Given its ranking in the holiday hierarchy somewhere between "Walk Barefoot to Work Day" and "Sell Your Children on eBay To Afford a New Set of Golf Clubs Week," I won't be surprised if no one is even aware that it's National Vegetarian Week. The human transition to omnivore status (an event possibly occasioned when some pre-human ancestor realized that grass and berries are more palatable when eaten with five pounds of mammoth meat) has left as its indelible mark a genetic heritage that makes the dead flesh of other animals taste good, and thus I expect few converts during this highly underpublicized "event." For my own part, I already botched it by preparing a chicken dish to bring to work for the first few suppers of the week, a situation I find vaguely ironic given I've purchased and cooked meat, including this dish, a total of twice in the last several years. In my defense, I find it likely, given the price of the antibiotic-free poultry I insist on using for my cooking, that I'll slide back into vegetarian cooking with little effort.

I'm asked now and then, in hesitant voices as though I may be offended, if I'm a vegetarian, usually at restaurants with new acquaintances or at family gatherings where my dearly dedicated mother, over my protests, cooks a separate meal to accommodate my decidedly non-western Nebraskan palate. Amusingly, I've been assumed to be a vegetarian twice in the last 10 years by coworkers because I passed on the red meat option and instead chose the chicken dish (in one case being the only attendee out of 40 not to opt for prime rib), which highlights a common public misconception that vegetarians eat fish and poultry (and consequently assuming that it's vegans who eat no meat at all, which is technically true but incomplete). For the record, I'm not a vegetarian, although my total poultry intake for a year is so low that I might as well be (I'm just annoyed enough by the people who triumphantly pounce on my decision to order one chicken dish every few months when dining out to avoid making the claim; yes, siblings, I'm looking at you). My last experience with red meat was a good eight years ago and frankly I've moved past the "do you miss it?" point to hover somewhere around "walking past the red meat counter at the grocery store makes me briefly nauseous."

My original decision to abandon red meat was based almost entirely on health reasons (there is just no way to justify red meat as a healthy diet base, at least in the context of the non-grass fed meat supplied by American feedlots). At the time I started, vegetarian diets were far more difficult, but greater access to varied foods and a renewed interest in non-meat dishes (both for health reasons and for flavor) on cooking shows and books have largely erased any stigma (at least for me) of not eating meat. I still take flak from my family for my soy- and vegetable-based reimaginings of the dishes we had when I was growing up (in particular, the two soy-based pies I made last Christmas that I conveniently "forgot" to mention were soy until after the fact), but hopefully in the long run it will help them see that dishes don't have to be unhealthy to be edible.

Personal taste and health reasons aside, a far bigger concern is environmental impact. Livestock production consumes a tremendous amount of resources (something like half of water use in the U.S. when you consider the water used to grow the grain that feeds the cattle). Figures vary from study to study, but estimates by the University of Michigan are 25 gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat and 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef, before adding in petroleum costs and the very serious problem of excessive antibiotics being transmitted into water supplies (not only ending up in the body when the water is consumed but also providing excellent breeding environments for antibiotic-resistant infectious bacterial strains). I'm not quite on board with all of the points in this article, but it's a comprehensive (if slightly more strident then mine) summary.

In any case, if you're at all curious about whether a vegetarian diet is workable for you, now is the week to try it. Or you could switch to insects.

Labels: humanism, social commentary

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Tuesday, May 13

No Dice

I finished Discover's Einstein-dedicated March issue a few months ago. It included numerous articles about his life, his learning years, his teaching environment, his family and his children. It did not, however, contain anything like this:

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this . . . For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions.

Labels: humanism, religion and atheism, science, social commentary

Posted at 4:24:00 PM.  |     |   Permalink to this post.

 

Friday, January 19

Aural Activism

I broke down and bought a Nickelback song on iTunes yesterday. Not so much because I like Nickelback, but because I liked the song itself. The video is reminiscent of my favorite Sarah video, which still makes me teary when I watch it. Oh, look, my humanist tendencies are showing again.

Labels: humanism, music

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