We human beings are not humane. That a United States Senator could read a quote about the incredible suffering of animals raised in factory farms — in order to ridicule a witness whose appearance was cancelled — is illustrative to me of the baseness of mankind and the inherent cruelty of people. it is also illustrative of the cowardice of the Democrats in this farce, and yet one more indication that Samuel Alito will be confirmed, and probably without much of a fight. (I sure as hell didn’t see much of a fight from Feingold today. Only Schumer stuck it to him.)
Here is what happened to that witness, who tells his story in today’s Los Angeles Times:
I had been scheduled to testify as an expert on an organization called Concerned Alumni of Princeton. In 1985, on an application for a promotion in the Reagan Justice Department, Alito had touted his membership in CAP, which had opposed coeducation at Princeton and asked for strict quotas limiting the numbers of women and minorities at the university. Alito’s membership in the group thus could shed light on his respect for civil rights. […]
[I]t was an L.A. Times Op-Ed article I wrote. In “Animals Suffer a Perpetual Holocaust” (April 21, 2003), I defended People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for using a quote of my grandfather’s. Unlike me, my grandfather was a famous man, Isaac Bashevis Singer, who had escaped anti-Semitism in Europe in 1935 and won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1978.
My grandfather, a principled vegetarian, famously wrote: “In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis. For [them], it is an eternal Treblinka.” …
Let me pause here and tell you that — to vegetarians and vegans, and to all who fight to stop or at least ameliorate the suffering of animals — this is one of the most precious, meaningful quotes we know.
This is a photograph of a typical factory farm setting, where most of your meat comes from. Look at how a sow must lie. She cannot move. She cannot turn over. (Photo: HSUS) Think for a minute about how you’d feel — physically, no matter mentally — if you couldn’t even turn over or stand up. Is bacon worth this kind of suffering and sterile environment — particularly for pigs, which are more intelligent than dogs?
Stephen R. Dujac, the grandson of this great man, continues:
Three years ago, PETA built a campaign around that quote, but critics charged that the words were not really Isaac’s, only those of one of his characters. My Op-Ed article affirmed that from my personal knowledge Isaac felt that way — that the cattle-car reality of factory farming compared to the Holocaust. And I agreed with him. [..]
In the era of the search engine, no good (or bad) deed goes unpunished. Then again, perhaps I should take pride in being ridiculed by a U.S. senator, John Cornyn (R-Texas). “It seems like a little bit of desperation to call a witness whose only apparent expertise is in comparing meat-eaters to those who stood by during the Holocaust,” a Cornyn spokesman said. The Washington Times led with, “A free-lance reporter who compared the Holocaust to eating meat…. ” A right-wing blog gloated, “Latest Dem charge: Alito’s a carnivore.” I haven’t found an account from the right that mentioned Isaac or his quote.
As it turned out, hundreds of decent, honorable Holocaust victims and their families were deeply disturbed by the original essay, and I have apologized publicly for it — an apology I reiterate here. Sometimes using an extreme example to make a point is a bad idea. Sometimes a quote really doesn’t belong in a new context. Too bad my latest attackers don’t get it.
Most of you are meat-eaters, and that’s your business. I eat meat sometimes too. But I make damn sure it comes ONLY from small farms where the animals are treated humanely throughout their lives, are fed proper food without chemicals and hormones, and suffer the quickest-possible death.
I am in grief right now. I grieve that a U.S. Senator can use a heartfelt expression of the suffering of animals to attack a witness to Samuel Alito’s cold-hearted bigotry. And I am ashamed to be the member of a species that can so selfishly buy the products of intense, unremitting suffering with nary a concern because they like the taste too much.
Most of all, I am ashamed of myself. From this day forward, I will never eat meat again because to do otherwise is to give legitimacy to the inhumanity of people like Sen. John Cornyn. P.S. Meet your meat.
Below, more of Mr. Dujac’s op-ed:
Bill Bradley (Princeton, class of 1965), future Democratic senator, quit CAP in disgust within a year after it was founded in 1972. Bill Frist (class of ’74), future Republican Senate majority leader, publicly censured the organization. But CAP survived to become more anti-woman and anti-minority. In 1984, a year before Alito proudly proclaimed his membership, CAP’s magazine had published details of an underage female student’s sex life and named her, allegedly by mistake. A few issues before that, in a piece about blacks and Latinos, the magazine editorialized: “People nowadays just don’t seem to know their place.”
In response to questions about CAP, Alito has proclaimed his fealty to American principles of equality. But when he had a chance to make a real statement, back when CAP was spreading its poison, he boasted of being a member.
That’s the story that should have gotten its 15 minutes this week. But you won’t hear about it from me.
Great diary and interesting thoughts on the subjects.
However, your phrase We human beings are not humane. sums up the problem with you terrestials. Best to simply give in and avoid the struggle.
😉
Thanks Susan. I was wondering what the hell Cornyn was talking about. The LA Times piece says it all.
Cornyn is bebeath contempt. But then we already knew that.
Good diary..I have been vegetarian since 1989 and everytime I see something like that pic or hear stories about animals so dehydrated and packed into trucks it makes me ill….Shame on that Senator for his bloody nonsense
As I watched Cornyn make that statement, I thought about how it would effect you. I’m not surprised to see you rip off this diary in record time. I knew you were going to be pissed.
I’m heartbroken.
He read that statement like it was an indictment of a human being, when in fact it was a recognition of Singer’s humanity.
(And thank you for thinking of me … hugs ….)
Then there’s the WHOLE MESS of what raising meat does to the environment! Oh my god ….
I’m a proud carnivore who looks forward to watching Ted Nugent’s reality show where he makes city slickers slaughter their own meals in order to survive. Nugent is nuts, but he has the correct respect for animals, in my view.
But Cornyn is just an asshole. There is a world of difference between the lazy displaced acceptance of the average American about where their meat comes from, and the overly indulgent and morally superior moralism of vegan absolutists (try being a vegan in Somalia) and the kind of crass dismissal that Cornyn displays.
I grieve for your attitude.
