismiss it out of hand simply based on how it looks.

i’ve known many a taste in my life that was pretty to look at but hell on the palate

Yes, that is why I became a vegetarian. When I was in my early twenties, after struggling with this situation for many years, I realized that I could not reconcile my feelings of compassion towards animals (living beings) with my desire to eat tasty food. I pretty much became a vegetarian, cold turkey, no pun intended.

Back then it was much harder, because there were not a lot of decent vegetarian options, most people were not vegetarians, and people looked at me like I was crazy or pitiful, or even that I might have an eating disorder (they thought that because I refused to eat certain animal foods, that I must be anorexic, which is/was far from the truth).

Also, during that time, although I had a rudimentary knowledge of cooking, I was not a cook in any sense of the word. I knew that I was going to have to do a lot of research to find out what were the best things for me to eat, to maintain a healthy diet (and not succumb to the “Cheetos Diet” which is technically vegetarian, but very unhealthy for anyone).

Then I decided that I needed to learn how to cook, because going out to eat, at that time, was almost impossible to find a decent vegetarian meal (this was in the early 80’s) and I knew that my relatives were not going to accomodate me, mostly because it simply didn’t occur to them, and secondly because they were totally unfamiliar with how to achieve a wholesome vegetarian meal, and because they knew that almost no one else in my family was going to “put up with this foolishness.”

Over the years, I have become a pretty good cook. I’ve scoured magazines, like Vegetarian Times, and clipped vegetarian recipes from Cooking Light, Sunset and Better Homes & Gardens and Martha Stewart Living. I’ve created my own recipe archive in a notebook and online.

I’ve learned to create meals from vegetarian items, that normal people will eat. Therefore, I’ve become rather popular at my family and work potlucks. Everyone assumes that I will bring something yummy. I love to cook and I love to eat, yummy springs from that.

My best friend, who is about 10 years younger than me easily embraced and switched to a vegetarian lifestyle very quickly. Her boyfriend, who is from my generation was a dyed in the wool meat and potatoes kind of guy for the first 35 years of his life and the first 2 years of dating my best friend. He kind of pooh poohed our vegetarian lifestyle/diet as kind of a nuisance. But one day, he and my best friend were driving on the freeway and there was an accident. A car had collided with a truck that was carrying ducks to the Asian restaurants in Los Angeles. There were cages of ducks strewn all over the road, and many of the ducks, who’s cages had been broken apart had been hit by other cars and killed. They were stopped and tried to help. There was nothing they could do. It was at that moment, that my friend’s boyfriend had an emotional ephiphany and he decided right there on the spot to become a vegetarian. That was ten years ago and he’s never looked back. It was a little harder for him, because he is a pretty picky eater, and being a male, he is regularly given grief from his male friends and relatives.

I don’t expect that in my lifetime, that most people will choose to adopt a vegetarian diet. I am not the type of person to preach my beliefs to anyone. I only give measured answers when questioned. I know that I am going to continue to live in a world where most people eat animals and consider vegetarians to be, if not a little bit weird, to be fully “out there.”

I also don’t try to be one of those people who preach to other people what is right. I only know what is right for me, and I try to do what is best and compassionate, and that sometimes means tolerating what everybody else is used to.

I love to cook and feed people and care for people, and care for animals and help to alleviate their suffering. I hope that with my knowledge of cooking and good food, I can convince some people that eating vegetarian food is not only compassionate, it is healthy and tasty too.

Thanksgiving dinner my house.

I think about the healthy and non-healthy aspects of food. I avoid filling my stomach 100% full at any time. I try to eat whole grains and several servings of fruit and vegetables a day along with adequate protein and water intake. And to make sure that I get enough calories I eat a little junk food too.

I don’t think I ever ate anything that had eyes. At least, not at the time of eating it. I don’t really think about my food when eating it though. And when I do, it’s usually slight concern towards my person. Like today I had a hamburger, but the meat seemed a little too red inside the patty. Seemed not thoroughly cooked. I ate it anyways, I mean it tasted fine, but I was like, I better not get sick from this.

@ratboy Holy crap. O_O And being cooked over bumfires, at that. O_o

I won’t allow eyes or feet on my plate. I don’t eat anything which has a smell that I do not like. I prefer to eat foods that are prepared at home. I am happy to not eat out—I think it’s a risk every single time. It can’t always be avoided. Luckily my fella feels pretty much the same way. Other than this, no, I don’t think too much about my food. :)