Confessions of a Reluctant Omnivore

I suffered an almost typical conversion to vegetarianism as a teenager. One day I was staring at an unappetizing heap of processed lunch meat when it dawned on me. "We're eating chopped up dead animal parts." It just seemed wrong. The evidence was everywhere: factory farm conditions, diet-related illnesses, environmental detriment, and so on.

I happily abandoned meat without really thinking about the bigger picture and soon confronted the fact that a healthy vegetarian needs to do more than just pick the meat off of things. One must pay close attention to food and its composition: amino acids, B-vitamins, iron, etc. This kind of scrutiny usually opens the gateway into a long journey of nutritional self-education. One thing was certain: I needed to learn to cook my own food.

My personal gastronomic journey had begun. I went crazy for all those things I ignored as a child: kale, quinoa, hummus, fresh sprouts, nutritional yeast, sesame, tempeh... I began eating fish and shellfish while traveling in Chile. It didn't seem right to refuse. I learned and asked more questions of my self I decided that eating animals isn't fundamentally wrong in any situation. In fact, in terms of health and environmentalism, the questions go way beyond the simple Plant vs. Animal debate.

It is more challenging but ultimately more rewarding and meaningful to look at the complex picture. Local family raised meat seems many times more sustainable than imported processed soy products. So why do so many environment & health conscious people choose the processed soy?

If we're speaking purely in numbers of souls involved, the industrial production of grains involves a tremendous scale of cute-little-animal destruction. Think of all the food and material provided by just one large mammal, especially if its grass-fed and didn't require the destruction of wild habitat. I know: most of our meat is produced in ways that are incredibly, rediculously, immorally destructive to the environment and yield unhealthy products to boot.

This is my advice:

Support local family farms and butchers. Seek them out. Make friends with these people. The best way to increase the welfare of livestock is to support the folks doing it right.

Learn how to handle, prepare, and store animal products. I will always remember the day a chef-friend gave me a bloody sack of raw venison and I stayed up all night reading the Joy of Cooking and Alton Brown. The effort paid off. The result was delicious and heart-warming. Anything you learn to do on your own will save you money. Think you can't afford to buy local grass-fed products? Learn how. It's a very empowering process.

Once I turned my ecologically-inspired vegetarianism into total all-out foodism I abandoned my former squeamishness. I cannot stress enough the beauty and value of the nasty bits: marrow, organs, tongue, casings, lard, blood, gelatin, sweetbreads, trotters, cheeks... exploring these aspects of an the animal is not only fundamental to the food traditions of every culture on earth, it the responsibility of any conscious omnivore.

The "don't ask don't tell" mantra of many meat-eaters and their insistence on cheap ready-made products is what's wrecking havoc on a global scale. It is usually this behavior that drives many of us to forgo meat altogether. I believe in a third way. It is a growing movement and some prominent chef-authors have been saying so as well. Mark Bittman and Jamie Oliver come to mind. So come on and try it, I dare you.