And never mention Ted Nugent to me — he is a repugnant, crude idiot who likes killing animals with a bow and arrow, a particularly slow and vicious way to kill a wild animal.
I used to have these strange Nugent hunting shows on my local cable in college. They were really creepy. He would go bow hunting for deer and he would explain everything about the deer’s habitat and their day to day activities, their diet, their quirks, the difference between bucks and does. He was obviously obsessed with deer. Then when you thought he couldn’t love deer anymore than did, he would kill one with a perfect shot through the heart.
Then he would explain how irresponsible it is to hunt for deer if you can’t consistently hit the heart, because otherwise they A)suffer, and B) run away and you can’t catch them.
THen he would literally pet the dead deer, almost crying over it, as he praised it, and talked about all the fine ways to make use of its body.
There is more to Nugent than most people realize. He’s plumb crazy, but he loves animals as much as any PETA member.
interesting guy.
And, Hitler loved his dogs.
Please, don’t generalise people! I’m a practising vegan and have been for 4 years (vegetarian for 8) and there are many reasons for being vegan and many types of people make up the vegan community.
I could go on and on and harangue you with all the great reasons veganism is a good idea but I’m sure you ‘ve heard them before so I wont prosyletize. It’s enough to tell you that there are a large number of us that respect your right to make up your own mind and , no, we don’t think that your evil just because you happen to eat meat.
Let me tell you though.. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had someone 1. tell me why im an extremist 2. wave their meat in front of my face and make mmm noises before slatherign it down their pipes 3. ‘tsk’ at me and wonder how i get my nutrition (when I know I know what i’m eating a great deal better than they do)
It seems to me that vegans get a lot more flack than you poor put upon ‘carnivores.’
..and your not a carnivore. If you didn’t eat any plant matter at all.. you would die.
Simply mentioning that I’m a vegetarian is enough to start the eye-rolling and “yum yum lookit this steak” antics. It was silly when my younger brother kept adorning my tofu with bacon, and for strangers to do similarly is just puerile. I wouldn’t get the same response if I refused nuts, or root vegetables, or all foods starting with “P.”
What I eat is my decision, just as it is yours. It is laughable to make assumptions about why I eat what I do. Often people guess I’m with PETA, but although I love animals, their welfare has nothing to do with why I don’t eat meat.
I’ve survived years working for the Forest Service in 4-H strongholds in Utah and Wyoming. But I’ve also been yelled at and literally pushed around simply for not eating the steak.
People have a lot to learn.
You’re an omnivore, not a carnivore! I hope anyway!! 🙂
Eating vegetarian or vegan is almost always less expensive than eating meat and other animal products. Meat and animal products are unsustainable luxury items that many people in developing countries can’t afford. Most hungry people would prefer save the 10lbs of grain it takes to produce 1lb of beef and feed the grain to their family. Meat production in this country takes a lot of energy, too — one gallon of gasoline per pound of grain-fed beef.
Keith Acker writes as follows in his “A Vegetarian Sourcebook”:
Land, energy, and water resources for livestock agriculture range
anywhere from 10 to 1000 times greater than those necessary to
produce an equivalent amount of plant foods. And livestock
agriculture does not merely use these resources, it depletes them.
This is a matter of historical record. Most of the world’s soil,
erosion, groundwater depletion, and deforestation–factors now
threatening the very basis of our food system–are the result of this
particularly destructive form of food production.
Booman. It’s part of our bioliogical makeup, and I won’t lie to you and tell you I still don’t smell certain meat and start feeling hungry. It’s basic biologiy to respond to the smell of protein and fat.
So I’ll never pick on someone for being a meat eater. I will however give them a very frank answer if they criticise my vegetarianism.
I do also ask those who ask me politely about it to 1) consider the case for avoiding meat produced by inhumane practices and 2) think about how much meat we eat & how socially injust and environmentally unsustainable it is and therefore 3) ask them to please consider eating less meat, and taking the trouble to source it responsibly <if it is possible</i> – because in some places it simply isn’t.
I also give away lots of healthy duck & hen eggs from my mother’s spoilt hens and our spoilt ducks. 🙂
biology
if it is possible
and make that meat cooking, not raw! :/
Booman I agree about Cornyn but I’ll have you know that I accidentally gave you that 4 and now I can’t take it back. Ted Nugent is a repulsive piece of waste product.
Booman,
I’m leaving my four with you in spite of the Ted Nugent statement. I agree with you opinion of the attitude taken my some against those of us who eat meat. I have no problem with it at all. Eating meat that is. That doesn’t make me immoral or indifferent to suffering. To me it’s the natural order of things. Has been for millions of years. Animals have been eating each other for millennia.
I understand Susan’s heartbreak. It affects her that way. It does not effect me that way. I will never knock someone for their choice of food and I’m not saying that Susan is, but this diary is unbalanced in my opinion.
Susan, I’m with you. I’ve been a vegetarian for years and this stuff makes my blood boil. People don’t want to know how their food suffers before it hits their plates… it could spoil their appetite.
Free range and organic raised livestock is a much better choice. Fewer or no chemicals, and the animals have a life before they’re sacrificed. It’s a bit more expensive, but eating meat every day (meat, poultry) is like taking a pill of additives, chemicals and drugs along with your one-a-day. Bon apetit.
We eat meat, but not beef, and only organic/free-range.
I also keep chickens for the eggs, and they have a nice little house and pen…and it has always amazed me how some people, when I offer to give them a dozen eggs, are uncomfortable with the idea of eating an egg from a “known” chicken, but have no problem eating factory-farmed eggs from the grocery store.
and while I don’t eat eggs, my wife and son tell me the ones we get over the fence are far superior. Plus, all the quiet clucking when we’re in the yard just makes everything seem happy. (Why wouldn’t anyone want to know where their food comes from?)
Any meat or dairy that I eat, I so try to have it be free-range, organic, grass-fed… or at least local.
My ex- is the county ag extension agent, and has taught me so much. He continues to teach me a lot. Some of the conditions he describes of the larger dairy farms brings me to tears… I hate that.
