I’ve been a vegetarian for over 20 years. I wish I could offer some magnanimous reason for not eating meat but I’m afraid it boils down to being so grossed out by the raw chicken I worked with during my 2 year stint at Bolton Dining Hall (UGA) that I haven’t been able to eat anything processed in a packing plant ever since.

I was a Student Manager for the dinner shift and one of my many roles was to check-in the 20,000+ chicken breasts that arrived each week. About 3 chickens into the first shipment I made the decision to stop eating food that had been touched by human hands…the chicken wasn’t the problem, it was all the filth and human grim that came with the birds. Of course the cleanliness of the dorm kitchen kaboshed that plan so I switched my conviction to include fried foods that were too hot to be touched and things I had washed with bleach in the laundry room sink. I dropped 10 pounds in my first two weeks of school.

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