The Vague Vegan

Our situation is an odd one. When surveyed, virtually all of us agree that it matters how we treat animals. We also agree that it matters how we treat the environment, and yet few of us give much thought to our most important ­relationship to animals and the environment. Odder still, those who do choose to act in accordance with these uncontroversial values by r­efusing to eat animals (which everyone agrees can r­educe both the number of abused animals and one’s ­ecological footprint) are often considered ­marginal or even radical.

There is something about eating animals that tends to polarise: never eat them or never ­sincerely question eating them. We know that if and how we eat animals matters, but we seem to fall back on this all-or-nothing framework when discussing our everyday food choices.

It’s a way of thinking we would never apply to other ethical realms. (Imagine always or never lying.)
The choice-obsessed modern west is probably more accommodating to individuals who choose to eat differently than any culture has ever been, but ironically, the utterly un-selective omnivore – “I’m easy; I’ll eat anything” – can appear more socially sensitive than the individual who tries to eat in a way that is good for society.

Imagine an acquaintance invites you to dinner. You could say, “I’d love to come. And just so you know, I’m a vegetarian.” You could also say, “I’d love to come. But I only eat meat that is produced by family farmers.” Then what do you do? You’ll probably have to send the host a web link or list of local shops even to make the request ­intelligible, let alone manageable. This effort might be well placed, but it is certainly more invasive than ­asking for vegetarian food (which requires no explanation now). The entire food industry (restaurants, airline and college food services, wedding cater­ing) is set up to accom­mo­date veget­arians. There is no such infrastructure for the selective omnivore.

Our decisions about food are complicated by the fact that we don’t eat alone. Food, family and memory are ­primordially linked. Some of my ­fondest memories are of weekly sushi dinners with my best friend, my dad’s turkey ­burgers with mustard and grilled onions at b­ackyard ­celebrations, and ­eating my ­grandmother’s chicken and carrots. These ­occasions simply aren’t the same without those foods – and that matters.

If my wife and I raise our sons as vegetarians, they will not eat their great-grandmother’s singular dish, will never receive that unique and most direct expression of her love, will never think of her as the Greatest Chef Who Ever Lived. Her primal story, our family’s primal story, will have to change.

To give up the taste of sushi or roasted chicken is a loss that extends beyond giving up a pleasurable eating experience. Changing what we eat and letting tastes fade from memory creates a kind of cultural loss, a forgetting. But perhaps this kind of forgetfulness is worth accepting – even worth cultivating (forgetting, too, can be cultivated).

The question, for me, is this: given that eating animals is in absolutely no way necessary for my family – unlike some in the world, we have easy access to a wide variety of other foods – should we eat animals? For me, for now – for my ­family now – my concerns about the reality of what meat is and has become are enough to make me give it up altogether. My friend and I have started g­oing to the Italian restaurant next door. Instead of the ­turkey burgers my dad grilled, my children will remember me burning ­veggie burgers in the backyard.

I say this as ­someone who has loved ­eating ­animals. A vegetarian diet can be rich and fully enjoyable, but I couldn’t honestly ­argue, as many ­vegetarians try to, that it is as rich as a diet that includes meat.

(Those who eat ­chimpanzee look at the western diet as sadly deficient of a great pleasure.) ­However, to remember animals and my ­concern for their well being, I may need to lose certain tastes and find other handles for the memories that they once helped me carry. I love sushi, I love fried chicken, I love a good steak. But there is a limit to my love.

On those Saturday afternoons at my grandmother’s kitchen table, we would sit, just the two of us, and over pumpernickel ends and Coke she would tell me about her escape from Europe, the foods she had to eat and those she wouldn’t. “Listen to me,” she would plead, and I knew a vital lesson was being transmitted, even if I didn’t know, as a child, what that lesson was.
I know, now, what it was.

“We weren’t rich, but we always had enough. It wasn’t like now. We didn’t have refrigerators, but we had milk and cheese. We didn’t have every kind of vegetable. The things that you have here and take for granted… But we were happy. We didn’t know any better.

“Then it all changed. During the war it was hell on earth, and I had nothing. I left my family, you know. I was always running, day and night, because the enemy were always right behind me. If you stopped, you died. There was never enough food. I became sicker and sicker from not eating, and I’m not just talking about being skin and bones. I had sores all over my body. It became difficult to move. I wasn’t too good to eat from a garbage can. I ate the parts others wouldn’t eat. If you helped yourself, you could survive. I took whatever I could find. I ate things I wouldn’t tell you about.

“Even at the worst times, there were good ­people, too. Someone taught me to tie the ends of my pants so I could fill the legs with any potatoes I was able to steal. I walked miles and miles like that, because you never knew when you would be lucky again. Someone gave me a little rice once, and I traveled two days to a market and traded it for some soap, and then traveled to another ­market and traded the soap for some beans. You had to have luck and intuition.

“The worst it got was near the end. A lot of people died right at the end, and I didn’t know if I could make it another day. A farmer, a Russian, God bless him, he saw my condition, and he went into his house and came out with a piece of meat for me.”