I'm a meat eater. Not necessarily red meat. In fact, I only rarely eat beef, and when I do, it's almost always a hamburger. I haven't eaten steak in years, except to take a small bite when someone says I have to. You know how that goes: "Oh, my God...this is so good. Do you want to try it?"
"No."
"Oh, you have to."
And, so, you do.
But I do eat flesh. And the sorry fact is, I feel I need it. I did once live for some very few years as a strict vegetarian. A more precise reckoning of "some very few years" actually comes to precisely nine-and-a-half-months. A more precise reckoning of "strict vegetarian" means I was a macrobiotic. I suppose there will be those readers who don't know what that term means, and to that I reply that no one does. It has something to do with eating only produce that can be grown locally -- though it doesn't have to actually have been grown locally. It also has something to do with avoiding alcohol and other stimulants -- though coffee and cigarettes are somehow justified. Macrobiotics believe in eating only vegetables and grains... unless, of course, you crave fish, with the primary emphasis on a diet centered on the complete protein concocted out of beans and brown rice. This is also a wildly misunderstood stricture, however, and there have been several deaths reported due to malnutrition among those who insisted on believing that the true, pure nutritional necessities of humans could be met by ingesting only rice -- and the fewest grains of rice imaginable at that. In the complex, ever-changing world of dietary recommendations, an easy mistake to make.
Macrobiotics is further defined by the delicate balance of yin and yang. Certain foods, as any fool might gather, possess the qualities of yin, while other foods, it goes without saying, are decidedly yang. I investigated the distinction between the two enthusiastically when I was adhering to The Macrobiotic Way. I wanted to be able to discern, without the aid of a book titled with that same phrase, just which foods fell into which camp. I read extensively, and spoke with several devotees. The answers I received in print were declarative, yet unenlightening. The answers I received verbally were delivered impatiently, and divided all edible substances into degrees of heat and coolness that had nothing to do with their temperature. My final conclusion was that in order to be considered yin, an entrée must be of interest to the editors of Interview magazine; to be yang, of interest to Vanity Fair.
I was led into macrobiotics in my mid-twenties as a result of a diagnosis of acute leukemia, an excuse that could serve for crimes much more severe than following the vague, capricious dietary notions of a chain smoking Japanese mystic. My bet is I could have murdered the human being of my choice at the time and not suffered one moment of state sanctioned punishment. Looking back, which I do far too often, I'm amazed -- and not slightly disappointed -- that I didn't take advantage of my misfortune a great deal more. Cursed is he who dwells on missed opportunities.
But now, I eat meat. Regularly. Though, I suppose, in the current climate, even that statement requires clarification. There are those fantastically misguided souls -- vegetarians by their own definitions -- who don't consider the muscular tissue of fish or fowl to be "meat". Salmon, tuna, chicken, duck, oysters, mussels, guinea hen. It makes no difference to them. As long as it had wings or gills, or perhaps no face, it can safely be classified as a vegetable. Go figure.
I'm no vegetarian. Rare is the day I don't eat a piece of chicken. If I don't, it's a good bet I've consumed some shrimp, beef, fish, clams, snails, pork, goose, rabbit, goat, or snake. I've actually never eaten snake, but if none of the others were available, I just might. It's just that, somehow, I've come under the impression that I lack a degree of physical strength without animal protein. But I can trace the feeling back only as far as the illness, I'm afraid, and it's a poor reference point. Quite simply, vegetarianism never occurred to me before it, and was adhered to afterwards only out of the most primal fear. Take that as my statement on the bravery of the survivor.
For years after I recovered from leukemia I was plagued (I still am, really, I just can't stand to admit it other than in an aside) by seemingly constant upper respiratory infections. Sore throats, head colds, chest colds, pneumonia once. Somewhere between thirty and fifty percent of my time is spent not feeling very well. And the way I've soothed myself, the avenue I've chosen to compensate for the pleasures denied me during my repetitive echoed convalescences, is to eat rich foods. Again, not the most daring rebuttal to deprivation. Why I haven't sought comfort in constant sexual indulgences, unbridled spending sprees, constant sexual indulgences, or constant sexual indulgences is a disgrace to desperate souls everywhere. I suppose I lack the joie de vivre of the truly tormented.
