If a cow ever got the chance...

Happy July, dLand. How's everyone doing? (Believe it or not, the people on this website are the only ones I greet sincerely anymore... everyone else gets hypersarcastic yipping [which that was not] or some sort of ambiguous grunt. This is why you don't want to know me in real life.)

Being veg.diaryland.com, I feel a certain amount of responsibility to write more about veggie-related things. Otherwise I've wasted a neat domain name, much like vegetable here.

So... remember the lobster thing? Newsweek printed a really good letter about it: "I don't know what's worse, that people are microwaving live lobsters in pursuit of culinary happiness or Newsweek's lighthearted description of this activity, complete with 'how-to' tips. It is bad enough to boil lobsters alive--must we now prolong their demise? Should we microwave other creatures as well if it's tastier to do so? I'm not a vegetarian, but I strongly believe that the consumption of animal-based products should not be protractedly and unnecessarily cruel." Also, purplememe sent me this link a couple weeks ago. It has more info on a supermarket chain that's selling a gadget called the Microwave Lobster Steamer (which is what, a microwave-safe bowl?) and the resulting letter-writing campaign to get them to stop marketing it.

Also--last thing--Time magazine's cover story this week is called "Should You Go Vegetarian?" The piece is pretty good, by which I mean that it's lengthy, and that it didn't make me gnash my teeth with rage at any point while I was reading it. (That came five minutes later, after I thought about the cumulative effect of its tone.) Let me summarize (everything in quotes actually appears in the article, the rest is my paraphrase):

Lots of people are going vegetarian! Your teen may be among them! Lots of fluff-headed teens who want to save Babe the Pig are going vegetarian because they think it's "cool!" It might actually, possibly, be healthier to go vegetarian! But it's too hard and you'll never succeed!!! You'd have to be a nutritionist or have "perfect knowledge" to get all the right vitamins and nutrients! There are lots of different kinds of vegetarians--some are normal and some are fanatic religious-cult-like vegans who think that honey "oppresses the worker bees!" Oh, those silly vegans!

Then it kind of repeats (there is very little structure to this article; in summarizing it for you, I have concluded that it sucks. I really didn't make up my mind about that until I read it over again):

Being a vegetarian requires "the full-time care and picky-picky feeding of [your body]." Vegans are philosophically opposed to vitamin supplements. Oh, those frightening, insane vegans! This one couple actually almost starved their baby by putting it on a vegetarian diet. You don't want to starve your baby, do you? Lots of teenagers who are vegetarians are starving themselves--denying themselves meat is just another manifestation of their eating disorder! If you eat too many carrots you'll turn orange! (Yes, that's actually in there--Dr. Michelle Warren of the Council for Women's Nutrition Solutions, which is sponsored by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, says, "I think it's very unattractive.") There are ethical arguments in favor of eating grain instead of meat, but the tractors and stuff that harvest grain also kill lots of grey-tailed voles. Does no one care about the grey-tailed vole? Hypocrites!

And in conclusion, " 'It may take a while,' says actress and vegetarian Mary Tyler Moore, 'but there will probably come a time when we look back and say, "Good Lord, do you believe that in the 20th century and early part of the 21st, people were still eating animals?" ' It may take a very long while. For most people, meat still does taste good. And can 'America's food' ever be tofu?" (The Japanese are coming! Watch out!)

In fairness, our tiny article did concede several points about all the saturated fat that meat contains. And I am actually not totally displeased by it--as the piece itself says, the fact that a major newsstand magazine is even pretending to discuss vegetarianism seriously and at length is a marker of how much progress has been made by the vegetarian/animal rights cause. I mean, when the whole Branch Davidian compound siege was happening, there were no articles in US News wondering whether David Koresh might actually be Jesus, and if so, what the American people should do about it...

Setting all facetiousness aside for a second (which is like difficult for me), I truly believe that American society is making real progress toward vegetarianism. It's become an accepted diet pretty much everywhere--people you meet may not be vegetarian themselves, but they (generally) understand that you are, what that involves, believe that it's OK, and don't mock you for it. For example, restaurants in Michigan took a lot of trouble to make sure I got a good meal even though it lacked the main component... This meant lots of cheese on everything--salads, breadsticks, whatever. This is something that vegetarian cookbooks were doing all the time in the 1970s--they'd give you four different kinds of cheese plus a fried egg in your recipe, just to make sure you got a 'good meal' with lots of nutrition in it. I actually like it when non-vegetarians do this; it seems like a friendly and humane response. Instead of communicating "you're stupid, why don't you just eat meat", they're communicating "I respect your choice and will try to make it taste good". Or something like that. It's really becoming a mainstream choice--this article's existence proves that.

In the interests of full disclosure, I'm not a vegan. I'll have cheese once or twice a month, probably eggs too if they're in someone's homemade dessert... I don't use dairy or eggs in my cooking and I'll avoid ordering them at a restaurant if there's an alternative to be had. But animal flesh is really where I draw the line. That isn't relevant to the article, just don't think I ever stated it here before.

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