I am not a person who is prone to recurring dreams, but there is one that I have had a few times a year since I quit eating meat in late 2005. I am in the passenger seat of a moving vehicle, the weather is sunny, and I am eating a chicken leg very slowly. I am happy.
For those of you who did not experiment in college, vegetarianism is horrible. It is more than refusing your grandmother’s meatballs or settling for a Caesar salad at restaurants. If you are among the unlucky—the reluctant vegetarians who still have “the hunger”—it is a constant exercise in self-restraint. Not only must we pass on those foods that are obviously prepared around meat, we must actively assess each meal looking for the bacon (indeed, it has become an accepted fact of American life that bacon is everywhere). Depending on where the vegetarian draws his or her line in the sand regarding animal consumption, this dance can inspire feelings ranging from mild irritation to abject misery, health and environmental benefits be damned.
And the lines we draw in the sand are as varied as they are arbitrary. There are so many species of vegetarian that even well-intentioned taxonomy is futile. For my part, I just don’t eat anything with a mother, as my also-vegetarian brother puts it. By-products are acceptable as long as they are too small to be chewed (lard, broths, gravies, etc.) There is no solid reasoning behind these policies, other than that they are reasonably convenient and I am lazy. Here is how it started: One night my friend Bunk and I were deciding on which sandwiches to have delivered, and we caught a music video called “Wilted Rose” on a public access channel. It’s the Flash-animated tale of a brave little chicken who shuts down a factory farm and frees his fellow captive farm animals. It’s cheesy enough but it struck a chord and we ordered cheese pizza instead. I never looked back—immediately the “big” meats were out, and then seafood the next year. (Bunk was back to meat by the end of the week.)
What I realized after watching that video was that I could no longer deny the basic trade-off of every meaty (read: delicious) meal: an animal must die for the meal to exist. I have raised pets my entire life and have known animals to be capable companions. I have also seen animals of all classes do remarkable things both in person and on television. I am further inclined to believe that killing in general is bad policy, unless absolutely necessary. There is a value judgment being made every time we consume meat, particularly for pet owners: some animals are fit to exist, share our beds, and even enjoy limited protection under the law; while others should be slaughtered en masse. I am not comfortable with accepting responsibility for making that call, so I begrudgingly refuse even the sausage sandwiches I lived on in high school.
I am not convinced that eating meat isn’t a natural, proper, morally-acceptable thing to do. I have been presented with a litany of good reasons by smart folks about why I should come back to the fold. I have likewise been told by the liberal media that being a vegetarian is an Earth-friendly, healthy lifestyle (although I have some reason to doubt this, as I lost a third of my body weight after converting and now struggle to keep it on). I don’t care either way. I take no moral high ground above carnivores--proselytizing about beef would look ridiculous coming from a guy in a leather bomber jacket, anyway. What I think is offensive and dangerous is the compartmentalization of the products from the process. Fishers and farmers and workers at the slaughter certainly understand the link between an act indistinguishable from murder and their Six Dollar Burgers. I don’t think anyone has a place to judge the diet choices of those who have a direct hand in the process. For those of us comfortably removed, however, it is quite easy to allow complacency, habit, and convenience to permit behavior that would be considered unconscionable in only slightly different circumstances. Imagine the horrifying intellectual consistency of addressing our schools’ cafeteria budget shortfalls by utilizing our burgeoning national stray cat problem!
As of this writing, I remain bitter that KFC waited until after I quit eating meat to unleash their Double Down upon the world. Until scientists have the impetus and funding to start cranking out synthetic meat, I will continue in this absurd denial, surviving on whatever the hell imitation products are made out of and resenting life in general as a result.
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Kerry Lauerman
Joan Walsh
Salon.com
Comments
As for your sudden weight loss, I'm not an expert but you may want to consult a nutritionist to make sure you're getting all of the nutrients you need. My vegetarian friends have told me that that's the hardest thing to get used to - meat is a huge source of protein, for example; you can get it elsewhere, but you have to pay attention to what you're eating.
I hope, as I continue on with my vegetarian diet, that I crave these things less, because when the cravings hit, I end up eating junk food instead of something healthy.
Are they real?
Do you play?
I did keyboards & drums in jazz groups for 25 years and cannot play anymore due to hand problems.
However, my ears function properly.lol
BTW-I am and will always be an OMNIVORE!!
It took us years to build up the recipes that are now our staples -- it takes effort to revamp a diet to a healthy non-meat one -- cheese on a bunch of noodles will have you craving forevermore.
Signed, Raised three boys and a physically hardworking hubby on a veggie diet for over twenty years that has evolved as our needs have, but I don't gloat or assume it's better, or that it's right for everyone...
Great post! Reasonable & wise!
@XJS-- Not mine--I'm still learning. But someday...
Besides the cruelty factor, the pollution and destruction of the land should be enough. They raze rainforests the size of Rhode Island everyday to make way for cattle to graze. That's right, the cheap burger you just scarfed down at the fast food place has severe consequences. It's all connected. I don't even have kids, but I care enough about the planet they're going to have to live on. In general, people are selfish. They want what they want, when they want it, all else be damned. Tis the American way.
I don't preach my beliefs to others in my life. If I'm asked, I tell them why I made the choice. Some respect it, some don't get it at all. I couldn't possibly care less what people think. I have to live by the choices I make, and I choose not to take part in what I believe to be unnatural and barbaric. Can't help it, just wired that way!
So I feel your pain- even though I only feel it about once a year.
I have introduced vegetables into the world of those, who stated they would never eat..such and such and they have no idea...that is what they are consuming with great joy.....
