Truesday: Meat Is Whatever-er

Broccoli fucks me up something serious. Especially if it’s been Thai-spiced and bespeckled with something even more colon-durable, like peanuts.

Straight-up gut-riot.

The month passed. And I’ll have to say that “pass” is where all the emphasis should fall. Being vegetarian means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And in their blessed honor (amongst what it meant to me) I’m going to go ahead and list the reasons why every vegetarian I’ve ever met has decided to shun the beef trade and go green (they were, after all, my inspiration for the month-long tour of the lifestyle).

Morality.

The vast, vast majority of people I discussed the discipline with focused on their desire to avoid the consumption of anything that ever “had a face”. Something that might look up at them and ask “are you seriously going to run my head through with a modified nail gun, and then nonchalantly burn my bits in some rusting metal box, which your ex-roommate long-abandoned out on the back patio?”

And sure, I understand why that would cause someone to doubt their reasons behind partaking in a good barbeque. One could easily equate those steaks with the rotted death of a once-brilliant and potentially happy… soul, albeit a very slow-witted soul, I suppose. Hell, it seems refreshingly enlightened to transcend the whole abstraction of supermarket meats. Buying a blooded slab of steak on a Styrofoam tray at HEB to eat is much like buying p0ker chips to gamble. Once there’s a second layer of abstraction glossed over the transaction, it makes it considerably easier to seal the deal with no cognitive dissonance or remorse. If I had to bet actual dollar bills from my wallet, or better yet: the literal hours of my goddamned life represented by the bills/chips/blood at the blackjack table, you could damn sure count on me being a whole lot more thoughtful about doublin’ down on tens while doing six shots of Jack with some regretably forgettable, retired Telecom Sales Exec from Idaho. If I played at all. I mean, with all the crying I’d probably be doing, the game would certainly lose any sense of “lustrous fun”. I’d probably punch the sales exec just to ease the horrific stress of it all, then end up in jail after hiding in a bathroom stall for a couple of hours, and my mom would bail me out saying some shit like “damnit Craig, you know I hate coming to Vegas”.

I have no idea where I got that last part from.

And I realize that if I had to go out to some field, to a herd of cud-chewing, no-business minding moo-cows, pick out a victim (I’d probably select my victim by either their look of slothy-stupidity, or their inability to answer me some questions three), and punch that motherfucker to death with some brass knuckles before I could hack off a slab to grill, you can damn sure bet that my meat consumption would be anything but extravagant. I’d probably just end up owning a shitload of cows, and bury them like family gerbils when they passed of natural causes.

So I feel like I get it. The morality. Anything with a face. Even now, if a section of “pooch” were to pop up in the chilled bins of my local meatery, I wouldn’t bite. And it wouldn’t just be because of my awareness that dogs stink and make headstrong efforts to eat their own shit (doesn’t stop me from eating bacon like it was fried geniusness). It would be because after spending my entire life around them, I’ve grown to love dogs tremendously, and it just doesn’t jive with what little sense of food-morality I have. I am more than familiar with dogs and their obvious signs of personality. It’d be like eating a soul. With some A-1, or maybe a nice teriyaki marinade. There’s something blatantly incongruous with that, when pressed against all the other shit I like to pretend I understand/believe about life.

That’s where the whole “inhumane” thing comes from. A question of personification. To me, dogs have personalities, or person-like qualities. And I’m not down to eat people unless I’ve already gnawed off my own less-useful appendages and there’s no more tree bark to boil. It’s the whole “soul” part. Like, I’d be ingesting more than just the most basic of chemicals that my body needed to keep organs from sleeping. There’s something voo-doo about it. Even cannibal societies saw it that way. They didn’t hunt people for food (not usually, anyhow). If they did set out to eat someone else, it was to acquire something intangible from them. Power over/through them. Their life-force. Their land and poon (oh, that’s just insensitive right there. However: true). Perhaps a clean palate between glasses of perfectly aged wine.

Whatever.

So once I personify something, I’m not going to fucking eat it. It spooks me the fuck out. Which is why my carelessly omnivorous ways are pleasantly catered-to by the local butcher, who must see the world more like my great-grandfather, a rancher, did when he got hungry. More practical than emotionally bankrupt.

Being a product of the depression, where any kind of food (voo-doo tainted or otherwise) was rare, my thoughtful and caring great-grandfather encountered no moral hurdle worth considering as he sliced into a slab of sirloin, fresh off a cow he had been carefully feeding and kickin’ it with for a couple of years. If any of his cows had names, they’d probably be “better-not-get-struck-by-lightening, damnit” cow, or “get fat, get eaten” cow. He had more of a Chris Rock approach to those things: if a man is lucky enough to be staring at something as worldly-rare as a cut of meat, the only question he should be asking himself is whether or not the meat is spoiled. If it’s red, you eat it. If it’s green, you don’t.

