Comments

Ali Jo,

Thanks for posting this debate. This is one of the cool possibilities that the blog format opens up, but you're one of the first to use it.

I think Omnivore's Dilemma will also inform the debate. I guess I have just 3 contributions to make;

1. You have to decide if you are arguing on "natural" or on "moral". You seem to go back and forth. The anthropological stuff I've seen shows that most human food is plant food but that most cultures (including indigenous cultures like Australian aborigines, Calusa in Florida, and !Kung in Africa) also highly value animal flesh. Like you say, just because lots of humans do it, and other animals also do, doesn't mean its right. But it does seem hard to argue that it isn't natural.

2. I agree with your distrust of overconsumption of soy. This year I quit being a vegan (after 15 years) partly around this. Rather than soy-yogurt 3-4x a week it seemed better to do pasture raised goat yogurt.

3. I think the strongest arguments in favor of vegetarianism/veganism are a) health - vegetarians live longer and healthier on average. You can see this, perhaps, in your own experience. But I don't think this argument can overcome Dylan's point about eating occasional and decently-raised animal food. The second major argument in favor of veganism (and less so in vegetarianism) is the non-exploitation argument - slavery is wrong and enslaving other animals to serve as food sources is morally dubious - perhaps even when the slaves are treated relatively well.

This was the main reason I became vegan - I saw it as a daily practice of resisting a culture that is based fundamentally on domination of the weak by the strong.

The argument can be nuanced though - are clams also exploited - are they really qualitatively more "there and aware" than a sunflower? If there are ways of eating that are more ecologically sustainable (pasture raised eggs, goat yogurt, perhaps even chicken flesh, beef) and more ecologically beautiful (wild honey versus sugar cane monocultures) what should our priorities be?

Food #6 - Response to Pollan

For this assignment please respond briefly to Michael Pollan's argument, in the first few pages of Omnivore's Dilemma, that we as a culture lack a stable food culture like the Italians or French, are obsessed with health, are confused and anxious about food, and therefore easily succumb to various expert-directed food fads.

What food experts do you and your family pay attention to - scientists, journalists, chefs, commercials on tv, doctors, nutritionists, health officials, book authors?

I find Michael Pollan's argument that much of the US lacks a stable food culture to be overstated. Certainly it is true that there are fads (Atkins diets), "trendy foods" (acai), and a superficiality of everday eating. But, on the one hand, isn't this precisely a sort of food culture with an emphasis on the "new"? And on the other hand isn't much of US food culture pretty stable - burger joints, french fries, pizzas, sodas? And on the 3rd paw doesn't Pollan's argument mainly apply to a selective-college-educated segment of the population who actually cares what the scientists are currently recommending while most of the continent continues crunching Cheez-Doodles?

It does, however (final paw), apply to me. I read books about food (including a lot before and a few after Pollan's) and think about different ways of eating (I've read manifestos and had conversations with friends who advocated vegan, vegetarian, paleolithic, sustainable, freegan, and raw diets). I switched to grapeseed and olive and flax and coconut oils at different times on being told by "experts" that one or the other were healthier (now a mix of all them). I was vegan for 16 years - largely based on the arguments and insights of anti-cruelty and anti-exploitation food philosophers - and recently added pasture raised eggs and pasture raised goat yogurt on the arguments of the sustainability philosophers (Gene Logsdon, Michael Pollan, a few others) and my experience seeing animals raised humanely at a commune in Virginia. I've been eating a lot of flax seed and DHA on reading that it might be a particular health issue for vegans and think I even see a benefit from it.

So I would have to say that I lack a stable food culture - that the corporate food culture I grew up in is insane and that abandoning it was crucial to my health - and that I don't miss it at all. When Catherine DeLaura tried to hold faculty dinners at places like "The Olive Garden" and "Outback Steakhouse" I never went.

Grocery Store and Habitual Food

Please write a post about how your family uses grocery stores and the variety of vegetables, fruits, roots, grains, and nuts that you eat in a typical week.

You should include your insights about how grocery stores "push" particular types of products, how you learned (or didn't) to eat a variety of foods, and information about your favorite meals and habitual diet pattern.

In our class exercise I counted approximately 45 vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, and roots that I eat in a typical week. My favorites include arugula, broccoli raab, blueberries, acai, and quinoa. I'm able to buy most of these foods organically at the Park Slope Food Coop. Luckily, our food coop doesn't work the same way as most corporate grocery stores - it doesn't "push" chips and other unhealthy foods - it does provide a lot of organic/local/healthy foods at relatively low prices.

I didn't start out eating such a wide variety of foods. My childhood, as I discussed in an earlier post, was a typical American one. I ate meat and white bread sandwiches with mayonnaise and no vegetables. I remember consciously learning to eat tomatos and lettuce with the help of the McDonald's McDLT, around 12 or 13. When I decided to become vegetarian at the age of 15/16 I had to build my repertoire of foods because my main foods at that time were still meat sandwiches plus pizza and clam chowder from a can. I built my reportoire slowly - gradually eliminating meat (first hamburgers, then hotdogs, then beef in general, etc.) and gradually adding other foods (tofu, soy milk, more broccoli, etc.). By the time I got to college I was vegetarian and ate things like tofu sandwiches, apple-pie, baked potatos (got one version from The Secret Garden and invented another - baked potatos with fresh orange juice and tamari sauce), drank carrot juice, and enjoyed vegetarian chili (pre-made). In other words I was eating a lot the same way, but with different, plant-based ingredients.

I think my number of 45 would have been around 30 before I became a member of the food coop on moving to NYC. It seems that my taste-buds have changed - I can remember eating arugula in a salad during my college years and being surprised that people would eat it on purpose. And this wider variety of foods is much more accessible to me now.

May Day Response

In a previous life as a grassroots activist I used to feel strongly about May Day - the international day of resistance to capitalist domination. I was caught up in the feelings about it, the struggle over it, the united workers and the greedy bosses, brave anarchists and the oppressive state, the collusion of the liberals, the poignancy of today's ignorance, etc.

Today I still feel all that, but less strongly. Today I feel more descriptive about May Day, more like, "May Day has been hidden - what does that reveal?" Before I felt completely outraged by the fact that May 1 is now officially "Law and Loyalty Day" (since Eisenhower) in the U.S. Now I see the outrageousness of that but also how that fits the bigger pattern of bumbling and blatant oppression structures in the U.S. and that even resistance to May Day being "Law Day" tends to exhibit a certain cartoonishness that I also see as also typical of the American mentality.