When I lived downtown in New York's East Village, I'd head over to the Second Avenue Deli. It was, in its way, a bold choice for someone suffering from his seventh severe flu of the season. Most restaurants in the neighborhood boasted of free delivery, but not the famed shrine of Kosher cholesterol. I'd wrap myself in sweaters and scarves and brave the winds for the six block journey, spurred on by the promise of a sandwich made of brisket of beef on soggy, doubly-mustarded rye bread. In addition to this I'd bring home a tray of potato kugel that I'd heat in a filthy toaster oven, and I'd imagine I was somehow fortifying myself against the microscopic tormenters of my tissues as I devoured the roasted tissues of another creature, even less fortunate than myself. Now that I've written it down, I can see that perhaps my unconscious motivation was simply to spread my misery around.
My meat eating, however, was thrown into crisis some years ago in the city called San Francisco. I'd never been to the city by the bay before, and the Japanese restaurant I strayed into was equally foreign to me. I was in California on a book tour, reading in bookstores from the memoir I wrote about my illness and unexpected recovery. While most of my experiences on that tour were enjoyable -- after all, traveling the country as an author, on someone else's dime, being interviewed and treated as someone with opinions worth heeding is a heady adventure -- the fun of the actual bookstore appearances often could be equated with that of chemotherapy. I read to over a hundred who laughed and cried appropriately in Manhattan. Then, in Chicago, while hundreds of African-American women hauled their children to the Borders across the street to listen to Toni Morrison, I sat on the second floor of Barnes and Noble reading to two strangers, Lisa and Tom, both bone marrow transplant recipients, accompanied by Lisa's husband, Mike, and Tom's grandmother, Judith. Imagine the Q and A interplay afterwards. To end my tour I landed in Los Angeles, a city in which I have nearly as many friends as I do in New York. However, on the night of my elegant party at Rizzoli in Santa Monica it rained. Angelenos responded to the light precipitation as they always do: by locking themselves in their storm cellars. The platters of food -- chosen to sate carnivores and vegans alike -- remained untouched.
At Hiro, the Japanese restaurant on State Street in San Francisco, I ordered salmon teriyaki. A modest choice, by most standards. I don't eat sushi. Though I've had few qualms about eating creatures over the years, I do insist that they be cooked. Thoroughly. The "few qualms" I do have preclude me from hunting or fishing for my own meals. Firstly, I can't abide the cruelty of directly causing the animal's death. In addition, I suppose I fear that the hunting of an animal makes me fairer game to be hunted by one in return. While being eaten by a beast does seem, in an ecological sense, to be an honorable death, I'm intent on avoiding it nonetheless. One of my other qualms has to do with a more superstitious concern: fear of retribution. I won't eat raw fish, shellfish, crustaceans or other flesh due to concern that I'll be more susceptible to the karmic punishment of a heaping bacterial infection or parasitic attack. Yes, I live in fear. Then again, such things do happen.
I enjoy salmon cooked teriyaki style. But, as with all meats, I insist it be cooked well. Japanese restaurants are ideal in this respect, because it doesn't require special instructions to the chef. While the current recipe de rigueur in regard to seafood is to cook it until barely heated through, I've found that most Japanese restaurants cook their salmon to within an inch of incineration. Since most of these establishments also offer sushi, I find it an interesting juxtaposition of extremes. Fish either raw, or, in the eyes of most other-ly oriented gourmands, destroyed by fire. Perhaps the reason salmon teriyaki is so well cooked in Japanese restaurants is that the chefs know the only customers ordering it are the ones who are afraid of sushi.
Let me state right away, or, at least, right away now that we've gotten this far, that the flavor of the salmon was fine. I cast no aspersions on the freshness of the fish, or its preparation. But from the first bite I had a sensation that has troubled me to this day. As I chewed my meal and swallowed, as I enjoyed the crisp outer crust of caramelized sugars and animal fat, as I sat alone in San Francisco and wondered who might show up later to listen to an unknown author read from his rabidly angry tome about every detail of his bouts with acute leukemia, I had the disturbing impression that I could taste the personality of the fish.