& my partner has been for over 14 years. I’ve been at it for about 3 1/2, but still ‘lapse’ sometimes, mainly because my job exposes me to constant conference / work catering, including really bad vegetarian catering, and sometimes I cave, and I hate myself for it.
So I watched the PETA video, and just feel so miserable and sick now.
I know most people aren’t, but there’s certainly an element, and I bet they nearly all vote conservative, who get off on animals’ pain. They get off on the power and sadism of it all – think Stanford experiment.
I’m vegetarian not just because of the unspeakably cruel ways we raise our “meat” but also the enormity of the environmental costs, and the profound social injustices surrounding it. Over 90% of some grain crops like corn in countries like the USA goes to feeding cattle & pigs in inhumane & disgusting feedlots so that we can all suck down 3 or 4 times more meat per day than is healthy -and meanwhile people across the world starve to death for lack of both protein, and grains.
As a friend of mine succinctly puts it, it’s sick and it’s wrong.
We’ve been meatless for over 10 years (other than some occasional seafood). You summarized that very well, myriad.
I seem to recall reading that for each person you feed with meat from livestock, you could have fed 5 persons with the grain you fed to the livestock. Just one more unsustainable practice our species is inflicting on the planet.
Bless you for this terrific post, Susan.
If part of the civics curriculum in our primary or secondary schools included a visit to a factory farm, the vegetarian demographic would explode.
but I’ll never tell you what to eat. Food is not a rational decision. I can argue ad nauseum about the negative environmental effects of the meat industry, and Susan did a great job highlighting some of the cruelty.
But even more than politics, I realized years ago that it was fruitless to try to change anyone’s mind about food. Just do what Susan says–do your best to make sure it’s healthy and humane, no matter what you eat.
Quite frankly, what does Dujac’s views on animal farms and slaughter have to do with CAP. People, this is another diversion. Takes the focus off of Alito’s involvement with CAP. Are the dems really going to let them get away with this? Is someone looking into the possibility that Alito was deeply involved with CAP? Why would anyone put on their resume a society that they were not proud to be a part of.
To the eating of meat…I have been both vegetarian and a meat eater and I know how much healthier I am when I do not eat meat. One of the Baskins sons did a great film on this about ten years ago. He gave up millions and turned his back on the family ice cream business because of his beliefs. I believe it was called “The Feeding of America”. Anyone remember that film?
It was John Robbins who wrote a very influential book called Diet for a New America which was also the name of the film. He has several other books too.
Leave it to the librarian to know that. Exactly right. Thanks for the correction. It has been way too many years since I viewed that film and it made me go vegetarian for about five years. Thanks Lil!
I know about John Robbins because he speaks and works in Northern California, and a friend of mine met him and was quite taken by his teachings.
That is a great film. It’s been many years since I saw it, also. It influenced a lot of people to go veggie including me, too, for a while. My daughter is more advanced than I am in that regard.
Always something new to disgust me regarding the behavior of Republicans.
How low will they go? There is no limit.
I’ve been a veg since abt age 4 when I asked where the food on the table came from and was told they used to be chickens… it was quite a shock for me and one I’ve never been able to get over. My mom tried the whole fish route with me, but they have eyes and I’m a Pisces, so that didn’t go over too well either.
I am a sensitive person and I could never get over eating somethings flesh and ending its life when I could survive on other foods. So I do.
I am not a particularly “healthy” veggie, I don’t eat Tofu or get enough protein by any means, but my body has adjusted perfectly and I am in good health… don’t get sick, no stomach problems, not deficient in iron or anything. So, it has worked for me.
I have no problem with others being carnivores as long as they are aware and responsible about it… I view slaughter houses and the whole industry as the height of human hubris.
What was that quote of Einsteins… something about the planet surviving if people embraced vegetarianism… but he was just an eccentric old fool anyway. 😉
I used to live across the street from a slaughter house in Bakersfield, California. I was a teenager that was pregnant and very impressionable. The stench and the horrifying screams that came from that plant were beyond the pale. As a result whenever meat was put before me I had a visual of the animal set before me. It made me a vegetarian.
Then I moved to Sonoma and lived down the street from a family that raised and slaughtered young cows for veal. My son was young, his best friend was the son of the man who owned the ranch. They invited us up and showed us where the young cows were kept and the process they went through to get the veal. My son started crying. I scooped him up and put him in the car. When we got home we had one of our heart to heart talks. My son has made me proud his entire life because of his humanity.
I eat meat some now but mostly eat fish for protein and for health issues. The beef I do eat comes from a wonderful small farm where they raise the cattle as humanely as possible, they don’t use hormones or antibiotics.
Thank you for the diary Susan. After reading it I’m evaluating, once again, if I will continue to eat meat at all.
Congrats on thinking about the issue and acting on what you feel to be necessary to be consistent with your ethics.
I say that as a “devout” meat eater. I personally have no problem with killing and eating animals… for many long-winded philosophical reasons… but I also think that everybody, no matter what their final decision, should spend more time thinking about where their food is coming from and what sacrifices had to be made for them to eat it. I think that too many meat-eaters tend to be okay with it as long as they can pretend that their hamburger popped into existence as prepackaged little patties on some assembly line.
And factory farming practices are disgusting on more levels than I want to go off about; someday, if I have my way, I will live on enough land to raise at least a substantial portion of the meat that I eat, and I try currently to buy meat from smaller operations that tend to be far more humane.
BTW, I’m sure you know, but please if you haven’t, take the time (and this goes to everybody who decides to change their diets) to research nutritional issues and make sure you’re getting everything you need. It’s not hard to do as a vegetarian, somewhat harder as a vegan, but easily doable either way — but I’ve known far too many people who went veggie or vegan without even a basic grasp of the nutrition involved, and I always want to (nicely!) kick them.
Copper coinage.
If everything is perception, then there is no reason to consider human beings as superior to so called “animals”. Especially…..if there is no GOD as humans imagine.
Perhaps we are animals ….being raised for some reason….maybe we are on a planetary farm…. and like those we eat …..are unable to imagine the larger universe of predators.
This is the biggest secret we can know….
I meant to say….maybe it isn’t our meat… they are after…. but our conciousness.
