There is something I’ve found very disturbing for some time now. And for some reason the political season we are all mired in has intensified the debate and widened that casum. It’s not Democrat versus Republican, left versus right, conservative versus progressive, all though those are bad enough. What I am talking about is the rift in the sustainable food movement between the vegans and the omnivores.
Lets talk about common ground. All people (and actual all animals in general) must consume living things, either plants, animals or both. Humans can live off animals only or plants only, but excluding either does not necessarily mean a healthier life. “There is the ‘ethical’ issue of whether we should eat other animal life, the argument as which is ‘better for you’, and there is even the ‘lifestyle’ argument whether our lifestyle defines our diet? I have yet to see good evidence that shows that vegetarians live longer on average than non-vegetarians or that the reverse is true.”[1]
For the healthiest form of human life, our biochemistry, history and physiology indicate that there is a balance somewhere between the extremes of vegan and omnivore that is right for us. I’m a chef, which means that I am part, scientist, part parent, and part philosopher. My belief is that humans are Omnivores. “Our teeth and intestines are those of omnivores, the teeth designed for ripping and tearing meat, and stripping leaves from trees, but also for grinding grains, and our intestines are something between the long and the short. People are able to eat and live on every type of food imaginable from brains to intestines to leaves to roots to ants and grubs.”[1]
Aristotle in his work Politics wrote,
Plants exist for the sake of animals, and brute beasts for the sake of man – domestic animals for his use and food, wild ones for food and other accessories of life, such as clothing and various tools. Since nature makes nothing purposeless or in vain, it is undeniably true that she has made all animals for the sake of man.
Science and philosophy aside, I believe that we, as humans, are also designed and relish in experiencing the entire range of tastes, textures and aromas. Food is substance but it is also pleasure.
Frederick W. Hackwood in Good Cheer: The Romance of Food and Feasting wrote,
Eating does not consist in putting cold, greasy animal food into one’s mouth. Eating consists of putting into the mouth – chewing, enjoying the flavour, and swallowing, of course – warm, juicy, thinnish or thickish, fat or lean, morsels of properly prepared food precisely at the nick of time.
The ethical treatment of animals address some of the moral dilemmas of eating meat, but the ugly fact that we still have to kill living creatures still presents problems.
“In the far future, perhaps we could genetically alter animals so that they would want us to eat them. Douglas Adams explored this scenario in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, (in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe) where a very obliging Ameglian Major Cow, a species of dairy animal specifically bred to not only have the desire for someone to eat him, but also capable of speaking English so as to communicate his desire. As the Dish of the Day, the Ameglian Major Cow offers his diners various ways to eat him.” [2]
Sources:
[1] Omnivore vs. Vegan Who is Right by Darrell Miller
[2] Omnivore vs. Vegetarian by Jim Walker
