"The pleasure of eating should be an extensive pleasure, not that of the mere gourmet. People who know the garden in which their vegetables have grown and know that the garden is healthy will remember the beauty of the growing plants, perhaps in the dewy first light of morning when gardens are at their best. Such a memory involves itself with the food and is one of the pleasures of eating. The knowledge of the good health of the garden relieves and frees and comforts the eater. The same goes for eating meat. The thought of the good pasture and of the calf contentedly grazing flavors the steak. Some. I know, will think it bloodthirsty or worse to eat a fellow creature you have known all its life. On the contrary, I think it means that you eat with understanding and with gratitude. A significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one's accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes. The pleasure of eating, then, may be the best available standard of our health. And this pleasure, I think, is pretty fully available to the urban consumer who will make the necessary effort."

From Wendell Berry "The Pleasures of Eating"

You can google if you want to read the whole thing(or any other of his writings). His writing is great and he is probably one of the most conscientious people on the planet.

Yeah, but 98% of meat, dairy, eggs are factory farmed. Instead of thinking of the pasture, you can think of the battery cages, the chained veal calf standing in his own filth (veal is the end result of milk), the crated confined-for-life dead-inside pig...

Don't delude yourself with mythical images. Eat animals if you want, but know you're eating suffering.

http://www.whyvegan.com

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again...

Look, I'm not going to yell at you for not being vegan for this week, or even scold you, per se.

I realize that we live in a culture that totally supports and embraces ignoring the suffering/deaths of animals and ignoring the destruction of the planet. I've felt very depressed this week thinking about this, the fact that this world is hurtling towards its own destruction on the backs of cheap hamburgers.

I wish to god that every piece of meat someone ate came with a complete price-tag of habitat lost, suffering endured, the torments of death, water pollution, the misery of slaughterhouse work, the resources wasted, the atmosphere lost, etc. etc. etc.

The world is eating itself to death, and in the end, people are going to realize that it wasn't fucking worth it. Not for any steak, not for any piece of chicken. Losing the atmosphere, the oceans, the rainforest. Not. Fucking. Worth it.

I really hope that you will hop back on the wagon, at least for your promised week and take advantage of reading and thinking about the many materials that have been sent your way.

Guilt is useless and I don't recommend it. But I do recommend complete, unflinching honesty with yourself about the actual price you're willing to pay in order to eat meat, dairy or eggs, or the price you are willing to inflict on others, humans and animals alike.

Also - I don't know if you're planning on having children (I'm not), but if you are consider the kind of world you are leaving them. The picture for the next 100 years keeps getting grimmer and grimmer. Maybe one person alone can't make a difference to this, but a lot of us together can.

Remember that each time you eat, you are making choices about not only what you want to eat, but about the kind of planet everyone else has to live on, too.

Sincerely,
Jennifer

p.s.

There is pleasure in veganism too. I defy Wendell Berry or any omnivore out there to enjoy their food more than I do.

Veganism may seem austere at first, but that's because it takes time to realign your palate and get rid of various psychological associations most of us have with food.

Maaaaan...that burger at Skyline is sounding better all the time....

Matt, There's no such thing as the Vegan police. You're not going to be thrown in Vegan Jail for not being 100% Vegan. I'd just say don't abandon your path of considering what you eat and why you eat it because you had a non-veg meal. Being Veg isn't about extremism, it's about making a personal choice about what you eat and its impact on both the world and animals who live in it.

Thanks Matt! I just won enough money for a surf n' turf dinner through the "How Long Do You Think He Can Possibly Last On A Vegan Diet Anyway" betting pool.

Cheers,

Dear Astor-

I'm not deluding myself in any way. I've actually visited many of the farms, both animal and vegetable, from which a lot of my food is coming from. Can you say the same?

Jennifer-

Speaking personally, I enjoy my food a lot more when I grow it myself or know the people that grew it or raised it. Have you ever read any Wendell Berry(other than what I posted)? At least I've read Animal Liberation. I love Singer's stance on zoophilia btw.

In any case, I eat with a clear conscience, and Matt, you can too.

In a sign of indignation toward this rampant over-liberalism, I am going to throw a steak in the trash!!