Someone above mentioned John Robbins. This web page has a fact list excerpted from his Pulitzer Prize nominated DIET FOR A NEW AMERICA.
Here’s the start of the list:
At one point I tought myself to read Yiddish, just to read I.B. Singer in the original, his stories had that much of an effect on me.
When you read those figures, 80% of corn it fed to livestock, while only 20% is fed to humans – you might be thinking that you don’t eat that much corn, or you only eat corn in the summer months, the occasional can of corn, or sometimes you have corn tortillas,etc. Actually, you probably don’t get through a day without eating, or drinking corn. The sugar in your soda pop – corn syrup. The hydrogenated fat in just about any processed food is mostly corn oil.
A box, pulled at random from my pantry, of Koog Foo Sing Fortune Cookies, contains Maize (corn) Starch as its forth ingredient (after Flour, Sugar, and Vegetable Oil – the latter two of which are probably partially sourced from corn).
I started on my road to vegetarianism at 16, when I raised and ate my own Hereford steer, Rex. He had a good life for a cow, but it still bothered me to the point of action.
I’ve lived in farm country (still do), and am always quick to point out to my neighbors that I have the utmost respect for people willing to properly care for their own future meals.
And I hardly expect someone with few food options to opt out of eating animals, as my clearly privileged position on this planet allows me to do. Also, I know many people from impoverished backgrounds, who only recently have been able to eat “high on the hog” and need the social reassurance that being able to eat meat provides them. I’ve had this discussion with many of my Black friends, pointing out that I hardly expect them to fore go something only so recently attained. But that I’d ask them to consider what it means to make the existence of a being, animal or human, merely an means to and ends of someone else pleasure. And in my mind, it was this reduction of beings to mere matter, the enslavement of animals, that made the slavery of humans possible.
Oh, and as for eating meat in Somalia. As a woman I would not get much, if any meat, anyway. 80% of children who die from malnutrition are girls. In most third-world countries, food in general, and high prestige foods like meat, in particular, are reserved for men.
Excess protein, which can’t be used or stored by your body (which for most people in the US is around 50% to 75% of a the protein they eat), grabs onto calcium and leeches it from your body via urine.
Osteoporosis is a western disease. It was nearly non-existent in China until more Chinese started adding more meat to their diets in the last few decades (heart attacks have increased dramatically too).
I sincerely respect the choices made by others and have always supported people who choose not to eat meat.
I don’t think a condescending attitude from any side is necessary. After all it’s not the carnivores that have designated supporters of PETA as domestic terrorists, it’s the government that’s done that.
I want so much to stop eating meat. Help!
Beans, rice, proteins… Take vitamins to supplement, at least for the time being. Cheese and dairy will help too, if you want to eat those. Lots of veges. Nuts of any kind are very good too.
As I do lapse sometimes – for example I still love seafood, and partner Keres tolerantly watches me on occasion cave and eat local scallops and/ or rock lobster – I can relate pretty viscerally.
I also know how difficult it can be, for eg I definitely am subject to peer pressure at work.
Diet – still getting it right, tend to eat too many carbs as ‘comfort food’ and too much dairy (cheesaholic).
So, what do you need help with? Perhaps we can help each other.
I am still eating chicken and eggs. I feel like I am addicted to food. Over the last 10-15 years I have gained weight due to illness and predisone. Next week I am starting on kombucha tea, I am hoping it will help with my food addictions.
Well I personally don’t think there’s anything wrong with eating free-range eggs, as they are a great source of protein and a whole range of things that are otherwise hard to get. If you can’t get free-range, you have a problem, not just ethically, but because factory eggs are so leached of nutrients and full of chemicals, I regard them rather like little chemical bombs for my intestines.
So, I reckon, find yourself some free-range eggs, don’t eat more than 2 a day in a balanced diet, and no problemo.
Chicken – many, many vegetarians will admit that the smell of roasted chicken is the one meaty thing that gets them long after every other meat makes their stomach churn!
Myself, I take comfort in “not meat” poultry products, like chinese ‘mock duck’ and chicken-like nugget mix. IOW, check out your local health food store if you have one, and look at the ‘not meat’ options.
I firmly believe that very few vegetarians can live on tofu and pulses (peas, beans, lentils) alone, because most of us would all go mad. 😉
Also, I can tell you that both me and Keres get serious protein cravings sometimes, like when we get our periods (hope that’s not too explicit for you!) – and we’ll have a very protein heavy meal or two to address that. I know other vegetarians who do the same – so I don’t see a ‘balanced diet’ as something that has to be achieved solely within a day timetable; having a ‘bad’ day and balancing it with a ‘protein-light” day for eg, makes it easier to appease cravings without falling off the wagon. If you’re dealing with illness & drug side-effects, I think this is really important.
So I’m thinking your next best step would be to explore what variety of meat-substitute & egg sources are available to you. It is really, really hard to change your diet, be it vegetarian, low glycemic index, macrobiotic etc. towards a healthier diet without seriously exploring what foods are readily available to you – otherwise it very quickly just becomes all too hard.
Have you found yourself a good source of fresh, preferably organic, veggies? Again, hard to quit the flesh without satisfying and flavourful veggies to replace some of the ‘flavour’ aspect of meat.
Finally, if you are dealing with weight gain/illness/drug regimes/trying to be vegetarian, I would seriously see if you can afford to see a dietician to design you a good diet that addresses these many facets; – it’s maybe just too hard an ask to do it on your own, and it makes good sense to get a professional’s help, rather than try & fail and feel bad.
Ok, hope this wasn’t too preachy, and hope it had some ideas in it for you. 🙂
I would love to go to a dietician. Maybe this year I will be alble to afford it. I belong to a lupus support group and we are having a speaker on diet this month. Gluten-free…etc etc. One of the members has had alot of success controling lupus symptoms. She is young and I wonder how she does it. Not surprising that there are so many vegetarians on this list.
Hi, Mattes! The free-range eggs are so good, and I feel good when I buy them because Im’ supporting that industry.
Have you tried the Yves line of products? Their hot dogs — especially the chili hot dogs — are really delicious.
