poliphilo | Not Proud

Not Proud

I've started eating meat. It's France that's to blame. You scour the menu for the vegetarian option and all they've got is crudites- you know, raw carrot and zucchini and stuff- so I made a decision before we went- for the next five days I'm a carnivore.

What I hadn't been prepared for was how my energy levels went up.

But I'm going to insist we buy meat that's been raised ethically. That's my quarrel with meat-eating- not that I'm sentimental about animals, because I'm not- but that industrial farming is disgusting.

Last night we had lamb steaks- in a mushroom sauce- with mashed potato.

I'd forgotten food could be such fun.

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I have started to eat meat last year again, after 15 years of vegetarianism, when I discovered about my gluten allergy. You simply CANT live healthily without cereal AND meat/fish. Not to talk about the impossibility to find anything to eat at all while traveling.
And I have made the same experience you write about, regarding the energy levels.

Human beings are engineered to be omnivores. It's hard to go against biology.

I was a vegetarian for several years in my late teens and early twenties, but gave it up ten and a half years ago, mostly because I was craving meat so badly I thought my body must need it somehow.

However, I'll only buy ethically reared meat. The meat we eat at home comes either from the local organic butcher or from farmers' markets, where I can buy it direct from the people who raised the animals. If I'm eating out I will generally have the vegetarian option, unless it's a really good restaurant where I know the meat will have been ethically sourced (ethical meat really does taste better).

Occasionally I think about becoming vegetarian again, but although I still wouldn't be supporting factory farms I'd also not be supporting the ethical meat producers, and I think that by doing that I'm actually making more of a statement.

I don't crave meat, but have to admit it makes meal times more interesting.

We don't have any practical option but to buy from the local supermarkets. I'm just hoping I can trust them when they put "outdoor reared" and "organic" on their produce.

Welcome back. Here on Saaremaa I work with the local Saare Mahe - That's the organic food producers union. Their vegetables are so good that they make a body consider becoming vegetarian but the meat our farmers produce is SSSOOOOOooooooo good as well. We believe that a balanced diet with lot's of fresh veg and fruit and reasonable amounts of meat will make you healthier. More energy means more active and that's good for your heart as well. The BBC Food magazine regularly lists local fairs and green markets. You should be able to get a line on ethical producers in your area from them.

You're right, we should do the research and see if there are any farmers' markets in the area.

I'm just hoping I can trust them when they put "outdoor reared" and "organic"

I know nothing about British regulations, but in the United States this sadly doesn't tell you much about how the animals are treated. Most of the popular "organic" brands are industrial operations, and in some cases the labeling is actively misleading about the quality of the animals' care.

It's very frustrating for people who are interested in ethically raised meat. Provided they actually realize that "organic" doesn't mean "ethical" in the first place.

I'm afraid things may be the same in Britain. Our local supermarket says it operates high ethical standards in choosing it's meat suppliers, but we've only got their word for it...

All of these things are ethical trade-offs. If we make a decision to eat one kind of food over another, we're privileging one form of life over another, aren't we? What about all those embryonic wheat and soy plants that will never be born because we've converted them to pasta and tofu?

Some food producers blur the ethically-raised label pretty badly, too. I hardly think that a chicken who's been allowed out of his coop once qualifies as a "free range chicken," but some marketers do.

My grandparents had a farm, so I've taken a chicken or two to the chop.

Ailz used to keep (and occasionally kill) chickens. She says they're nasty, vicious creatures and she has no compunction about eating them.

It's true! Chickens ARE often nasty and vicious and turkeys are stupid... so feel free to eat them without any form of guilt. ;-)

Maybe I'll have turkey for Christmas this year. How long is it since I last did that?

I think you should!

It's a puzzle finding decent vegetarian foods at Christmas. In the past I've had complicated nut roasts which really weren't worth the bother of cooking.

Nut Roast? That sounds interesting...

Believe me, it ain't!

Our chickens -- we have four in the back yard -- are adorable and sweet, if dim-witted. One of them looks like a bearded professor and actually likes to be picked up. They'd follow us anywhere for a banana. True, they tell each other off now and then (for instance, when one hogs too much banana), but they are nice to us unless we're grabbing them and they're scared -- then we're at risk of a scratch from scrambling feet.

On the other hand, we don't have roosters -- because our law only permits hens (and only four) in the city, AND because they are not so nice, especially to the hens.

We are raising our chickens only for eggs, soil benefit (they can do wonders for the compost), and companionship, although we're not against raising chickens for meat (but our local law also forbids backyard slaughtering). These four girls are truly "free range," in that they spend their days outside the coop, eating weeds, bugs, and produce scraps from our compost. Studies have shown that eggs from truly free-range hens (as opposed to hens that are allowed to "look" outside now and then) are many, many times higher in all the "good stuff" nutritionally, and many, many times lower in any of the purported "bad stuff" that's in commercially/conventionally produced eggs.

