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The Omnivore's Angst

What should I eat? Should I stop eating meat? What about becoming a vegan? No, too harsh. What if I eat only meat that has been killed humanely? That sounds sort of OK. So, where do I get that? And what is humanely? Kill is kill, isn't it? Do we have a right to kill animals? And eat them? Is there any pork that I can eat? No, I don't think so. I have heard that pigs are really smart (Hey, I saw the movie, Babe.) and suffer like we do and eat each others tails off when they are confined, so, no, I don't think I can eat bacon anymore. Should I stop eating anything that has a mother? Do fish have mothers? Can they think? How about clams? Do they have mothers? Oh, but they are bottom feeders. Yuck. Can I eat eggs? And drink milk? Yes, because chickens and cows give gladly. At least I think they do. But what about those horrible chicken mills where they stand around in their own poop and peck each other to death? Then Safeway sells these bad karma eggs for 99 cents a dozen. No thanks.

The book is divided into three main topics: 1) Industrial: Corn; Or how of the 45,000 items you can find at a supermarket, 1/3 are made of corn. How cattle, although they are ruminants and are supposed to eat grass, are fed corn (cheaper and more plentiful) which upsets their sensitive rumens, so they are then given antibiotics to help their chronic indigestion so they can continue to eat the corn that will allow them to live long enough to produce that nicely marbled rib-eye. Lots of other cool albeit disturbing stuff in this section.

2) Pastoral: Grass; Organic is not all it's cracked up to be. In fact, Michael Pollan thinks that Whole Foods is no better than Wal-mart and slaps them both with the epithetic label of Industrial Organic. Lots of corners are cut in the organic realm, folks, and you will learn all about it here.

3) Personal: The Forest; Pollan goes foraging for mushrooms, kills a wild pig, debates the morality behind meat eating with Peter Singer and finally has a dinner party where he cooks the wild pig, the mushrooms, uses foraged cherries for a tart, and makes sourdough bread from Berkeley "yeast" by placing a flour slurry on his window sill and collecting yeast spores.

About the rib-eye: Heretofore, I have just gone to Whole foods, pointed at the rib-eye and the guy behind the counter weighs it, wraps it up and I take it home and throw it on the grill. The Whole Food's butcher does not kill the cow (or the pig or the chicken) in front of me. They probably think that it would be bad for business. (All that blood and entrails and all the other slippery stuff. Smells bad, too.)

More to the point, I personally don't yield the rifle, mallet or knife which kills the cow, or the pig or the chicken. I have never wild-caught a Coho salmon, extracted a hook from a fish's mouth nor have I gutted it; or gutted anything else for that matter. I daresay that we would all feel a whole lot differently about what we eat if we were forced to participate in our own personal food chain - from living animal with personality and eyelashes to dinner plate. I have no problem picking lettuce, or corn or tomatoes. How about you?

But, back to my rib eye: The purchase of my piece of dinner cow is all unconsciously executed and the butcher and I end up as co-conspirators in this weird animal killing dance: It's as if we have agreed to agree that that piece of red meat that is to become a piece of charred flesh on my plate came from Barney's Playhouse, all clean and uncomplicated, born or, better yet, extruded from a nice, shiny machine rather than from a living creature with lovely eyes that gets a 7 inch nail driven into its forehead at the slaughter house by the lucky person called a "stunner." How many of us superimpose the cows face onto the rib eye or Babe onto the bacon? I think if we did (and I am), we may not eat steak or anything with a mother anymore. At least we might question it a bit more.

Here's what I think: Do I wish I hadn't read this book? Not at all. Can I eat meat the way I used to? No. Can I still eat meat if I can find stuff that is grown sustainably without bad karma? I think so. Check out local ranchers and buy a ¼ of their cow to put in your new freezer. In lieu of this, buy grass fed beef, although the taste gets some getting used to. Pork? Never. Chicken? Buy only organic but say a little prayer of forgiveness and gratitude over it just to be safe. Beef? Not now, maybe later. Fish? Yes, but not farmed and not from the Atlantic . Shellfish? No.

Eggs? Be careful with this. Eggs can be the most inhumanely produced form of protein you can find at the grocery store. Find a farmer who is willing to sell you eggs and if you can't, then buy the more expensive stuff with DHA in it and say that little prayer of forgiveness and gratitude. Milk? Again, find the rancher who might sell you raw milk. Other than that, the only semi-organic milk and milk products you should buy are from the Organic Farms brand; they have what they call a "Family of Farms" and buy their milk from lots of small farms. And, although I have mentioned this many times, if you can 1) eat mainly from the perimeter of the supermarket and 2) eat nothing from a bag, box, jar, can or wrapper, then you are more than half way there.

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