Vegging Out
I’m
not trying to cause trouble here, but someone who eats chicken every week and
claims to be a vegetarian is making a fairly good case for misrepresentation. In
a recent survey, another ten percent of people calling themselves vegetarians
stated that they ate red meat once a week. We’ll call these folks, bovo-vegetarians.
What
this information does reflect is some recent trends in food consumption. In the
last fifteen years or so, our meat consumption has dropped by almost twenty
percent. We, at the same time have increased our consumption of fish and poultry
to more than make up for this deficiency. So the real news is the increase in
the consumption of fish, seafood, chicken and turkey and in the numbers of
people who see themselves as vegetarians, because vegetarianism conveys a number
of values that we find appealing.
The
reality is that less than 4 per cent of vegetarians avoid animal products
entirely, which is one quarter of one per cent of the Canadian population and
that means no leather shoes, coats and belts as well.
Most
vegetarians give health, as the number one reason for their dietary inclinations
followed by, “not sure” and then further behind by environmental and animal
rights concerns. It is also true that vegetarians have fewer heart attacks,
lower blood pressure, and slimmer figures than meat eaters do. But collateral
information also shows that vegetarians tend to lead healthier lives in general
and exercise more than average.
A
vegetarian diet in and of itself may not be much of an advantage over a meat
eater’s diet that is low in saturated fats, full of fruits and vegetables and
moderate consumption of meat.
Being
a true vegetarian is hard going. Forget those images of leafy gastronomic feasts
that are turning up in food magazines more and more. You won’t survive for
long on meals like these because they rarely contain any protein. For that, you
must consume large platefuls of unglamorous legumes and grains. Strict
vegetarians need to be careful in making their nutritional ends meet.
Vegetarian
restaurants are few and far between. In a city such as ours I suspect they are
not economically viable without the additional of a few meat selections. True
vegetarian restaurants tend to pay more attention to their ideology than their
cooking. The dishes always seem to be sloppy and artless. We eat vegetables
because we hate meat. In Europe, people eat vegetables because they truly love
vegetables. It is interesting to note that virtually all of the voluntary
vegetarians in the world live in North America and England (those not
vegetarians through either poverty or religious belief) and neither group is
particularly renowned for their cooking skills.
China,
Japan and India – unlike North American and the countries of northern Europe
– do have traditions of vegetarian cuisine of very sophisticated cooking.
Japanese shojin ryori uses rice paired with soybean curd as its principal
protein combination while in China there are astounding imitations of
traditional meat and poultry dishes in which wheat gluten, tofu, soybean
protein, arrowroot and chopped yams are used as a meat substitute and in India
where the majority of the population is vegetarian we see the
rice-lentils-wheat-chickpea quartet.
Today’s
supermarkets and health food stores are full of imitation meat, usually lower in
fat and calories than the real thing (but often higher in salt, to make up for
the savory taste of animal fats and protein).
Often
being a vegetarian comes down to standing in the kitchen mixing up packets of
microwavable, artificial meat substitutes. Is this what being a strict
vegetarian has come down to? The answer is all to often yes.
Its
not difficult to come to the conclusion that nature never intended us to become
strict unyielding vegetarians. There is nothing natural about it at all. Become
a vegan and you will soon find your medicine cabinet filled with a variety of
vitamin supplements. The truth is that we humans are designed to be omnivores,
complete with a wide assortment of teeth that is perfect for the ripping and
tearing of flesh and a digestive system capable of defeating almost anything
thrown down there. As an anthropology student, I learned that for the past
million or so years of our evolution, humans have eaten meat, especially fish
and low fat wild game. The only source of digestible plant protein that does not
require cooking to be digestible is nuts. But cooking is a relative newcomer to
the human repertoire, long after our physiology and genetic structure was put
into place. I know of no traditional, non-industrial culture that practices
vegetarianism if they can help it. Being a vegetarian is always the result of
scarcity, religion, or ideology, including current nutritional fads and
fashions.
The
environmental argument against meat is strong, but to me, should apply to
everything that we eat. And that is to avoid the products of factory farming
with their incumbent use of chemical and hormonal products. There is also no
doubt that the production of meat is an inefficient use of land and resources.
But unless you insist that we must all eat in the most economical manner
possible – though few of us dress or live that way – then this is really an
argument for eating less meat and raising it in a sustainable way. There is also
the case to be made for the millennia old tradition of raising livestock for its
magical ability to convert agricultural waste, failed crops and the vegetation
that exists on unfarmable land into high-quality protein.
In
the end, I think that we are simply seeing a more thoughtful approach to diet.
When I hear someone say that they are vegetarians, I hear a plea for safe,
nutritious food, produced in a healthy and benevolent environment and cooked
with care and artistry. Starting to sound a little more reasonable?