I’ve used Yves “ground hamburger” in chili and other foods, and it works great …. it’s a little hard to get to stick together for a burger, but I’ve managed, and it’s just delicious.
And, for frozen dinners, Seeds of Change meals are extremely delicious! The veggie stirfry with noodles and peanut sauce is to die for!
Will have to look for yves. I have to remember to make a big pot of beans and freeze them in individual packs…so when ever I need protein, it’s there. I need to get off sugar as well, sugar starts it…and then I eat everything.
I love black beans…cooked in garlic, olive oil, green pepper, onion and alittle bit of red hot peppers. Though it’s best on rice with alittle bit of sour cream and green tometillo sauce.
that many of you are, as mattes has just done, coming very close to posting recipes that would be very warmly welcomed on Eat4Today which is katiebird’s new site for anyone who is struggling with questions of diet, shugga dye bead eaze, whatever fun and exciting disease you may happen to have on hand.
And now I return you to your regularly scheduled debate.
Thanks for link….I’m on my way!
Read “Transition to Vegetarianism” by Rudolph Wiley, MD. He has written other books on health and nutrition as well. His detailed knowledge of Ayurveda’s (Classical Indian medicine) approach to vegetarianism is what makes this book a stand out for me.
Disclosure: I am a Naturopathic Doctor in Canada.
http://www.lotus-medicine.com
Thanks, I’ll get it. More than anything I want to work on my health this year. I am running out of options with my lupus.
Well, it was for me. I’ve been vego for 3 or 4 years, and I’m missing so little. I am still a junk food eater. Here are some handy ideas:
YUM Primal Strips Texas BBQ flavor fake jerky… give that stuff a try ASAP. I love it. It’s closer to pulled pork than to jerky, really.
Fake burgers (not gardenburgers, which are just veggies smooshed into a patty, but burgers made of soy stuff that are intended to taste like burgers). You will definitely notice a difference, but of course the key is covering it with lots of good stuff. Cheese, onions, BBQ sauce (Sweet Baby Ray’s, of course). Most mid-quality (above fast food) restaurants will fakify any burger. Islands’ Hawaiian burger is awesome. Red Robin has a clone, the Banzai Burger. I am big on teriyaki burgers.
Investigate the fake meats. There is a wide wide range from really awful stuff to great. Tofu especially can be a broad range from slimy clam guts to really firm, meaty texture. Stuff like that generally has little flavor, so it’s all in what you put on it (and of course, texture, which is big to me). Textured Vegetable Protein is the real key to fake meat. You can get these little packets of ‘chicken strips’ or ‘beef strips’, fajita style, that are really good. There is also “quorn”, which is fake chicken that’s GROWN. It’s a fungus. Strange. It’s good, but hard to get over when you know what it is. Very nice texture. There’s a lot more to fake meat than just tofu.
I recommend avoiding official tofu dishes at chinese restaurants, from my experience (slime city). But I have found that ordering meat dishes, with tofu substituted for the meat, works much better. It’s firm and usually fried, and of course chinese food is always full of flavorful sauces. My latest such order, my dad tried a bite and actually said “that’s really good!” He was in shock.
Hot dogs. The morningstar farms fake hot dogs (normal size ones – be very afraid of any very large fake hot dogs, YUCK) to me taste exactly the same as cheap real hot dogs. Not good ones, but cheap ones, which is fine by me.
Then there are little packaged meals that are often good and ridiculously expensive. Find the little vegetarian-wackos niche in the freezer aisle, and there are some very interesting things there.
So that’s the fake meat issue, which can cover your cravings very nicely. But fake meat isn’t something I even eat the majority of the time. There’s too much normal veg stuff I’ve always had that is great: spaghetti, mac n’ cheese, pad thai (get it with tofu), PBJs, bean burritos (lots of mexican food, if you pretend they didn’t cook it in lard, or make it yourself), fries, chips, popcorn, bread in all its splendor and forms, salads, potatoes, and on and on. If you check out your diet, you’ll be surprised how many things you eat that are meatless anyway. For me, I had always had meat with lunch and dinner, basically every time, so it was different, but there were still dozens of dishes I could have anyway.
Point is: vegetarians don’t generally eat weird stuff. They eat most of the same stuff everyone else does, just not the big slabs of meat Americans tend to center dinners around.
I say, start small. Look at what’s available that isn’t meat. If it sounds good, even if not quite AS good, get it. If not, get the meat this time and move on. When we started, we did no meat ourselves, but whenever we were out to eat or at someone’s house, and there wasn’t something really good that was veg, we had meat. Eventually we stopped that and said it was cold turkey time (but not literally). My (republican) family has issues with that, and makes WAY too big of a deal out of it, but it works out fine.
Thousands of years of vegetarian experience. Get to know your local Indian vegetarian restaurants.
Don’t like tofu? Meet paneer! It’s cheese, so if you are vegan in the sense of no dairy, it’s not for you, but there is nothing like paneer and cashews in tikka masala! This dish will be known by 9 squillion different names, so just ask for the ingredients.
Indian food, even vegetarian, does depend on dairy products a lot, but even if you don’t, your Indian veg restaurant will still be able to hook you up!
pad thai!!! I have to learn to cook this dish. I love tufu pad thai I could almost live on it. I recently moved to an area that does not have good thai restraurants. There is an eastern indian place I have to check out. You have given me some ideas.
unless you use petroleum-derived synthetic fertilizers. It’s a fact of nature. Vegetables need manure, manure comes from animals and all of our domesticated animals serve multiple purposes. Chickens lay eggs. Cows make milk. Horses pull plows. Pigs root and till the soil. Sheep grow wool. That’s why humans selected them for breeding instead of, say, gila monsters. It’s a great symbiotic cycle of humans serving animals and animals serving humans.
Now every gardener knows you can’t put meat products in a compost heap. So what are you supposed to do when the chicken stops laying and the cow dries up, etc? You use the chicken’s feathers for pillows and mattresses. You use the cow’s hide for shoes and coats. On and on. And, you eat the meat!