In the depression era, color comprehension superceded any frivolous moral platitudes when it came to doubting sustenance under the shadow of ever-eminent starvation. Understandable, if not noble. One should not want to become vegetarian by simple virtue of no options.

Which leads me back to the grocery store. A place where the only pictures of animals you’ll find will be where the sugary, starchy, chips and breakfast cereals live. The packaging for that ribeye steak has no photo of the cow it was carved from. No pig-yard shots for the sausage/bacon boxes. You’ll only find animal representations in places where animals are hardly involved in the food at all.

And the those representations are ALWAYS absurd. Literally: cartoonish. A talking tiger with a red handkerchief around his neck, an over-excited grin, and an implausible Italian first name. A bunny rabbit that tries to steal cereal from hapless children. A cheetah with dickhead sunglasses and a ridiculous x-games-inspired deathwish. No one minds eating a fried cartoon cheetah head, as long as that big-headed fucker keeps grinnin' and sky-surfin' on the next package.

Hell, that shit’s cheesy-delicious!

And that’s the roundabout basics of the morality stance. I'm totally cool with that, but it’s just not enough to wean me from the pulled pork at Curra’s. After all: if I don’t eat it, someone else will, so the hog’s gone either way. So it’s just a question of how satisfied/jealous I’m going to feel about who ends up enjoying the meal. Yeah, that sounds a tad short-sighted, but I bet I could argue that the "long view" is silly-overrated more times than not.

Health.

There’s reams of evidence in both directions on this one. What it boils down to is the obvious: we’re omnivores which require individualized balance. Period. If ALL you eat is meat, your body will eventually poison itself in all sorts of uncomfortable ways. You’d be fucked. If ALL you eat is vegetables, your body will eventually become invisible due to a lack of protein fundamentally necessary to rebuild your internals as they need patching-up. You’d be fucked. But if the all-meat eater would cut back on the reds and add some natural fibers to fill the gap, all would be better. And if the non-meat eater added some meat, or made very specific efforts to ensure they were getting adequate non-meat proteins to rebuild their bleeding heart (ZING!) then all would (also) be better.

So the key is moderation, on either side, which has become an obnoxiously predictable answer for just about every human health issue ever encountered. Except for bullet wounds and interning in any Bangkok lingerie studio. Those are still pretty absolute.

And of course, there are those who have been put on special diets which prohibit meat consumption. Because their body is either incapable of metabolizing (or does so in a radically inappropriate manner) the stuff. Or perhaps their immune system is too compromised to handle an infection that might be introduced by meat. But I don’t see these situations as a matter of choice, I see them as turns of fate. I simply hope that no one in such a situation loves bacon as much as I do, because even at the risk of sounding boorishly insensitive about such a delicate issue, I’m not so sure I’d be able to see the value in a bacon-free existence for myself. Call it selfish if that makes you feel better about yourself.

But regardless of whatever evidence is provided at the aggregate level, my health certainly did not improve remarkably in the (admittedly) limited time I dedicated to my diet to vegetation consumption. So that’s no mover for me.

What was a mover for me was all that fiber. Dear lord, it was full-blown monsoon season out my ass. Every day. Multiple times per day. And the gravity of those episodes was directly linked to the variety of non-meat that I took in. I believe Ben had it right with that one when he touted the philosophical point of trying vegetarian cuisine: don’t eat fake meat meant to remind you of what you’re avoiding. Eat actual vegetables prepared AS vegetables, but deliciously so.

Because those garden burgers destroyed my gut, every time I ate one. Sure, they’re delicious. But so is ice cream to someone who is lactose intolerant. There’ll be hell to pay. And pay it with flames, I did.

I also had a marked increase in my intake of sweets and stimulants. I ate a-lot more bread, actually craved cake (not since I was four, and didn’t know any better, have I given two shits about cake), and sought out the cookies or chocolates horded at the desks of my cubemates. So it’s safe to say that I’d hit the rotund mark with a quickness if I kept on it.

I suppose that was my body’s reaction to a deficiency. Or maybe I was just paying more attention to what I ate. Really, I have no idea. And that has to do with proper planning, research, and preparation. Which I will be much more diligent about the next time I go experimenting with my internal organs. Lest I wish to once again triple the amount of time I spend in public restrooms, praying that the “toilet paper” made available is neither block of wood nor paper of wax (I never seem to care if the damn thing flushes, as that is, provided I’m not in my own home, inherently not my problem).

And I almost forgot to mention the main reason men, specifically, become vegetarians: to get laid. Lots of ladies dig vegetarian dudes. Apparently they “taste” better. Since I am not on the market, and I got no compliments on any flavor improvements (not sure how to feel about that one, but I’ll survive), this was never a driver on my mission.

But others might take notice.