Meat: Your worst nightmare?

You figure cows wake up screaming to images of Rocky punching sides of beef in a freezer. But people, well, we struggle with an entirely different kind of meatmare.

The Food Section considers vegetarians’ “horrifying visions of meat or the (troubling) experience of eating meat” with tales culled from an online forum called Veggie Boards:

“I had one a few weeks ago. I was on like a hotel balcony just stuffing bacon in my mouth. I could hear my conscious mind telling me not to eat it, that it was bad for me. I also remember my brother in the dream yelling at me from below not to eat it. I made myself wake up and was so happy it was only a dream.”

It is amazing how one person’s meatmare can be another person’s dream vacation. I imagine that International Bacon Day this past Saturday led to a few sleepless nights as well — out of either nervousness or indigestion. As far as meatmares go, the only anxiety I could see entering my dreams a la Freddy Krueger would be connected to the possibility of E. Coli food poisoning from eating ground beef.

But the presence of meat in dreams is also thought to have a lot of significance depending on whether it is cooked or rotten. Raw meat suggests obstacles to a goal; cooked meat means achieving that goal. Eating meat (keep it high class) means you’re being direct, while rotten meat suggests that something is wrong with your system.

I choose to believe a meatmare simply means you shouldn’t eat jerky in bed. Either that or it’s time to give up the bacon pillow.  

[Image of bacon pillows via Bacon Today]