What do I mean by this? I don't exactly know. What does a personality -- particularly the personality of a fish -- taste like? I don't know this either. But as I sat chewing; alternating between fish, steamed broccoli, and rice; cutting the meal with sips of mediocre white wine; every taste bud registered the presence of a being stunned and frightened to be caught in a net. I knew I was ingesting someone who had hoped for nothing other than to escape and reach home. I knew, as I chewed, that as his terror increased, his hope became simply to somehow send word back to those he loved of how he was taken and to where he'd disappeared. I know he thought of his family and his friends, and felt distraught over the panic they were sure to experience when he didn't return. His agony was indescribable, his frustration unbearable, as he imagined their imaginings of his choice to flee and never come back.
"They'll think I've rejected them", the fish feared. "They'll think I didn't want to ever see them again."
He thought of who his mate might find to replace him. Wondered if she'd grow old alone.
He worried for the safety of his offspring, if they'd come to love someone else as they'd loved him.
He worried if the pain of death would be unbearable, if there were fish he knew nearby who might witness the un-heroic panic with which he was to meet his end. If there was ever a reason to have done any of the things he'd done, or to have ever hoped for anything more than what was being given him right now.
And I chewed the fish. I ate him, and he tasted good.
There is no way I can prove the truth of what I felt that night, but I know it to be real. I tasted his terror, his pride, and the extinguishing of his will. I tasted his final realization that he would not be saved, and I tasted the exhaustion that is too often attributed to acceptance of one's fate.
And I swallowed, and I nourished myself with him. And he tasted good.
I left that restaurant in San Francisco haunted by what I'd taken inside myself, and I've remained somewhat haunted to this day. I made my way to the "Clean, Well Lighted Place" bookstore and read to a smattering of souls about my own narrowly avoided death. I can't quite categorize what I experienced that night, or what I've come to know as a result since then. I'm not sure I can put such knowledge into words. I have examined it, and wondered if there were more emotional distortions at work than I've been willing to admit. After all, if the aphorism says we are what we eat, who's to say we don't turn what we eat into us? Most likely, what I tasted in my salmon teriyaki that night were all the feelings I remember having back when I though I was destined for that fish's fate. But then, of course, no one would have eaten me. Anyway, after all the horrible shit they ran through my veins, I doubt I would have passed USDA inspection.
But, if I know the taste of that fish's terror -- from both inside and out -- how is it that I still eat meat? Is it as simple as what I felt in the hospital when they'd wheel a tightly wrapped corpse down the hallway on its way to the morgue? Sure, I'd be shocked and terrified at the undeniability of the possibility of my own demise. But, for the most part, my feeling then was "better him than me." As far as I could see at the time, every one who fell around me statistically increased my own chances for survival. In a strange and horrible way - decidedly divorced from the individuals involved and my feelings for them - I was rooting against every one of them, because that was the same as rooting for myself. It's not that I'm incapable of feeling for the soul whose life was stolen in order to nourish my own. In fact, for some reason, I've come to taste it in every bite. But, alongside each gram of sadness I feel for my part in the bargain is the increased assurance of my own existence I get with every swallow. It takes the death of another for me to survive. And, someday, I'll be taken to make room for someone, or something, else. Like it or not, that's the way of the world -- at least the one I walk in. And, having once felt that net closing around me, having barely made it back to where I insisted I belonged, the chapter where I don't make it out is the one I plan to keep unwritten for as close to forever as my mind can fathom. Until then, Bon Appétit.
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Mahatma Gandhi, statesman and philosopher
What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being? The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes..."
Jeremy Bentham, philosopher 1748-1832
Reason number one industrial farming is bad for the environment:
A report from the United Nations shows that animals raised for food generate more greenhouse gases than all cars and trucks combined, and that meat is "one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global," including land degradation, air pollution, water shortage and pollution, loss of biodiversity, and of course climate change. And according to a recent University of Chicago study, switching to a vegan diet is more effective in countering global warming than switching from a standard American car to a Prius.