Humans have evolved over millenia on this basis and rejecting that natural, simple relationship is the cause of many problems. Our current agricultural crisis is caused by separating animals from crops. Putting animals in industrial ghettos separates them from their natural function. Separating crops from animals has made farmers dependant upon chemical fertilizers.
A balanced diet = a balanced earth. You cannot sustain crop land if animals are treated like pets. They will eat you out of house and home after they have fulfilled their usefulness. Vegetables are food and so are animals. If it were not so, then humans would have stopped protecting chickens, cows and other domesticated animals a long time ago and they would already be extinct, devoured by wolves and foxes.
I feel sorrow for calves penned in boxes. I mourn for dairy cows knee-deep in their own shit. I’m horrified by chickens without beaks in tiny cages. But the problem is not eating meat. The problem is the industrialization of a natural process, the divorcing of animals and crops from their true place in agriculture. And on our plates. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being an omnivore — that’s the natural human condition. It’s how we’ve survived while do-do birds haven’t.
I don’t think anyone on this thread is ” rejecting that natural, simple relationship” of animals and plants.
What most of us are rejecting is the very un-natural way sone humans in the last century or so have devised to industrialize animal production.
Did you know that cows in feed lots are feed shreaded newspaper and old phone books? Because the high percentage of grain in their diets is unnatural, they need “roughage” in order to counteract the way this disrupts their digestive processes. Think about having a constant belly ache – most feed lot cows do.
And most of the manure produced by feed lot animals is so full of antibiotics that is can sterilize your soil (i.e. kill all the beneficial microbes).
Factory farming, the “gift” that just keeps on “giving.”
Nuff, said.
Dodo birds are extinct because, having not co-evolved with humans, they had no fear of us.
The western sailors who first stepped ashore on the island of Madagascar could walk right up to them and club them over the head. In fact, these sailors would go so far as to only wound one, so that her compatriots would come to answer her cries of distress, allowing multitudes to be slaughtered at one time, so that only the “best meat” was taken back to the ship, leaving the majority to rot.
For the last ten thousand years, the vast majority of humanity’s relationship to both wild and domestic animals has been one of explotation, not balance.
Moas, a terrestrial bird similar to a Dodo and native to New Zealand, and the native wild horses of the Americas where slaughtered in the tens of thousdands (run off clifts, etc.). Both to extinction. While humans wasted the %90 of more of the carcases.
I’m all for balance, but it’s a mostly an attractive myth where humans are concered.
Therefore, in my personal approach to “balance,” I choose to not align myself with the most disruptive practices.
pps My ducks may be “pets,” but they sure give me good eggs.
There are people in America who are producing natural meats for you at great effort and expense to themselves. They certify — pass govt. and independent tests — that their meat is antibiotic free, grass fed, the animals live natural lives and are humanely treated in their deaths. If you don’t support these people, they will go out of business and the industrial feed-lots will win.
I have already stated that I am opposed to animal factories. If you reject the meat that is being produced by natural farmers, then you are supporting their adversaries in the industrial meat factories. Don’t give up meat that is naturally farmed because you oppose meat that is unnaturally produced. Vote with your wallet and support organic vegetable and meat farmers.
when you consider the reality that about 10 – 15% of the population is vegetarian. So I’d say the onus is on the other 85-90% to buy the organic free-range meat & support that side of organic farming, not the vegetarians and vegans.
buying local organic/free-range vegetables and fruit, eggs, cheese, other ‘value-add’ products like jams, chutneys and relishes and sauces – all of this all of us should be doing as much as possible, and is the make or break of local farming operations.
And btw, Keres and I are in Australia.
I’m glad you clarified your above statement to centralize your support of humane livestock practices. If that was what you were trying to say above, it was lost to me.
Yes, if people choose to eat animals, they should support ethical growers.
But those growers will not go out of business because of my “defection” from the meat eating masses.
Sustainable farming practices for livestock would only produce a mere fraction of the meat that “mining” the environment does. In a sustainable scenario, even a small portion of people paying premium prices for humanely harvested animals would keep every such grower in business.
The conflict isn’t no meat, versus supporting ethical meat. That’s reality. If all meat were raised ethically and sustainably, there would be hardly any (which means most of use would eat little, if any). And, growers could name their price. The conflict is between “cheap” (environmentally catastrophic) meat, and sustainable farming practices. So if you wish to appeal to meat eaters to change to humane small suppliers, by all means do. But please don’t put the continued existence of such busnesses in my lap. I, and other vegetarians/vegans are not the problem (at least in this instance).
In Tasmania, where myriad and I live, there is a farm that produces sheep cheese called Grand Vewe (a punny play on “Grand View”).
We occassionally drive down to their farm and splurge on their products. We know that they harvest their young males for meat, and we assume that they slaughter their older ewes as well.
We matronize them because we know that their animals are happy and well cared for. Their dairy sheep enjoy lush pastures and kind handing from a family that loves what they do.
So, we are supporting the very people you are touting above. Plus, great cheese. Mmmmmmmmmmmm.
Think about it a little more ….
Why is there industrialization? Often because there isn’t enough land left … even here, in rural America, more and more farms are being sold for those hideous McMansions occupied by fat people who have to have steak every night for dinner.
And because agribusiness has taken away the chance of a small famer to make it in today’s world.
Furthermore, the raising has shifted to poorer countries — such as Brazil and Argentina — where millions (MILLIONS) of acres of rain forest have been razed to make room for cattle raised to be slaughtered for McDonald’s hamburgers.
Susan, if you don’t support small producers of food they will not survive. If you don’t support natural, organic producers of vegetables — and meat and milk — they will be out of business.
There is plenty of land in rural America lying fallow and unused while the owners work at Walmart. The scarcity of land is a lie! A pure lie! The industrialization of farming wasn’t based on a lack of land; it was born in greed, in centralizing profits for the few instead of the many.
The ability of small farmers to survive depends on you supporting them by buying their products. If a farmer could make a living off of his land he would not sell it to McMansion developers. Why can’t he make a living? Because people buy cheap and don’t think about the quality of what they are buying.
