I’ve become interested in vegetarianism and veganism recently. I’d like to say I’ve suddenly developed compassion for other species—any other species…actually, let’s include ours in there too…except I haven’t. In fact I was most deeply affected in this respect by the book Food Matters by Mark Bittman, which I read on our recent trip to Hawaii.
There wasn’t anything particularly new in the book, I’d read the various things in bits and pieces elsewhere, but for some reason, the way he juxtaposed the effects of factory farming on the environment (for instance: the fabulous fact that raising livestock creates more greenhouse gases than does all of transportation…cars, planes, the whole nine yards) and the effects of our diet on our health (which I’ve known) and came up with Change Or Die really made a big impact on me. Here’s Bittman on the subject at a TED conference.
Bittman’s strategy of eating “vegan until six” makes a lot of sense to me (though of course I haven’t done it yet): eat a strong plant-based diet until dinnertime, at which point nothing is off the menu, although after a while you’re going to lean much more heavily toward the vegetables and greenery and use the meats as a condiment, not as a main course. And as a convenient side effect you’re going to find your health improve and your weight drop. Just a side note.
Between “vegan until six” and Michael Pollan’s seven words mantra, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” it seems really easy to choose what direction to head in.
I really like Bittman; I think How To Cook Everything is a fabulous general cookbook, and I am looking forward to picking up How To Cook Everything Vegetarian. (Well, after our remodel is done. Not buying more stuff now!) I am also bored crapless with the meals we’ve been having. I can see the kids aren’t going to be thrilled by moving to a more vegetarian diet, but my theory on dinner runs something like this: “You can eat it, or you can not eat it. There is nothing else being served.” So maybe they’ll adjust.
And by the way, if you don’t buy what Bittman or Pollan has to say, maybe you’ll buy Barack Obama:
(Let’s all take a moment to imagine how George W. Bush would have responded to that question. Or pronounced the word “vegan,” for that matter.)
Anyhow, so I’ve been reading up more on vegetarianism and veganism (hilariously, I’ve discovered that the built-in Macintosh dictionary doesn’t recognize the word “veganism”—uh, guys, you might want to get on that before someone shows up in your office with a flamethrower), and I’ve noticed something omnivores do whenever the subject comes up. It’s like a tic. A really, really weird tic that makes me go “Hmmm.” Obama does it in that YouTube video. In the letters to a recent Salon story about Jeffery Masson’s appeal to veganism, letter-writers did it over and over again. The general gist of it goes like this:
I like to eat steak.
or:
What you need is a good cheeseburger.
And all I can think every single damn time I see it is: Is somebody a little defensive about something?
It’s always about cow meat. It’s always specifically about consuming cow meat and how it’s superior to all other forms of food. I know that Americans worship this idea of the West and cattle ranchers and what have you, but…the knee-jerk defensiveness makes me think: You guys know there’s something wrong with your diet, right?
It is impossible to be informed about our current food production system and our understanding of nutrition and keep to the standard American diet with any confidence or gusto. Consuming cow does not make you superior; in fact, depending on the kind of cow, it could make you quite sick.
We know there’s something wrong. We know we can’t continue the way we’ve been going. And the entire world can’t move to our diet (which they are trying damn hard to do), because if they do the entire freaking ecological system is going to collapse. (Seriously. Look into it.) Start with yourself and discover different ways of eating that don’t depend on cutting up other living beings (that have a central nervous system—don’t go for that canard again).
And stop with mentioning the cheeseburgers already, unless you want to signal that you secretly know how bad your diet is.
Update: And indeed, the letters to this Huffington Post column about the enivronmental dangers of livestock production continue this you-will-pry-my-steak-from-my-cold-dead-fingers meme apace.
There is always the option to just pick only good meats to eat – and by good I mean raised locally on sustainable, non-factory farms and just not eat cow ever. I admit this is where I started when I got back onto the meat wagon but it’s slipped over the last 2 years. It’s good for me to be reminded that factory farmed meats are truly horrific and destructive to the environment. I have been mulling over dropping all meat again lately bcs I feel like I’ve been eating too much meat. The only thing is that I never ate enough protein when I was just eating fish meat. A happy medium may be to just not eat pork and cow and stick to chicken and fish. hmm. clearly your blog post has got my brain thinking =)
Well…I’ve been an ova-lacto vegetarian since 1980 or 81. I can say without reservation that, just as with any diet, it’s easy to get stuck in a rut and just eat the same things all the time.
Though it’s a lot easier now than it was 25 years ago, the fact is that this is not a vegetarian-friendly country. Eating out is often an exercise in saladry. (After a couple of decades of that, I don’t accept invites if my only option is that “great salad bar”. Even to a veggie, after a while it’s just leaves.) You watch food network, and often the veggie courses are little more than sides rather than entrees.
Me? I’ll eat tofu straight-up. I think it tastes fine on its own. I cook up my own wheat gluten (a/k/a seitan) pretty often, and being a native New Mexican, my life would not be worth living if there weren’t beans around. I’ve never worried about not getting enough protein, even when I was very athletic. Protein is pretty much everywhere.
I’ll confess that I’m not a big fan of vegetables, even though I’m a vegetarian. Lots of being made to eat poorly-prepared (or canned…yuck) veggies made me such a non-fan. I’m better now, but still not an oh-boy-look-at-that-tasty-asperagus sort of person. There are a lot of choices. I just wish the economic realities were such that the choices were easier to budget.
It’s never made sense to me that flesh is consistently cheaper than veggies…even though it takes veggies to grow the flesh. It’s the subsidies. And with corn being over-produced and diverted to make fuel and HFCS, there’s even less affordable supplies of the foods we are supposed to be eating to be healthy. It’s annoying.
I’ve totally lost track of any point I think I was trying to make. Being a vegetarian isn’t the easiest thing, but it is getting easier. If you have any questions or other follow-up, please feel free. I’m going to link to a little blog I wrote a while back: From the Stomach of a Vegetarian