Farmed animals produce about 130 times as much excrement as the entire human population of the United States, and since factory farms don't have sewage treatment systems as our cities and towns do, this concentrated slop ends up polluting our water, destroying our topsoil, and contaminating our air. And eating meat is responsible for the production of 100 percent of this waste—about 86,000 pounds per second!
Many leading environmental organizations, including the National Audubon Society, the WorldWatch Institute, the Sierra Club, and the Union of Concerned Scientists, have recognized that raising animals for food damages the environment more than just about anything else that we do. Whether it's the overuse of resources, unchecked water or air pollution, or soil erosion, raising animals for food is wreaking havoc on the Earth.
Anyway, I was a vegetarian who ate fish (a.k.a. a hypocrite) for 6 years. It had gotten to a point where red meat just made me ill. Even with a high-soy and varied diet, I felt myself starting to lose energy quickly. Even cut out caffeine (which, I don't know if you've done it, REALLY REALLY SUCKS). Long story short (too late) I gradually reintroduced meat into my diet and returned to my regularly shlubby ungenial self. Excited for season 2 if you take a gander at these comments, Evan. Here's to happy sinuses this year (I've been suffering in L.A. too).
Handler is a a funny and engaging writer, unfortunately when you get to the meat (pardon) of what he's saying, it's the same ol', tired, nonsensical crap: eating meat is somehow "natural," and of course, it's pleasurable to consume. So it's OK.
Yes, meat tastes great, and it's "natural" in the same sense that rape and murder are "natural" and have been part of human behavior for millenia. It doesn't mean it has a place in a moral society in the year 2008.
Meat-eaters need to get past attacking the caricatures of the sanctimonious, straw-man vegetarians ("They say they're vegetarian but they eat fish!") and need to take a look at their own behavior and the harm it's causing.
The factory farming practices is in this country are inflicting untold cruelty on hundreds of millions of animals a year in the name of low prices, and inflicting untold damage on the environment in the process.
When your behavior (eating factory farmed meat) is polluting the water I drink, polluting the air I breathe, and generally degrading the natural resources of the country I live in, I'm sorry, but I need to hear more justification than "it tastes good" and "it feels sort of natural."
MY BABY WAS TO BE KING
(by "Diane"}
The coyotes have
killed my baby, but
I am so hungry
I could eat a deer
Low quality protein
from plants
from soy has
made me
distrust
the vegan mythologists
who let me be
brought to court
for malnourishing
my tiny one
without protein
starving by a mother
of scrambled brain without
an egg to whisk, until
a death by nature
made it moot,
a mute cry
Plainly the data show
humans are omnivorous
must eat meat, or eggs
or dairy for baby. Bambi
has brought the curse
to my cinematic vision,
scenes too faux for fawns
to see reality in us, the
carnivores of canine tooth
I will kill the wolf in sheep's clothing
to avenge my child,
if only you will let me hunt
the scorpions of fashion
with deadly tails and tales
who see themselves as
pussy cats
meowing insects
Kill the predators --
endangered species be damned --
I have no need for dinosaurs, nor
saving any
who have succumbed to
compassionate extermination
The coyote killed my child, and
I will not forgive nature, nor
the propagandist,
however cute he may be
in his suit of dead planted cotton
http://mojoepoe.wordpress.com
I don't know if it will help ease your guilt, but it will certainly taste and feel better in your body.
Have you tried constant sexual indulgences?
Brilliant.... XD
I recentlty saw a lecture on nerd tv about how the addition of animal protein to our diet allowed us homo-sapiens to gain the dominant position in the food chain and not become extinct like other proto-sapien species, and much later to develop all of that culinary genius and guilt. The additional protein had a direct effect on the development and evolution of our brain, enlarging it and enhancing those areas that make detailed communication and group cooperation possible.
Besides, steak and bacon are yummy.