How to Eat Meat (a Step-by-Step Guide)

Step 1: Exit the womb

(you laugh, but skip this step and you will fail miserably)

Step 2: Suck on a boob

Your mom’s preferably

Learn what mammal milk is for. You’ll forget later

Step 3: Learn to eat with silverware

Your parents might make some weird airplane noises 

as they circle the spoon towards your mouth

Eat anyway

Step 4: Feel the pressure of your incisors 

breaking through your gums

Endure

You’ll forget the pain later

Step 5: One day the airplane will carry death to your mouth

You will not know

Your parents will still be smiling and making silly noises

Chew anyway

Step 6: You will be handed stuffed representations

of cows or pigs or sheep

- the same animals you will be unknowingly fed -

Feel their softness, carry them everywhere

Learn love

You’ll forget later

Step 6: Your parents will teach you the noises

every barnyard animal makes

Learn to distinguish their voices

You’ll forget to listen later

Step 7: Years later, you will learn where meat comes from

Cry. Feel your compassion

You’ll forget to feel later

Step 8: Listen to the soft reasoning of your parents

as they tell you about the circle of life,

or your need for protein,

or how it will make you big and strong

Step 9: Become a better reasoner than you were as a child

Step 10 (Optional): Watch videos of our food system

Discover the reality kept so deliberately hidden

Cry

Wait a couple days, or a couple hours, or a couple minutes

Depending on how quickly you have learned to forget

Step 11: Continue to chew on their bodies

Resign yourself that “humans need meat to live”

Step 12: Meet someone who doesn’t eat animals

Ask where they get their protein

When they say plants, laugh

Or call them extreme

Do not let your belief in necessity be swayed by evidence

Step 13: Ignore the suffering

Ignore the environmental impact

Ignore the cholesterol

Just focus on the fleeting taste in your mouth

That will disappear not much later

Written January 12, 2026