A lot of people ask me “why did you decide to become a vegetarian?” Being vegetarian makes eating out a little more complicated, especially when friends opt for the BBQ Burger place or KFC. Your daily protein intake decreases, and you have to look for other alternatives. So why do I do it?

The way we eat has changed more in the past few decades than in all of human history. Corporations like to place an image of a pictureque farm on a lot of our food packaging, but the truth is that our food doesn’t come from a place anywhere close to that image.

Today, our meat is created in huge factories with assembly lines and conditions that you would probably work hard to get away from. Food, Inc. shows us up close and personal what we don’t want to see (the documentary is actually pretty objective – trust me, I’ve seen the bad ones). Who wants to eat animals that have been placed in inhumane conditions? No one.

But a lot of us do it anyway. We do it for a lot of reasons. Some people really don’t know what goes on behind the scenes. Some people don’t care. And some people can’t align their lifestyles to their beliefs.

For me, it’s a matter of integrity. I have to do what I believe. And the result of that has been two years of vegetarianism. Changing my lifestyle has never been difficult for me. That’s just who I am.

But how can other people change their lifestyle to match their beliefs? It doesn’t even have to be about food. It can be about exercise, about the way they get to work in the morning, or the time they spend in front of the TV. If we all did what we thought in our head was the right thing to do, a lot of things would change for the better. So why don’t we do it?