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Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Food Hard to Swallow

Posted by Alison Hallett on Tue, Aug 21 at 1:57 PM

B.R. Myers has a provocative article in September’s Atlantic, subheaded “The gourmet’s ongoing failture to think in moral terms.” Myers takes on both Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (“Is our national eating disorder really a matter of people pacing supermarket aisles in an agony of indecision? Or do we perhaps feel too little anxiety about what we eat?”) and the cavalier attitude toward suffering reflected in Best Food Writing of 2006. He essentially accuses foodies of prioritizing pleasure over morality, and argues that “because it tastes good” is not an ethical justification for meat consumption:

The pleasures of the oral cavity (though we must say “palate” instead) are now widely regarded as more important, more intrinsically moral, and a more vital part of civilized tradition than any other pleasures. People who think nothing of saying “I’m not much of a reader” will grow shamefaced when admitting an ignorance of wine or haute cuisine. Some recent movies have even tried to turn banquets into heroic affairs. Advertising has abetted the trend, while political correctness, with its horror of judging anyone’s “lifestyle choices,” has done its bit to muffle dissent.
The sexual revolution went faster than this but not as far, which is why we can still call someone a lecher. Our common language no longer has a pejorative for those who live to eat. Gourmand has taken on an even fancier ring than gourmet, while the word glutton can be applied only to someone who eats an enormous amount of food at one sitting—usually cheap food, and with the standard of what constitutes “enormous” revised upward each year for obvious reasons.

…the idolatry of food cuts across class lines. This can be seen in the public’s toleration of a level of cruelty in meat production that it would tolerate nowhere else. If someone inflicts pain on an animal for visual, aural, or sexual gratification, we consider him a monster, and the law makes at least a token effort at punishment. If someone’s goal is to put the “product” in his mouth? Chacun à son goût

Part of the article is available here.

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If someone inflicts pain on an animal for visual, aural, or sexual gratification, we consider him a monster, and the law makes at least a token effort at punishment.
see: Michael Vick

But pounding a bolt into the head of a cow, stringing it up by one hind leg and breaking bones in the process (hoping it's dead so it doesn't fight and fall to the floor), cutting it's throat, gutting it, etc. Well, that's just food. Eat up. Cows don't have feelings, right?

Posted by Hula | August 22, 2007 9:19 AM

It's the constant parade of guilt on upper-middle-class people that irritates me about articles like this.

Meat is produced cruelly....that is, unless you buy the more expensive kind of meat you get at Whole Paycheck. Wait a minute, we're rich enough to eat vegan organic food and assuage our guilt!

Go back to fressing at Old Country Buffet and eating greaseburgers at McDonald's, peasants. We've got ours!

Foodieism is good when it encourages people to buy free-range, local, and organic, and enjoy the process of cooking and eating their food. It should help reduce the pitching of heavily processed or unappetizing food to the average American consumer.

But there's always snobbery lurking in the background, as well as vegan fundamentalism.

Posted by Aaron V. | August 22, 2007 12:19 PM

I eat meat because soy gives you cancer, and because otherwise I'd be fat as a house on carbs (I tried being a vegetarian, I'm too lazy). In Southern Mexico, I think I got a look at HONEST meat-eating. The blood and screams are often right there for you to see. Then you have to make your choice.

Posted by Grant Cogswell | August 22, 2007 3:42 PM

I've been a vegetarian for 20 years now. When I learned about the healty-risks involved in eating meat, the cruelty involved in processing, and pollution caused by factory farming and waste. I stopped eating it period. I didn't agonize over not ever tasting roast beef or barbecued chicken again -there are plenty of other things to eat. I just cut it out of my diet period. It wasn't as big a deal for me as it apparently was for people around me. there were some ignorant family freak-outs but they all accepted it in time more than I want to accept their continued eating of meat, but hey, it's a free country, -unless you're a cow, chicken, fish, pig or goose liver. I still enjoy food, probably more so than when I was a meat eater. It is unfortunate that more "foodie"-fave restaurants aren't more accommodating though. Oh, well, I'm a good cook and I can spend my money elsewhere.

Posted by Beer Batter | August 23, 2007 5:04 PM

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