Rambling about diet

[flexagon]

I spent a while in Oregon watching the DVD that comes with this book about the RAVE diet (psst... rave = vegan). It was pretty dreadful, featuring blanket statements of dubious quality like "animal foods feed cancer, plant foods kill cancer". Even so, it got me thinking a little bit about how I have been wanting to remain conscious of eating lower on the food chain, maybe do it more consistently. I'm also kind of interested in reading The Vegan Diet as Chronic Disease Prevention... even though I KNOW it's not going to get around to talking sensibly about diets that don't perfectly toe the vegan line, it's supposedly filled with references and should contain some good nutritional information about the foods that do.

By the way, I didn't eat meat today -- as far as major ingredients go, I haven't even eaten animal products. I've cut down, and given the nutritional value of what I tend to eat when I don't eat meat, I'd like to cut down more. But I really think that even if I eventually cut meat out of my diet, I won't bother calling myself a vegetarian, because there are too many different diets that fall under that umbrella, and I just doubt I'll ever be that absolute about it. I can imagine it being like the way I generally don't drink soda and haven't for 10 years, but once every year or two I'll end up having one somehow (say, a locally-brewed root beer at a party in the North End, like I had a few months ago when everyone was raving about it and it did sound like it would go nicely with pizza). I think most people would still count me as a non-soda-drinker with this basic MO... and in fact some of my friends call me a non-alcohol-drinker despite my weekly Friday night drink... but if I called myself a vegetarian and ate an occasional burger? Not so much.

Dietary issues are so oddly polarizing. I am interested in eating locally (for the environment and the local economy), healthfully (for me not getting cancer), and low on the food chain (again for the environment), and I'd like any animals affected by my decisions to have good lives and humane deaths, but I'm really not getting the value placed on the absoluteness of some people's dietary restrictions. It's like it's a religious thing, and I don't mean that in a good way. It's a shame that those people seem to write so many of the books.

Comments

[bluechromis.livejournal.com]

but I'm really not getting the value placed on the absoluteness of some people's dietary restrictions. It's like it's a religious thing, and I don't mean that in a good way. It's a shame that those people seem to write so many of the books.

So there with you. I have a theory - when I became a vegetarian (in 1990) being a vegetarian was considered weird or extreme by the vast majority of people I ran into, and they had a lot of very forceful opinions on the subject. It took a lot of self-defense on my part to not give into the peer pressure. It definitely contributed to my early evangelistic attitude about not eating meat.

As time went on I came to the conclusion that many omnivores feel judged simply by the existence of of vegetarians. I can't think of a non-selfish (meant in the non-moralistic sense of the word) reason for eating meat, but there are many non-selfish reasons for not eating meat, and many people who choose to eat meat seem to need group reinforcement for their choice. But then again, who doesn't?

For my own part now if someone wants to discuss it I just encourage eating less meat, not necessarily none.

Thoughts?

[flexagon]

Yep, like most of my friends you're so sensible about it. You oughta write a book! :) You're totally right that vegetarianism doesn't seem so extreme anymore as it did in the early 90s -- in a way, it's winning, so people don't need as much of a soapbox (it's the vegans on the soapbox now). From the environmental point of view, a couple of people eating half as much meat as before is just as good as one person going totally vegetarian, so it makes sense.

As for selfish, even in the non-moralistic sense of the word, I can't think of a non-selfish reason for eating, period... it's what we do to stay alive.

I'm not all that focused on The Meat Question, I guess. It's one part of the decision to make, but there are enough other factors in it for me that I doubt I'll ever be absolute about just meat vs not-meat. As far as ethics go, I'd rather eat beef from a local, organic, reasonably happy cow who was killed humanely (and who feeds a lot of people) than some vegetarian processed thing made mostly of government-subsidized, industrially raised, monoculture, shipped-from-really-far-away corn. I don't have the answers though -- I like to think I'm creeping closer to something I like and find acceptable, but I'm definitely not there yet.

[bluechromis.livejournal.com]

As for selfish, even in the non-moralistic sense of the word, I can't think of a non-selfish reason for eating, period... it's what we do to stay alive.

Haha, true, touche. But of course what I meant was given that eating is something you have to do to stay alive it's one of the most basic aspects of life, and you can choose approaches to it that are more or less selfish, depending on your motivations.

That said, you have a point about local meat versus far away veggies, except that for me the whole killing an animal bit is a problem. I don't think I'd have been a vegetarian for so long if I didn't have the double whammy of concern for the animomos and the environment going on. Whenever one wanes, the other waxes.

From the environmental point of view, a couple of people eating half as much meat as before is just as good as one person going totally vegetarian, so it makes sense.

Precisely what I tell people. And whereas I think it's pretty impossible to convert someone to a full veggie life, going halfway is totally doable.