I recently read Eating Animals by Jonathon Safron Foer. This book definitely grossed me out with its imagery, sent me over the edge, and drove the hubbend crazy (due to my eternal badgering him over the grossness of eating meat). Now I am reading Omnivores Dilemma again and I am waiting for Michael Pollan to react the same way. I am reading it wondering, how can you see all you have seen and still eat meat? Yet he does.
I am happy to say I have relaxed on my hubbend and now don’t badger him at all on the subject, but as this loosening occurs and the longer time passes from reading that book (EA) the more I lose my own grip on the subject. To some degree the ability to eat meat comes from forgetting that the meat comes from an animal and the process it took to get there. So I sit and wonder how bad the honey chicken from the Chinese restaurant could be. The answer? It isn’t if you are ok with eating chicken. But to make the leap back into eating meat makes that chicken not feel like the right choice. So, what is the right choice? And why?
There are so many external factors and influences to how you eat. Sometimes it is hard to know what to do and the more information you get the more confusing it can be. Sometimes I just want to eat something and not care about it. I want to eat it not caring how I am going to feel, look and how ethical the process is that got that food in front of me. Sometimes, but not often I wish I could unlearn all that I have learned and go back to eating badly.
But then. Isn’t that what eating is supposed to be? Isn’t eating supposed to be about what your body wants and not the mind? It isn’t supposed to be about rules and calories and nutritional bytes. My body needs this food to fuel my activities and mind converting it to energy and future thoughts.
How do I get there? Because that is really the goal in all this. To eat. Mindfully yet honoring the body. Enjoying the food that sustains me. How do I do this?
I don’t know. And I’m bummed.
No comments:
Post a Comment