Well, not really... but some of the arguments are making me laugh. Why can't we be friends?

Girl_Cook - I enjoy my food a lot more when I know that it is not fucking up the planet and making the future bleaker for me and all the other people in the world. I also enjoy my food a lot more when I know that it is not the carcass of a sentient being no different from my beloved cats in any physical, mental or emotional aspect.

Call me crazy, but I don't enjoy paying other people to kill animals on my behalf!

Eating local, organic vegetables is something which many vegans do. Two of my best vegan friends are Wendell Berry fans, but they're still vegans.

Additionally, even if I didn't absolutely love my vegan food, enjoyment is not some sort of standard by which all food choices should be made. If it were, many people would be eating only doughnuts or steaks, etc.

And food "choices" are not benign personal choices, but effect the well-being of the entire planet. I'm not on some kind of anti-enjoyment crusade, rather I believe in thinking about how much we might "enjoy" a planet that has been warmed to the point where millions starve, due to loss of viable croplands.

Additionally, I see no reason why someone's brief gustatory pleasure should trump the greater pleasure a chicken or a bull might have in continuing to roam in a pasture or feel the sun on its back for the duration of its life-span.

And since vegan diets offer considerable pleasure to many people, including those (like myself) who thought they could never give up the taste of cheese, the whole notion that we should eat more pleasurably through the deaths of others and the destruction of the planet seems bizarre to me anyway.

Anyway, the philosophical notion that personal pleasure trumps everything could also be used to justify things like rape and stealing. Personal pleasure is not a very reliable test of ethics. In every other area, when one person's pleasure starts harming someone else, that's usually considered to be wrong or illegal.

And the cheap shot at Singer seems to indicate to me that you haven't found a way to counter his arguments pertaining to the subject at hand, so you attempt to discredit him by bringing up one of his more controversial views instead.

It takes a lot more than abstaining from animal products to be an ethical and responsible eater.

It is possible to eat responsibly and ethically and still eat meat.

Just because someone does not eat meat does not mean they are eating ethically and responsibly.

Stop factory farming, shut down McDonalds, and while we're at it get rid of SUV's, Hummer limosines, and urban sprawl.

Cook: If Matt was eating at a restaurant, the chances are extremely high that he was eating regular 'ol factory farmed animals or their products. So because you think the animals that YOU eat had nice lives, that erases that all these other animals were raised and killed in brutal factory farmed conditions and no one should feel bad about eating their flesh? What?

I honestly don't know why an omnivore like yourself protests so much, unless it's defensiveness. The AR/vegans do this "battle" because we know how animals are treated for food and we're trying to spare them endless suffering. But I don't really know why you're so hot under the collar about what anyone else eats - since your goal seems to be "pleasure" and most humans don't seem to have a problem pursuing that without your help.

Dear girl_cook,

With all due respect we disagree that you can eat ethically and still eat meat (at least if you're able to survive without it - I don't think there aren't any exceptions).

I haven't seen you refute the heart of Peter Singer's argument.

I haven't seen you offer an argument for why eating an animal when you don't need to for survival is ethical.

Nor have you taken into account the animals' interests in continuing to live and not having their throats cut. Yeah, raising animals for food in better conditions is better, but it doesn't make it ethical just because it's better than the way most animals are raised for food.

At the end of the day, that animal is still getting sent to slaughter and that animal is still no different in any real way from a cat or a dog.

I'm not trying to personally attack you, but you have not provided an argument here, so much as an assertion.Why is it ethical, in your view, to eat animals?

And yeah, there's more to eating ethically than not eating animals, but since when can people not do it all?

The one doesn't negate the other. Indeed, the best thing I've gotten from this whole on-line debate is a greater awareness of areas I can improve in with my own buying decisions. I know many vegans already, however, who eat almost exclusively fresh, local, organic produce.

Also - as much as Wendell Berry can wax poetic on a subject, that too does not make it ethical or good by definition. "Gone with the Wind" had some pretty keen passages on the "romantic" aspects of slavery after all. That is now horribly dated since people have seen through that veil. Good writing can be seductive, though.

We agree on many things. We disagree on one. I am glad for the things we agree on.