I am not a die hard vegan or vegetarian, however I would rather have a salad any day, than anything on a bone...
This was a wonderful read.....and if you play, all your frustrations can be taken out on those drums....anyways.....
I never ate at KFC...so I have no idea what I was not missing...
I myself am now an omnivore. I believe that God gave us all things to enjoy...my father (an anthropologist and international traveler) saw vegetarianism in his children as sheer rudeness. If we EVER declined an offer of food from a host/hostess based on our youthful vegetarian position---we would be thoroughly chastised.....
Excerpt from http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-03-03/restaurants/enjoy-vegetarian-soy-on-soy-action/
Alice Poon's original 'Enjoy' Vegetarian Restaurant on Kirkham at 12th Avenue, with its bright tangerine walls and big metal statue of the Buddha, has been a destination for vegans since it opened four years ago. For her second restaurant, she picked a strategic (if not symbolic) location on the border between the Financial District and Chinatown, aiming for a more polished, if colder, look: buttercream walls, jade-colored tilework accents, slate floors, rosewood-stained chairs.
The new 'Enjoy' seems to draw Chinese Buddhist and Western vegetarian diners in equal numbers. The waiters fluidly switch between Cantonese and English, and the 100-item menu appeals to multiple subtribes of the veg nation: lemon chicken and pepper steak for the tentative, fatty pork with cabbage and lotus root with lily bulb and gingko nuts for everyone else. . .
'Enjoy' takes two simple proteins — tofu and wheat gluten — and smokes, presses, deep-fries, braises, seaweed-wraps, and forms them into shapes both familiar and strange. (Alice Poon says that her cooks prepare some of the proteins themselves and import others from Taiwan.) A appetizer combo plate ($5.99) showed off the range — ribbons of dense pressed tofu scented with five-spice powder; sweet and sour gluten puffs, braised down into sauce-saturated sponges; thin slices of soy pork basted in barbecue sauce; and vegetarian goose, a dozen sheets of tofu skin rolled around one another and cross-sliced so that they seemed to flake away in the mouth.
The fake meats could approach outright mockery. An appetizer of fragrant crispy chicken ($5.99) resembled every factory-formed nugget you've ever heated up for your six-year-old's dinner. On first bite, I would have sworn the thin strips of soy beef stir-fried with green beans ($8.50) were flank steak until I zeroed in on their flavor and noticed they lacked that gamy, farm-funk undertone. The award for sheer ballsiness went to the sliced fatty pork ($8.50), or mock pork belly: The lean half was made up of pressed tofu, the translucent fat half yam-starch jelly. The strips were scented with five-spice powder and braised with cabbage and finely chopped mustard greens — not as good as the Hakka classic, to be sure, but good in its own right.
'Enjoy's' spareribs ($8.50), braised with daikon and carrot, were a remarkable facsimile of beef. The chunks of dark-brown wheat gluten broke down into long, chewy strands seemingly held together with filaments of fat and gristle. But it wasn't the illusion of meat that most intrigued me about the dish — it was the sauce, which hinted at black mushroom, a little cinnamon, a pinch of sugar. It had richness and more depth than I expected.
The dishes that best compensated for the lack of "strong-smelling foods" were the ones that substituted other strong-smelling ingredients. Iceberg lettuce cups filled with a confetti of finely chopped tofu, carrots, cloud ear, corn, and pine nuts ($13.95) tasted dry until we smeared on a spoonful of penetratingly aromatic, molasses-black hoisin sauce. The fermented bean paste and chiles in the satay sauce coating a dish of eggplant and tofu ($8.50) collided with the perfume of the fresh basil leaves tossed in, casting sparks. And it was hard to imagine how the strongest, spiciest dish of them all, smoked gluten stir-fried with pungent preserved mustard greens and salty fermented black beans, wouldn't excite the senses.
In fact, the black bean sauce was potent enough that I cut it with swigs from Alice Poon's one concession to her non-Buddhist customers: a bottle of Tsingtao beer. There's only so much that a human, religious or no, can do without.
Yelpers (http://www.yelp.com/biz/enjoy-vegetarian-restaurant-san-francisco) recommend:
Fried Curry Potato Triangle Samosas (#6);
Fragrant Crispy Chicken (#9);
Chicken Nuggets (#10);
Veggie Shark's Fin Soup (#16);
Black Pepper Sauce w/Steak Meat & Green Vegetable (#29);
Veggie Tri-Spice Chicken w/Napa Cabbage & Basil in Clay Pot (#31);
Taro, Sesame Veggie Chicken Cooked w/Coconut Sauce (#39);
String Beans w/Beef w/Chinese Satay Sauce (#46);
Eggplant w/Sea Bass (#53);
Lettuce Wrapped w/Shredded Mushroom, Veggie Chicken, Vegetable & Pinenut (#55);
Eggplant, Tofu & Basil w/Satay Sauce (#58)
Lotus Root, Lily Vegetables, Peas & Ginko (#63);
Kung Pao Chicken (#80);
Mongolian Beef (#84);
Curry Chicken Pot w/Napa Cabbage & Potatoes (#86);
Bean Curd Rolls stuffed w/Cabbage, Mushroom (#90);
Spinach & Pine Nut Fried Rice (#120)
Card-carrying San Francisco Vegetarian Society members receive the following discount (http://www.sfvs.org/discounts.php):
'Enjoy' Vegetarian Restaurant
754 Kirkham St./12th Ave., SF 94122, 415-682-0826 & 839 Kearny St./Washington St., SF 94108, 415-956-7868 (www.enjoyveggie.com) 10% off menu except lunch special
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