Quality costs more these days and if you want it you need to support the people who can provide it. If the fellow who sells you free-range eggs offers you a stew chicken, buy it! Make Cockaleekie soup or Chicken n’Dumplins. If you trust him to provide you with wholesome eggs, trust him to provide you with a wholesome chicken in the pot. Give him the extra profit that might insure his survival.
Turning against industrial animal farms does not mean turning against meat. We need to separate the two issues. It is not unnatural for humans to eat meat. It is unnatural for that meat to be produced in factories that deny dignity to animals. Can you see the distinction?
My last reply to you sjct. I feel that we have common ground, but that you are missing what I have to say when you keep using words like “natural” and “unnatural.”
Again, I’m not arguing that eating meat is unnatural. Nor have I read anyone else making that claim. But neither is meat eating necessary for most people eating an otherwise sound diet (Seventh Day Adventists, who are vegan, have unbelievably low disease rates, and are commensurately long lived).
As a denizen of the “first world” I am priviledged enough to have aquiring enough food be a relatively minor concern (although, I have been poor to the point of starving).
Indeed, at this point in my life I eat too much food, as my waistline will attest. It’s not that I have no desire to eat animals (though at this point, I have little), it’s that I don’t want to eat animals badly enough to do the work of finding suppliers that could meet all of my concerns. That, and I’m not sure that there are any, as I’m pretty picky. Which is not to say that everyone who does not share all my concerns is less ethical than I – just different in what matter to them.
I think you are voicing your concerns to the wrong people. Cuz, mostly we are in agreement with you.
I grew up on 8 acres of land, which my parents ran to be as self-sufficient as possible, including growing our own meat. One of my strongest happy childhood memories is sitting at the dinner table, and us all looking at our plates to play “what on it came from off our land” – and that regularly included lamb, as we had sheep. I watched happy sheep in our paddocks get shot without having a clue what was going on, die peeacefully and get stripped and prepared, with nary a qualm.
I guess what I’m trying to illustrate is that your post implies an assumption that vegetarians and vegans are somehow even more cut off from and ignorant of the natural cycle of life and our place in it becuase they reject meat.
Yet you also acknowledge the terrible harm done to both that cycle, animals and ourselves by industrialised meat production (and agriculture in general). In that context, I see nothing at all simplistic or further removed in a vegetarian rejecting meat on the “simple” ground that it is produced in a way that causes tremendous animal suffering. It’s certainly not simplistic or non-reality-based to reject meat from a realisation that how we produce it is profoundly unsustainable, and profoundly unjust.
If we ever want to have a hope of getting back to that natural cycle you wrote so beautifully about, it will take a significant amount of the population outright rejecting meat, and others eating significantly less and demanding sustainable, humane sources for it. Otherwise, industrialised farming and meat production will continue as long as people unquestioningly eat meat.
After that, there are also modern-day health issues; it was natural for early Europeans to make sausages, cheese wheels and pickled fish, and live on nothing else for 4 months of the year – and they paid a price for it; we have an opportunity now to re-evaluate what we eat and why for better individual and planetary health, and that would certainly mean for westerners, considerably less meat – especially when you consider that your average western vegetarian still eats twice as much protein as they need, and about 4 times more than your average third world dweller. And then we all get heart disease and osteoporosis.
After that, there’s a serious debate to be had in terms of the sheer number of humans, expected to top out at 9 billion, and what we can sustinably grow and eat. I doubt very much that large quantities of meat are going to be part of it.
The part of your comment that I am going to address — unfairly is: your post implies an assumption that vegetarians and vegans are somehow even more cut off from and ignorant of the natural cycle of life and our place in it becuase they reject meat.
I am being unfair because, on the whole, your comment supports my position. In a balanced world, the meat on the table is what you remember from your childhood. It’s a natural by-product of a wholesome life.
However, the rejection of meat is, indeed, an elitist option. Out here in the hinterlands, tofu is not available. There are no organic produce sections. No “whole foods” sections in the Produce Dept. No friggnin’ tofu. Do you get that? The Food Lion and the Piggly-Wiggly hereabouts do not sell tofu!
If you are a mother of four on food stamps, you buy dried beans and flavor them with pork. You try to gift your family with a pot roast on Sunday. And a stewed chicken on Wednesday when the specials kick in.
I’m going to bed now; I’ve stayed up too late answering these replies. I’ll cope in the morning…
Good night and bless all. I pray for harmony and balance after the oil peak subsides and natural farming becomes profitable once more.
Ok, I lied, one last response.
Most of us here seem to know that we have choices not everyone has – like having a computer and internet access. The vast majority of us here are clearly materially better off then “the masses.”
As for needing tofu, or special ingredients, that’s a myth – one partially promulgated by people who want you to think that meat has to be “substituted” for (i.e. that it is necessary). It’s also been promulgated by, yes, elitist vegetarians, who want their meatless diet to seem “special” and not just the norm for most of the world’s people.
I’ve travelled far and wide in the US (at least 40 states), and I know how hard it is to find decent food in some areas. Fresh vegies can be few and far between. On the other hand, rice, beans, potatoes, breads, pastas, in short – carbohydrates, which make up the bulk of most vegetarian meals, are usually plentiful and cheap. Bake some yams, and some onions, and maybe half a butternut squash, throw them on some rice made with vegetable stock (and some local mushrooms, if you’ve got them), and you have yourself a cheap and tasty meal.
Beans and lard is not healthy. It’s truly poverty food, not just because of its price, but because it is nutritionally impoverished. Which is why I’ve spent the last twenty-plus years, in some of the most impoverished parts of America, trying to spread the good word that there are better options to “po’ food,” that are just as cheap and even more tasty. It’s also why I’ve given my surplus garden veggies and eggs to the local women’s shelter, etc. I don’t desire to be “special.”
I really do know what it means to be hungry. I’m 5’7″, and at one time I was so poor that I got down to 118lbs (and wore a 28″ waist 32″ inseam mens jeans). I know that’s “normal” and even desirable, by Hollywood standards, but I’m muscular and on me it meant that my hip bones were over an inch in front of my belly. And, that all I thought about was food. Hunger is horrible. I’d never ask anyone to put any ideal ahead of addressing that. Nor have I.
