Despite a prescribing title, I am not inclined to tell anyone how to eat. I am inclined, however, to making a pitch for a vegan or plant-based diet. For those who wonder about the difference, vegan carries ideological overtones regarding animal rights, while plant-based is simply a statement about what you eat. I am going with “vegan” because I like the word and the spirit, though I disagree with certain slants of veganism. But I’m a card-carrying vegan who will never look back.
Despite a prescribing title, I am not inclined to tell anyone how to eat. I
am inclined, however, to making a pitch for a vegan or plant-based diet. For
those who wonder about the difference, vegan carries ideological overtones
regarding animal rights, while plant-based is simply a statement about what
you eat. I am going with “vegan” because I like the word and the spirit,
though I disagree with certain slants of veganism. But I’m a card-carrying
vegan who will never look back.
The truth is I was vegetarian for nearly 30 years before that, and never
seriously intended to stop eating cheese. Like many, I was attached to the
stuff. Later, I learned that cheese is mildly addictive—obvious handiwork of
natural selection to get baby mammals to scream for their fix. Be that as it
may, following personal and environmental convergences around diet, as well
as my husband’s decision to go vegan, I became vegan in 2013. Within a year,
I was a true believer.
The matter that often confuses dietary conversations is when a certain
faction of veganism pegs meat-eating as inherently immoral: the argument
being that it is in principle wrong to kill animals (or to use them in any
way). This dogmatism, however, reduces to absurdity, for were we to consent
that killing animals for food is immoral, it would follow that predators
wrong their prey by killing and eating them. Yet predators are beautiful and
good—every single one of them is amazing—and, as we now know, they make the
world green and increase biodiversity (Eisenberg 2011). Since eating flesh
is an aspect of nature’s order, it cannot be intrinsically wrong to do so,
especially when that eating is dictated by a creature’s makeup and rarely
violates the bounds of necessity.
There is, at the same time, a vegan perspective on killing animals that I
find compelling: Namely, that if you desire to eat meat, you should be
willing (at least sincerely in principle) to kill what you eat yourself. If
you are not willing to kill the animals you eat, it’s the equivalent of
saying: “Killing is nasty work. Or it’s ‘masculine’ work. I don’t want to do
it. Somebody else can do it for me.” (Somebody else who’s on a miserable
wage, to boot.) Of course, it is never easy to kill an animal which is why
indigenous, religious, and spiritual traditions have always approached the
matter with ceremony and prayer. But if you find it viscerally unpalatable
or impossible to kill an animal, why should you have the right to eat flesh
by externalizing an act you considerable unthinkable to someone else? Better
go vegan or vegetarian.
The thing about vegan today is that everything happening around it culturally is fascinating. Just a few decades back, if you were vegan you were considered a freak—kind of borderline human. What’s happening now, on the other hand, is that vegan eateries are everywhere sprouting and mushrooming in all sorts of flavors. Vegans have all along been the gourmands that the Slow Food movement venerates, foodies of outstanding palates. Yes, it’s the vegans. Because the plant world (I include fungi as honorary members) is chock full of flavors and textures and their endless combinations, especially when we throw in the spices, herbs, and nuts, all (needless to say) also plants. Plant eating is wildly diverse and sensually extravagant.
Proliferating vegan establishments are vaunting the privilege to tantalize your taste buds with exotic, nuanced, delish, and nearly 100 percent guilt-free pleasure—topped with the cherry of high nutritional value. I am here specificallytalking about vegan food that is free of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, grown in nutrient-rich clean soils, preferably local, and cooked/prepared with love and attentiveness. Such food is relishing and wholesome.
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Posted on All-Creatures: August 16, 2024
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