eat better

It doesn't happen very often that I find myself agreeing completely and wholeheartedly with someone. I almost always find a hair in the soup of someone's argument. That's why I was knocked out of socks the other day following a talk that took place at the London School of Economics and Political Science. I agreed with everything that was said.

The talk was advertised as a reading by Jonathan Safran Foer, the author of Eating Animals, on the occasion of his latest book's release as paperback, but it wasn't a straightforward reading, with quotes and examples from the work. It was a conversational interview undertaken by a rather smitten presenter, in the course of which some of the cardinal points in the book were discussed. This format worked to the subject's advantage because the author is quite a jovial guy and the conversation flowed naturally.

The book (which I haven't read) deals with the author's long and tortuous conversion to vegetarianism and explores the issues faced by him on the way. You might wonder why I care. I love a good steak and am certainly not a vegetarian. But I don't eat much meat these days, and this development has come through my own series of explorations and considerations. The arguments Foer used in the talk are very much in line with my own.

Meat consumption has become a controversial topic recently, and the arguments usually bandied about are animal welfare, concern for the environment and health considerations. To be honest, when I'm hungry, I couldn't care less about any of those. I believe that when I eat well, I automatically eat healthy, and the environment is far away when my stomach grumbles. And animals? Well, like Foer, I’m no animal lover. There's a different line of thought that I find far more persuasive.

I eat less meat because I like meat. On the dinner table, I'm not fighting for a better farming system, I don't want to save the world, and I don't particularly like animals. What I want is to eat the best food available. Most of what masquerades as meat on supermarket shelves these days is crap, because of how it was produced, cheaply and with utter disregard for the animals. This is the biggest issue I have with meat.

Getting good meat requires, first and foremost, doing away with factory farming. This would preclude a large number of environmental problems, assuage all but the most rabid animal liberators and be good for the farmers themselves. It would also be extremely costly. With big factories, with efficiency, with animals packed like Lego blocks in their cages, comes cheapness. Some say we can’t afford it any other way. They are right, but not as they think. What we can’t afford, because it’s bad for the animals, bad for the world and bad for us, is to continue the lifestyle we’re living. Cheapness is not good. Meat every day is not necessary. And eating one top-quality steak a month while otherwise following a vegetarian diet has great potential for savings.

Vegetarians miss the point. They are (or at least used to be – this might be changing) often fanatic, insisting on never eating meat and vilifying anyone who so much as swallows a mosquito on a hike in the woods. They would love nothing more than to have everyone follow their lead, but you don't change people's ways by preaching from the high horse. Foer gets this when he says that it's impossible to convert half of the world to vegetarianism but much easier to cut half of the meat-based meals. I think quality is the way to get there.

If people had a clearer idea of what they're consuming when they eat wings from Chicken Cottage or get the minced meat at the grocer for a pound a pound, the falafel stands would suddenly see a surge in popularity and turnips become a hot commodity. Maybe one should require fast-food joints and supermarkets to put a photo of right before the kill onto the packs, as is done with cigarettes in Brazil.

The good thing is that with meat you almost have the certainty that if it's expensive, it's good. It's not (yet) like organic or health food that has turned from hype to fad and you have the hardest time cutting through the jungle of marketing gibberish. If the origin of a steak is mentioned on the package and you can trace the farmer, it's probably good stuff.

Lots of food for thought, especially for those that still eat crap meat on a daily basis. So why don't you invest an hour and listen to the talk, which is available for download. Then think about what you eat, make a few adjustments, and eat better.