I've never had anything much to do with livestock. Ailz says chickens can be horrid to one another- but I suppose that's true of most animal species- including homo sapiens.

I must be great to go out into the yard in the morning and pick up a fresh-laid breakfast egg.

Oh, it is! Although in our case we pick them up in the evening, when we put the girls to bed. Actually, they generally put themselves to bed, making their way into their coop and up into their "dormitory" as the sun begins to set. I just go close up the entrance so predators don't get them, and then I stick my head in through the egg door, collect what's there, and say a few good-night words to the ladies. (Sometimes I sing them a verse of "Good Night, Ladies," ending with "...and thank you for the eggs.")

I'll bet there's a big difference -- in how one ends up viewing the niceness or not-niceness -- between raising a large number of chickens and raising a small handful. I suspect it's more pleasant with just a few.

What a lovely picture- the chickens trooping off to roost and you singing them to sleep.

When we kind of inherited a couple of chickens, they were indeed nasty creatures. They would mug the children if they were carrying anything edible and they tormented the cats, who were scared stiff of them.

Strangely I went back to eating meat last year after about 13 years of vegetarianism. I find my blood sugar levels are much more stable now. It also makes life easier because I can eat the same things as G and don't have to cook two different dinners.

Coincidentally, I have also become a meat-eater temporarily. I have little money right now so I eat whatever people will spare me.

If you want to make your food more interesting, I suggest trying kinds of ethnic cuisine you are unfamiliar with! Or simply grabbing things from the spice aisle of the grocery store and trying them out.

I eat a lot of curry. And Chinese food when I feel I can afford it. Other types of ethnic food are harder to come by in these parts.

Like many of the others here, I was a vegetarian for a time (although in my case due to poverty --- we had two people and a cat to feed on a budget of $10/week, equivalent to about $25 or $30/week now). I ended up going back to eating meat when I could afford to do so, but made the same choice about ethically raised meat. Neither my husband nor I can properly assimilate certain nutrients from vegetable sources, he because of an inherited digestive defect, me because I have malabsorption syndrome plus allergies to dairy and the entire wheat family of grains. When we were vegetarians, I used to get "cheeseburger dreams" in which I ate one hamburger or cheeseburger after another. I learned from experience that it was my body asking for iron, which I can only assimilate properly from red meat.

Now we eat meat about four or five meals a week, but we eat ethically raised meat when we have any choice. We also try to eat organic where possible, although the budget has the last word there more often than I would like. Counsels of perfection aside, we figure that since all life feeds on other lives, the best we can do ethically is to eat plants and animals who had a good quality of life and received decent treatment. As a pagan, I don't differentiate qualitatively between the animal and the vegetable; they're all alive and all deserve respect and gratitude for feeding us.

I agree with Ailz about chickens --- nasty little brutes! I feel no compunction about eating them, so long as they were decently treated in life. Which is more than they do to one another!

In all my time as a vegetarian I have never wanted meat. I'll admit I find vegetarian food a little boring, but I'd have been happy to put up with that indefinitely if I hadn't discovered that meat does me good.

It's strange how we can't live without killing things. What an odd way to run a universe.

Incidentally, we're both healthier as omnivores. We both had all kinds of minor health problems go away or drop down to barely visible levels when we returned to meat eating. Energy better, fewer colds, better overall vitality, etc. Of course, adequate nutrition has a lot to do with that in our case, which leads back to the issue of assimilation.

Like so much else, meat-eating is about moderation, and making good choices. If people truly understood what a portion size looks like (same size as a deck of playing cards for a piece of beef) they'd be able to incorporate meat into their diets without adversely affecting their heart or waistline. we just eat too damn much of it for our own good. Make the decision to buy organic/steroid-free meat and the health risks go down even further.

If you eat wisely, meat is also quite cheap. We bought an expensive pork joint but got three meals out of it- which meant it ended up being a lot cheaper than the veggie ready-meals I used to buy.

We could never give up meat, but we buy only organic meat wherever possible, knowing it's been raised in a field instead of a cage or tiny pen ... same with eggs. Our local produce is to die for.

Now there's the advantage of living out in the country.

Our local supermarkets sell what they call organic produce but you have to take their word for it.

True, we know where our butcher gets his meat from. The eggs are the best i've tasted and the fruit and veg superb, but herbs are a problem ... they either wilt in the heat or rot in the humidity in summer ... apart from parsley and coriander, we have to buy them minced in tubes.

I try to eat ethoically raised meat because it is, erm ethical, bit also because it tastes better.

I once went vegetarian for six weeks for a bet, but by the end of it I was really craving meat and constantly tired. Cereals make me sleepy, bloated and slow-witted. I was almost convinced by the 'eat right for your blood type diet' which claims that Abs like me are desecened form nomads with no agrarian tradition so I should avoid wheat and live on venison and goat and lots of dairy.

So blood type is a consequence of what our ancestors did and ate? That's new to me- and fascinating.

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Not Proud

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Free-range chickens

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Fresh-laid

Re: Fresh-laid

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