If you think what I’ve written here supports your skewed view of vegetarian elitism, well you’re not reading very closely or with open eyes.
It’s probably worth pointing out here that the vast majority of the world is totally or nearly vegetarian. Yes, consumer capitalism has exploited a niche market in wealthy vegetarians to cater to that elite, but take a look at cooking/restaurants/shops aimed at elite meat eaters and tell me there’s any difference. Vegetarians the world over are usually the poorest of the poor, because meat is the food of the wealthy.
And this is the inherent contradiction I refer to in yrou posts: in one breath you accuse people like me of elitism for being vegetarian because your average joe, according to you, can’t live off a vegetarian diet from the local PigglyWiggly, and in the next you exhort me to eat organic meat from small farm holddings – like your average joe can a) find that in the PigglyWiggly and b) afford it.
So if you’re talking about consumer pressure, I’d much rather place mine behind a push for decent & cheap fresh vegetables in regional PigglyWigglies, giving the chance for desparately needed nutrition to be available, and behind demonstrating through how I live that the long-standing cultural association of meat & wealth, meat & success, needs to be debunked.
So a lot of what you are talking about is far more far-reaching in scope, and has to do with at once culture and biology(why meat is prized), and consumer capitalism.
People are inately cruel, but people are also inately kind. People are capable of the level of intelligence and sensitivity their culture will encourage, honor and support.
How far we have to go is to a relationship with nature lived and understood by humans for thousands of years, represented in our time by the last “traditional” and indigenous” peoples. A key to our future is our past, and such understandings can be applied as best we can to our lives in the present.
It makes the most sense from that perspective to separate the issues, as many do, to focus on the cruelities of factory farming and the ecological devastation caused by fast food merchandizing and other industrial food production, rather than an absolutist view focused on the inherent pain caused by killing any living being, and quite possibly any living thing.
A light opened in my mind and heart the first time I heard of the traditional Native practice of thanking the animal killed in the hunt, as well as the plants uprooted for food and baskets. It’s sometimes said that the inherent contradiction of killing to live, or even the cyclical relationship of death and life, was a source of the religious and philosophical impulse in early human cultures.
Wow! The power of suggestion is just amazing. After reading your diary and seeing the piggy, I went shopping at Costco and bought an entire pork loin, and it wasn’t even on my list. And I didn’t even used to eat pork. Thisw is just phenomenal. But I wasn’t wearing a leather belt or shoes…does that make it ok?
OK. I’m a throwback. Still tear up wistfully when I smell tobacco smoke, even from afar. But I don’t do dope. And I don’t drink Scotch anymore. Just a little gin, now and then. And lite beer, only lite beer. And I’d eat more chicken if I could stand the smell of raw poultry. Love cheese too, but you know, there is that cholesterol thing.
And you know what? One of these days you are going to realise that most of us poor fuckers are struggling just to make it from one damn day to the next without getting fancy schmancy about it or making it any tougher or more excruciatingly painful than it already is.
That vegetarians on this thread aren’t just as much ‘poor fuckers’ than everyone else?
The rest of your post seems to mainly designed to provoke, so I’m not interested in feeding it.
Like the diary wasn’t meant to provoke.
Oh, shit, I forgot the Chianti and the fava beans.
For your comments ???
Susan, thanks for this heartfelt diary. I find that I’m eating less and less meat these days. I rarely have beef and we do try to get free range products as much as is possible. I too have been disturbed by the practices of farming animals. As to Cornyn, he is a f*cking asshole.
I have been lurking on Booman since the DKos “incident”. I have always wanted to post, but this post really motivated me. I have been vegan for 6 years and a vegetarian for 11 years before that. I also do animal rescue…and yes, I care about people, too. I read a great quote about the difference between intrinsic and use value. I found this a good distinction between people who eat meat and people who do not. Since I feel that a cow, fish, chicken etc. have intrinsic value as living beings with feelings, I certainly can not eat them. This seems to me also a useful way to think about many on the Bush administration. Workers, soldiers, pregnant women are useful, but do not have intrinsic value in and of themselves. Yes, I know this smacks of ecofeminism, but since I embrace that not a problem for me. And some of my favorite people are carnivores. I not attacking meat eaters. That is a personal decision. P.S. Thanks for the link to Meet Your Meat.
I love it when lurkers come forth from the shadows. Thanks for chiming in.
.
mrsb
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼▼▼ READ MY DIARY ▼
You’re right. And anybody who makes light of the fact that many humans treat other animals as Nazis treated people in death camps, simply doesn’t get it, or won’t admit that they do. They are apparently incapable of confronting the immorality of their actions, just as the Nazis were. As American slave “holders” were. And on and on into history.
All murder and torture is equally immoral. To pretend otherwise is morally bankrupt.
Susan,
Thanks for the powerfull diary….. Makes me wonder how I have strayed so far from a mostly veggie diet…. Brings back thoughts of one of life’s great experiences; traveling to the garden, to eat a tomato fresh from dad’s garden. Which reminds me of climbing a pear/apple/cherry tree, to find the perfect fruit… If I ever left the Colorado high country, it would be to garden, to a greater extent.
We as the ‘human’ race have strayed so far from what is natural… Food is just part of the disaster waiting to happen to the ‘human’ race. Cities and what they do to ‘humans’ a disgrace to our ancestors.
All should strive to interact with nature, even if it is only a walk in the park. Spend time with children before they are ‘human’ized. Spend time with animals, bond with the little critters and the birds. Plant a garden if one has time(Hint MAKE THE TIME). I will expand my herbs and try things to make my veggies work better here at 8,360 feet alititude; I am at. I will continue to rejoice in my expanding flower gardens…
Magic is a fact of life, and one only needs to walk into mother-nature, and embrace her, to understand magic is alive and well…. Time enjoying mother nature a blessing overlooked by many.
Plant a seed, watch magic unfold. Gather the future seeds, and share with friends. To see plants that have magically appeared from seeds, coming from seeds, that came from seeds, a magic way to gift a friend….. To grace a salad with Nasturtiums flowers or leaves from your garden… To spice it up with herbs/spices grown by you; divine.