We’re right in the middle of Lent, and for six weeks, Catholics are abstaining from eating meat on Fridays. When I was a child, Catholics abstained from eating meat every Friday and my dad would pick up fish frys on his way home from work. Batter-dipped fish with wedges of lemon and french fries and paper cups full of cole slaw and tartar sauce and the whole thing carried between two paper plates stapled together. You could smell it coming through the door.
In those days, it was a sacrifice to give up meat. It was important to eat as much meat as you could. My parents remembered the Depression, when meat was hard to come by. Even in my childhood, having meat on the table every night was not just about nutrition, it meant your family had achieved a certain socio-economic threshold. When I was older, I started meeting vegetarians; many of them came from families wealthier than my own. By eschewing meat, they seemed to be saying they were beyond such concerns. They had access to plenty of protein without resorting to a blue-collar plate of meat and potatoes.
I probably know as many vegetarians as the next guy and I always ask them how they got that way, what made them decide to do it. I find many of them never liked meat. That’s fine, but some of these people – you know who you are – will occasionally try to cover themselves in pious glory for not eating meat, something they never liked in the first place. My two favorite vegetarians are my friend John, who loves meat and despite years of not eating it, becomes visibly envious when a steak is consumed in his presence – and my friend Kathy, who also has years of vegetarianism under her belt, but as far as I can tell, does not like vegetables. You take her to a restaurant, she orders a salad and picks it apart.
I’ve tried to be a vegetarian, but I only go a month or so before I break down. It’s usually something dumb, too, like a hot dog at a ball park or some low form of meat like that. I tried the “not dogs” and the “garden burgers” but it didn’t make any sense to me. It just made me want the real thing. Eating a hot dog made of tofu is, to me, like drinking decaffeinated coffee or smoking clove cigarettes. Why pretend? Go big or stay home.
Some people are vegetarians for their health, some to be kind to animals, some because it takes so much grain to produce a pound of meat. The last reason is a biggie, I find vegetarians are very conscientious about the food chain. Did you know 90 percent of the nutritional value of the grain used for beer is thrown out with the spent hops and barley? I mention this to vegetarians, many of whom are prodigious beer drinkers, and they often become quite agitated. Most people would say, “Look, I gave up meat, I’m doing my bit, what do you want from me?” Not those vegetarians, they get upset. They want to accept the burden for all the misdeeds of our post-industrial society into their own gastro-intestinal systems. I think that’s symbolic and somehow, in a secular way, tied in with the whole abstaining from meat on Fridays during Lent thing.
Many of my vegetarian friends are agnostic or atheist. They wouldn’t observe Lent if you paid them. And yet they engage in some of the same activities – abstaining from eating meat – for some of the same reasons – to compensate for the wrongdoing we have perpetuated as a society.
I think it shows how deeply those motives and practices are etched into our collective unconscious and as long as people feel this way – whatever their motivation – there’s still hope for us.
Vegging Out
We’re right in the middle of Lent, and for six weeks, Catholics are abstaining from eating meat on Fridays. When I was a child, Catholics abstained from eating meat every Friday and my dad would pick up fish frys on his way home from work. Batter-dipped fish with wedges of lemon and french fries and paper cups full of cole slaw and tartar sauce and the whole thing carried between two paper plates stapled together. You could smell it coming through the door.
In those days, it was a sacrifice to give up meat. It was important to eat as much meat as you could. My parents remembered the Depression, when meat was hard to come by. Even in my childhood, having meat on the table every night was not just about nutrition, it meant your family had achieved a certain socio-economic threshold. When I was older, I started meeting vegetarians; many of them came from families wealthier than my own. By eschewing meat, they seemed to be saying they were beyond such concerns. They had access to plenty of protein without resorting to a blue-collar plate of meat and potatoes.
I probably know as many vegetarians as the next guy and I always ask them how they got that way, what made them decide to do it. I find many of them never liked meat. That’s fine, but some of these people – you know who you are – will occasionally try to cover themselves in pious glory for not eating meat, something they never liked in the first place. My two favorite vegetarians are my friend John, who loves meat and despite years of not eating it, becomes visibly envious when a steak is consumed in his presence – and my friend Kathy, who also has years of vegetarianism under her belt, but as far as I can tell, does not like vegetables. You take her to a restaurant, she orders a salad and picks it apart.
I’ve tried to be a vegetarian, but I only go a month or so before I break down. It’s usually something dumb, too, like a hot dog at a ball park or some low form of meat like that. I tried the “not dogs” and the “garden burgers” but it didn’t make any sense to me. It just made me want the real thing. Eating a hot dog made of tofu is, to me, like drinking decaffeinated coffee or smoking clove cigarettes. Why pretend? Go big or stay home.
Some people are vegetarians for their health, some to be kind to animals, some because it takes so much grain to produce a pound of meat. The last reason is a biggie, I find vegetarians are very conscientious about the food chain. Did you know 90 percent of the nutritional value of the grain used for beer is thrown out with the spent hops and barley? I mention this to vegetarians, many of whom are prodigious beer drinkers, and they often become quite agitated. Most people would say, “Look, I gave up meat, I’m doing my bit, what do you want from me?” Not those vegetarians, they get upset. They want to accept the burden for all the misdeeds of our post-industrial society into their own gastro-intestinal systems. I think that’s symbolic and somehow, in a secular way, tied in with the whole abstaining from meat on Fridays during Lent thing.
Many of my vegetarian friends are agnostic or atheist. They wouldn’t observe Lent if you paid them. And yet they engage in some of the same activities – abstaining from eating meat – for some of the same reasons – to compensate for the wrongdoing we have perpetuated as a society.
I think it shows how deeply those motives and practices are etched into our collective unconscious and as long as people feel this way – whatever their motivation – there’s still hope for us.