In the Spring of 2010 I had the privilege and pleasure to take a course entitles Food for Thought. The professor, one who I adore and respect, led the students through a garden of articles, books, and lectures that ushered in a new perspective on food. For myself, I was struck by the ancient understandings of meat consumption and how it has transformed from a fight for survival to a holy ritual to the consumers' wasteland.
The most significant thing I learned and will retain from the class is the value of consistency between action and thought through eating. We’ve discussed the sacredness of eating meat and the dirty habit it has become. I have an understanding of both the significance and the fragility of the nature of the guest/host relationship. And I now understand why the United States fluctuates through food fads; we have no culture of eating to call our own. These key lessons gained through the class require me, if I want to move forward with integrity as a philosopher and as a human, to acknowledge to role food plays in all our lives.
One could summarize these three lessons into one: learning to be a moral eater. This is necessary for the reasons Michael Pollan argues in The Omnivore’s Dilemma – we have the ability to make moral decisions about what we eat, not to do so shows a considerable lack of thought and consistency on our part. I myself have made the decision to eliminate meat from my diet because of his call for conscious eating. This, I think, is the strongest piece of evidence that I have taken concepts from the course and applied them to decisions I make from day to day. I feel inclined to say that my vegetarianism is not a result Peter Singer’s article. He argued that to eat meat is speciesism (to argue that animal suffering for the sake of consumption is permissible on grounds of the animals’ nonhumanity is to be a speciesist). While he is certainly right to classify this behavior as such, he has not made an argument about why this behavior, or speciesism, is immoral. I agree with Pollan, that to deny what humanity has done for 500,000 years is to deny an integral part of human nature. The problem with killing animals to eat arises when the consumer becomes so far removed from the life of the animal that they no longer recognize the it had once lived. We have a moral obligation to kill the beast we eat, to fail to acknowledge the life our food had led is to eat in ignorance.
Opening the pages of The Omnivore’s Dilemma introduced to me a scholarly reminder that food, like everything else, is better when we know more. Pollan’s objective is to become a fully conscious eater; he wants to be as active in the process of his food as possible, down to the act of killing the beast he will consume. Pollan asks that we be conscious too. When reading his words, I was sent back to the sixth grade when my mother drove my best friend and myself down to Le Centre, MN to purchase half a cow from my uncle. My mother, having been raised on a farm and trained in the delicate craft of chicken butchery, expected me to accept what I was seeing. However, I’m not sure she had a thought for Carter, who had never visited a farm, and certainly not a butcher shop. After witnessing the exposed hanging corpse of the cow we were about to purchase, Carter refused to eat the meat in my house. When she refused my invitation to dinner, I said to her: “Carter, you are not going to stop eating meat now just because you saw what happened to the cow before you eat it.” Her response to me was, “I just don’t want to eat the meat in your house. I’m fine eating it from the store.” Then I laughed out loud at the ridiculous inconsistency of her words. I saw then what I was incapable of articulating; Carter’s statement represented the disconnect between my generation and the food we eat. It is this disconnect that causes us to be unconscious eaters. The real tragedy is that we know we are, and we do not care. As an American people we are content to remain at a distance from the food we consume. The work of Pollan encourages us to open our eyes and stare what we eat in the face – because it has one!
Because of our discussion on the guest/host relationship I have made the decision to eat meat when attending a dinner where to forgo the flesh would be obvious and even rude. It is the host’s responsibility to provide hospitality and food, just as it is the guest’s responsibility to eat the food which is offered. There are few circumstances where it is acceptable to ignore this relationship. For my part, denying the meat the host offers does not qualify. For the reason that is not the killing of the animal which I protest, but the lack of respect for the ritual and act, I find I must give equal respect to a person who has cooked for me a set a place at their table. Both traditions date back past antiquity, and both require my acknowledgment of their significance.
