You Are What You Eat

The decision to not eat meat was – for me – not difficult. For many years, I ate very little meat. When I did eat it, I generally avoided doing so in the company of others. They tended to be a bit “put off” by the method that I used to “prepare” it for consumption. I could never eat any sort of meat without first examining it very closely. I would then remove every element of “other” that the meat possessed. All fat, all skin, all veins… Perhaps it was my mind’s way of trying to “de-animalize” it. If cleaned enough, it might seem as if I weren’t eating a creature at all.

This approach was often quite irritating to those close to me. It’s amazing how little tolerance people have, really… I can remember quite a few occasions that I would glance up from my breakfast plate to find multiple sets of eyes fixed upon me, all framed by raised eyebrows. Looking down at my plate, I would regard the bacon – the meat portions neatly stacked to one side, the fat pieces deposited to the side of the plate, ready for disposal. Nothing that warranted the expressions on their faces, in my opinion. Neither were the sandwiches that I had to completely deconstruct in order to “clean” the chicken breast (quite difficult when driving, let me assure you…) or the fact that a burger or piece of chicken had to be immediately discarded should I bite into it and encounter a vein or any other evidence of the “meatiness” of it.

When I finally made the decision to officially “not eat meat,” it was as if a weight had lifted from my shoulders. Ahhh… my mind sighed. Finally. It was the natural course of action, and it seemed odd that I had not taken the position sooner. At the time of my choice, I also made a decision to continue to eat seafood. As someone who spends quite a lot of time caring for my body – through both diet and exercise - I could not calculate a method of replacing the health benefits of fish with any other food source. It has not, however, been easy. I find myself thinking of seafood – and fish – in much the same way that I previously thought of meat. With each bite that enters my mouth, I imagine the flesh in its living state. I imagine the creature – alive. Not pleasant, as you might imagine.

This internal struggle has recently grown much worse. Last weekend, I saw a film at the Milwaukee Film Festival that very nearly put me over the edge. It is called Our Daily Bread, and I must insist that everyone in the world watch it. The film documents the modern food manufacturing industry. This is – to say the least – enlightening. If you’d like me to elaborate, I’ll add the word “horrifying.” The film takes place in Europe – no doubt because the footage would never be allowed to be taken in this country. Rest assured, however, that the processes are the same.

While I can handle the way that the produce/growing industry has modernized, and can even find it quite interesting, I find the lack of sensitivity in the animal industry absolutely deplorable. What does it say about humanity that we can “turn ourselves off” to the sadness in throwing live baby chicks into the garbage because they are so newly hatched that they’re not yet able to stand? I can only hope that the rest of the theater felt the same sense of fury/shock/rage as they watched chicks (and later chickens) thrown unto (LITERALLY) assembly belts and then propelled through chutes into assorted vessels. These same chicks would spend the rest of their lives either in tiny cages or in one big room, waiting for death. On a daily basis, staff would sort through them to remove the inevitable dead bodies.

That was only the beginning…. The film documented the processing of commercial beef and pork, as well. Then there was the part with the fish…. the part that I felt a personal responsibility for. If I eat it, it will continue to happen. I am the reason for the death of those creatures. The thought has hung over me – persistently – for days.

There is – I believe – a time or place in which the consumption of other living creatures could be justified. Some animals, for example, are not even biologically capable of surviving on a vegetarian diet. Humans are not one of those animals. Perhaps the fact that humans have the capability of devising sustainable diets that have a purely beneficial effect on the world is some sort of test? Are we being offered the chance to prove ourselves?

Then there is the question of economy. I would not condemn a young child to a death from starvation by declaring that an animal’s life needed to be spared. There are certainly modern day countries in which it would – even now – be impossible for the people (as a whole) to consume an entirely vegetarian diet. There is no justification for it in my life, however. I live in a time and place of “food prosperity.” I have access to so much – even so many “meat substitutes” – that eating creatures can only be out of a direct desire to do so. So there it is… I now need to either accept the guilt/burden of taking these lives, or I need to determine the best/healthiest diet that I can have without taking more than my share.

I fervently hope that this blog has not created a resolve within you – the reader – to avoid Our Daily Bread at all costs. Regardless of what your personal decision is, I believe that everyone has the responsibility to understand the full impact of their choices. That – again – is part of what separates us from animals.

For more information about the film: http://www.ourdailybread.at/jart/projects/utb/website.jart?rel=en