- Jen

"huh", your moral relativism is retarded.

You can use arguments like yours to question why there are so many over-moneyed WASPs bitching about veganism and killing animals when they're living on land that required the execution of thousands of people who were here LONG before they even showed up.

Alex_Jon

So should rich yuppies live on land that people were killed for AND kill animals and destroy the environment too? Would that make the world a better place?

And most of the vegans I know are lower-middle class. Granted, I am grateful to be lower-middle class and have a safety net, but I didn't have health insurance for most of the last 3 years, and had to beg a hospital for an operation, so it's not like I'm sitting around lying on cushions while someone feeds me grapes over here.

Quite frankly, I find it much more bourgeouise to be eating meat (a more expensive food if our government didn't subsidize it) at the expense of the planet, the animals and the very poor people who have to work in slaughterhouses.

Posing veganism as some kind of "class" issue is getting it backwards. No, we're not going to end world hunger by freeing up all that agricultural land for grain that we would if we abandoned a meat-based diet, but that's because of the crappy capitalist systems we all live under, not because we wouldn't have more food to feed the poor of the world.

I also think that the vegans of the world - the people with compassion for those who are killed and hurt by others - would have been a lot more likely to give a shit and try to stop Native Americans from being slaughtered. Native Americans and black people were both once considered to be "animals" by the racists out there, and beneath concern. To a vegan, no one who can feel pain is considered "beneath concern". We have simply extended our compassion out beyond the human race; it certainly doesn't mean we cease to care about humans - quite the opposite. It tends to be people who stop caring about animals that also stop caring about humans. There's a reason that childhood mutilation of animals is considered a sign that a child might grow up to be a serial killer.

There are some awesome vegans in this town who care about animal issues and human issues. We care about them because we want to make this world a better place where no one is massacred, slaughtered and displaced.

Forgetting the moral aspects of veganism is pretty narrow. It's not that veganism is bad; it's vegans that cock things up. A lot of fascist implications of stupidity and moral decay make for a ideology that stinks of judeo-christian demagogy.

In regards to the other part of my post, I will admit my remark about native americans was a bit leading-- but your response was a little clumsy. Do you honestly think that vegans would have stopped that? You forget how malleable culture and society are-- capitalism is one facet that will change time and again, and so is veganism.

Be a vegan because you want to do good and feel healthy... don't be that "YOU KNOW THE WORLD WOULD BE BETTER" vegan chica that flies off her rails in a way that attempts to imply moral superiority.

You're SO making me want to go back to meat 100%, missy, and I MEAN IT.

I will pick up that enchirito, I will consume it.

Alex Jon - that's fine. You live with your own conscience. If you know how those animals were treated (I doubt you really do) and you still make that choice to consume them, no one's going to stop you. To say that Jennifer "flies off her rails" is quite ridiculous. You're obviously the one acting rudely and defensively against someone who's given you more patience than you deserve. To make a kind of veiled threat - "I'm going to go eat animals because you were mean to me!" is just fucking juvenile.

Jennifer, you make far too many assumptions--about how current-day vegans would treat Native Americans vs. the rest of the population, about what exactly morality and ethics entail (which, you may be surprised to learn, are not decided by you), what sort of foods omnivores eat and where they come from (many health-conscious people buy their produce and meat products at the Farmer's Market or ensure that such meat products are indeed from small, family-owned farms, &c.) and how much all vegans care about any given issue (you are one vegan; your gross generalization only serves to make you look like someone who has trouble with oversimplification).

Your reasons for being a vegan are indeed noble, as is anyone that sacrifices that much for a belief they have, but your judgment calls of the rest of the planet are silly and misguided at best. You are helping no one by taking the position of piety when you should be more concerned with educating others on why you eat the way you do and empathizing with others who do not agree with you.

For the record, I eat very little meat. I buy organic and local produce whenever possible and do not eat or purchase processed foods. I am not vegan and have no intention of ever being so, but that does not make me or anyone else less moral than you think you are. It seems to me that you desire mostly to isolate yourself onto a plane where you feel you are superior to the rest of us--except for a small club of SuperVegans you likely interact with. This is of course an assumption of mine, and if it is not true, I suggest you reexamine the way you word your arguments.

