The vegan Beyond Burger is designed to simulate a 'real' hamburger, to the point where it 'bleeds' when you bite into it (thanks to a carefully designed beet content). The company that produces it points out that this burger is "so much like beef it's in the meat section of grocery stores". I'd heard of its legend from overseas, but it was only today, in San Francisco, that I got a chance to eat one for myself.

The experience was terrifying

I haven't eaten meat for over a year. I became vegan on the spot after I was shown, during a strong LSD-trip, how all conscious beings were sacred and unique and that we were committing a holocaust against animals. I was shown how, in years to come, we would come to reflect on this epoch as one of utter barbarism.

This last part of the message from the LSD was less impactful on me than the first. I could see quite clearly how animals were vividly conscious. And I could have been one of them, but all this animal holocaust stuff seemed a bit strong. Anyway: I became an instant vegan.

Now, a year later, I get the second part of the message.

It dawned on me when I bit into this vegan-meat Beyond Burger today.

Horror at first bite

It tasted exactly like a hamburger. "Great Scott!" I thought at first, "this is genius." Then a second later the flashbacks began: All those years I had participated in the killing of conscious animals. The mindless gluttony and pain. And for no other reason than everyone else was doing it. It was nutritionally purposeless since I have lived over a year without meat. The accurate taste of this burger threw me right back into the memories. What was I doing back then?

The full reality of it shook me: I was expressing my anger.

Anger drives the meat industry

We kill animals because we are angry and we pretend it is for food. I know because I did it too. Now I am not unconsciously angry; I no longer murder.

I fell to my knees and gagged.

If you've seen the documentary An Act of Killing, you will remember the scene when Anwar is taken back to the torture chamber where he killed his victims. For a moment, he is confident and indifferent, then suddenly he begins throwing up. He cannot escape the ghosts that haunt him, the true horror of what he has done transcends his petty intellectualizations: he was a killer.

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I was a killer

The Beyond Burger reminded me of a painful past. One where I bought murdered former-consciousness in plastic-wrapped packages, cooked it and ate it. If there was any doubt in me at the time, I just looked around at the other angry, unconscious people and they were doing it too. This made me feel better.

I told myself that vegans and vegetarians were mad hippies. Just as in Nazi Germany many people probably thought Schindler was a mad hippie saving those Jews.

What a world.

What a burger.

Thank you, Beyond Burger, I will never eat your disgustingly accurate recreation of a murdered and cooked animal again, but I'm glad you made this burger because I needed to (almost) throw up in shame.

I'm glad to be free.