Vegetarian? Not exactly!
I don’t really like to categorize myself but when I say that I don’t eat meat I’m always asked:”Are you vegetarian?! “. So, in those situations, I’m forced to take a position and express myself.
But no, I’m not vegetarian.
I still eat fish and sometimes it can happen that I eat meat, especially when I’m traveling and people offer me their traditional meals. But I tend not to buy any dead animal at the supermarket and to eat fish only at some restaurants (so not that often 😛 )!
What it is behind my apparently weird position is the idea of reducing. I really believe that reduce is the magic word to change our impact on the environment and to change trade rules. I really appreciate people who strongly define themselves through something they really believe in (like vegetarians, vegans etc.), but it is not my case because the thing I strongly believe in is, as I said, reducing.
Reduce is a good path to increase our consciousness on our own environmental impact and it’s the perfect compromise that allow people to respect our world and, most importantly, to make people desiring to listen to your point of view without being too extreme.
In fact, I’ve noticed that strong polar positions can often create opposite polar positions. Some categorized positions happen to create a contrasting social reaction that it’s totally against the main purpose.  Indeed, it can affect the good intent of (for example) vegetarians or vegans to change the world in a better place and spread the knowledge of the importance of choosing what we eat.

So the “reducing position” is just the first easy step that everyone of us could do to start changing our world :). That’s because it is not too much restricted, and put you in the position to be more flexible in the eyes of the others, especially when communicating about your position.

Essentially my little and easy suggestions to start reducing our environmental impact are as follow:

• Try to eat less fish and meat. Give the market the signal that it is not needed to store all that quantity of meat that nowadays is produced.
• Increase legumes in your diet. Did you know that you can do an infinity quantity of recipes with them? They can be a perfect meat substitutes. (I will publish an Italian delicious recipe very soon, so stay tuned!  🙂 )
• If you are struggling reducing to eat meat, do the effort to buy local and from little farmer near you and not from intensive livestock farming (normally this is the kind of meat that we find in  supermarkets or in the butcher shops. However always ask your butcher where his meat comes from)
• If you are afraid not to get the right amount of protein, besides eating more beans, add the quinoa to your diet and eat it with soups, pasta, vegetables, and anything you want!
• And last but not least, add some seeds too like hemps, which are very rich in proteins and faster to digest. Try them in the morning with a yogurt (better if it is farm-to-table) or a porridge with some pieces of dark chocolate! 🙂 You’re gonna love it!

Un bacio

Simona!