Eh, if you laid off the animals you might lose some weight too, Alex Jon. Your myspace picture? NOT cute.

Your body is a fat graveyard.

Allison -

I have no interest in being morally superior to anyone - I would love it if everyone on this planet lived a more ethical, environmentally friendly life than I do, because if that was the case, there would still be a planet to inhabit 80 years down the line.

If I come off that way, I'm sorry, but I was pretty pissed off by Alex_Jon's idea that it's somehow frivolous or irrelevant to care about animal rights and the environment simply because once nobody cared about Native Americans. It doesn't make any sense!

The remark seemed to imply that vegans don't care about any other issues, which is simply not the case.

As to my thoughts about what the type of person who is a vegan today might have done back then - that is just a guess. But I think it is a pretty good analogy to say that a person who cares about a class of beings that the majority of people don't care about today, would have done the same in another time.

I found alex_jon's remarks about class to be disrespectful of the real people whom I know as well as inaccurate.

As to omnivores who eat free-range animals - that's better than factory-farmed animals - I agree. But I do disagree as to it being ethically sound. Just as you disagree with me - you see?

I don't accuse you of being morally superior or feeling you have the monopoly on what is right because you disagree with me. Simply stating my opinion and arguing it does not mean that that is what I am doing, any more than you arguing your opinion means that that is what you're doing.

As to what morality and ethics do entail - what is your standard? My standard is one that is based on causing the least harm to the environment, people and animals as I can - it's somewhat utilitarian. I didn't invent it, I came to it after doing a lot of reading of other people's philosophy and a lot of thinking.

The question that no one on this particular thread is answering is - what ethical or moral system are you using in deciding that it is ethical to eat animals? This is not meant as an attack, but as a genuine question, because that is a place from where we can participate in a genuine discussion, without it being about everyone taking everything personally and making attacks on what they perceive as each other's tone.

The OTHER question that no one—particularly Matt—on this thread is answering: What was the meat that broke the vegan's back?

he, I stopped trimming down-- it's all about muscle growth... rugby's coming up again! Do you want me to brag so you can deflect it with ego-stroking statements of your own? I got laid all weekend, and people bought my drinks-- you? I can carry a 290 pound man down a flight of stairs -- you? etc. etc. etc. -- take this as my reply to every "lol u dum carnivor" argument. :3

reilly, sarcasm. And yes, I have hunted, fished, I've been to slaughterhouses, and I've done the student activist thing.

I'm not going to go vegan as part of this fad, and not because of a pamphlet, or as part of some lemming-like surge towards empty liberalism. If it's my decision, I will make it, and I'm hoping that's the case with you and the others here. ... but don't fool yourself into thinking every vegan is doing it for more than their own ego... there are plenty out there, and they make themselves VERY known.

Charity without humility is simply ill-will in a pretty package. :)

alex_jon

It is not my experience that vegans go vegan for their ego. For one thing, vegans get more shit from people for being vegan then you can imagine as an omnivore, even if you feel put upon occasionally by vegans or vegetarians. Most of us have to put up with many of our family and friends criticizing and ridiculing our decision until they get tired of it. And then deal with most of the rest of the people we meet doing the same thing. You have to develop a pretty thick skin, and if you are to relate with people cordially, you often have to abandon your ego altogether.

There are cool omnivores out there, no doubt about it, but if I wanted to stroke my ego, to feel better, I would have stayed an omnivore. You get tons of support and positive feedback for doing what everyone else is doing. You get to slap each other on the back and make fun of vegetarians. Hell, I used to make fun of vegetarians.

Indeed, the only reason I was able to go vegan was by letting go of my ego - my need to be "right". My ego felt very threatened when my former husband went vegetarian one day. I accused him of judging me even though he was very kind and gentle and put no pressure on me whatsoever to change. I walked around with a grumpy face about his vegetarianism for about a week, feeling very threatened and judged. Then I actually took his pamphlet to the bathroom and learned what a factory farm was. The shock was enough to cause me to look beyond myself and my ego and care about what was true and ethical, not what made me feel comfortable and self-satisfied.

And I did a lot more than read that pamphlet - I read (and continue to read) tons of books, articles and studies about the state of our world. All of them point in the direction of people needing to eat at least a lot less meat, and many point to eliminating it altogether as the ideal. You talk about vegans going vegan based on reading a pamphlet - well, for the majority of omnivores out there, they haven't even read a pamphlet on what they're eating; they just blindly follow what they've always done without research. Yet you are expecting vegans to be well-read. Most of us are, but do you see what a double standard you're expecting here?

Veganism is not a fad for anyone I know. I've never met a vegan who didn't go vegan out of deeply felt compassion combined with excellent research into what's going on in the world today - from factory-farming, to global-warming, to Peak Oil, etc.

This is not about "empty liberalism" at all - whatever that means to you. Rather, veganism can be a big part of the solution to many of the problems we face today - from global warming (google Diet and Energy - gidon and eshel study), to water pollution, to Peak Oil, to the myriad chronic health problems people are facing today. Since it is a solution controlled by the individual, it is not dependent on election results or policy-makers to implement, which makes it even less empty. It is a tangible project a person can undertake each day.

There are many many more reasons to eat a vegan diet, or at least a more plant-based diet. Even Michael Pollan - author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" - no animal rights activist - recently wrote an article for the NY Times entitled Unhappy Meal, where he advocates using meat only as a garnish, as part of a larger article about healthy food.

And yeah, there are unpleasant vegans, and you may consider me to be one, who knows. But there are plenty of unpleasant omnivores out there as well. The fact that there are some unpleasant people involved in a movement is no reason to discredit it. And like it or not, the scientific research out there shows that a vegan diet is better for the environment than a meat-based diet. I'm not saying this to be self-righteous, I'm saying this because it's accurate, and I'd like to be able to survive into the middle of the 21st century. Things aren't looking so good on that end with the way this country eats, drives and consumes in general.

It's not about being right; it's about survival and it's about compassion. And if I talk with people like you on boards it's not to try to stroke my ego (as if being called all kinds of names would achieve that anyhow), it's because I'm tired of seeing a real solution to all these problems ridiculed as if it's some frivolous fad. If people continue to think that various solutions to the world's problems are fads, then we're all fucked.

I want to make a change to improve the world. I think most people do want to make a change. There are other things people can do besides going vegan, but the sooner veganism is added to that tool kit of ways people can reduce their impact on the planet, the better. Time has already run out. Why, exactly, are you so opposed to veganism? That is my question for you.

- Jen

Jen- your blog postings need cliff notes.

Jen - you're freaking brilliant, patient, and the most sensible person on here - I always look forward to what you write. Don't listen to people who need posts to be contained in a couple sentences - not all ideas can be.

I want to make a change to improve the world. I think most people do want to make a change. There are other things people can do besides going vegan, but the sooner veganism is added to that tool kit of ways people can reduce their impact on the planet, the better. Time has already run out. Why, exactly, are you so opposed to veganism? That is my question for you.

I'm not opposed to veganism. Whatever works, frankly. I'm personally opposed to people militantly telling others what they should do. Which frankly, is how vegan supporters in this thread come across to me.

Anti-authoritarians don't cotton well to that kind of wrestling.

Do anti-authoritarians like animal abuse?

http://www.whyvegan.com
http://www.meetyourmeat.com

Animals don't cotton too well to being confined in unbearably small places, bored, miserable, sick; being crammed into transport trucks (no weather control) - wings and legs broken in the process; being slaughtered in the most miserable and yet routine of ways...

Make no mistake - you can do exactly what you want, down to choosing whether or not to read what vegans write. The animals have NO choice. I think your anti-authoritarianism means doing whatever you want, and forcing animals to do whatever you want too.

At this point I really don't give a shit whether you convert to veganism or not. The planet's dying, and you meat eaters are just speeding up that process; your conscience is truly sick and nonfunctionl; and your selfish whining "I can do whatever I want no matter what happens to animals!!!!" is revolting. And you're stupid - you really don't get that vegans are doing this FOR ANIMALS WHO ARE BEING TERRIBLY HURT AND CANNOT SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES while you're standing there trivially whining about being able to stuff some piece of food into your mouth.