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The Herbivore's Rumination

If you are what you eat, then I am not a dead animal.

Michael Pollen, author of the “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” wrote another stunning article in the New York Times, detailing the complexity of eating. This time, he took on the political implications.

In a March 2006 piece entitled “The Modern Hunter-Gatherer,” Pollen dealt with the individual morality of consuming food.

Georgetown’s own Woodstock Theological Center has been working on a project on “The Ethics of Eating,” which has been moderated by a former professor of mine, John Farina. As a vegetarian for more than half a decade, I know that making even small, intentional culinary omissions can radically change the way we view our most mundane moral choices. It happened to me.

When I stopped eating meat, in November 2001, it was because I suddenly appreciated the violence being done to animals for my consumption. I did not think that I was worthy of the animal’s sacrifice, especially when I was so far removed from its life and death. It also seemed to me that I had created strange justifications for certain acts of violence, while condemning others: I would never eat my adorable 8-pound dog, but I would gladly ingest a thousand pound cow. I stopped eating meat, and have been slowly transformed by that choice.

My diet has its critics. As my mother reminds me, Jesus ate animals, (though I’ve argued He would be a vegetarian if He had the resources). And although, as I was instructed by an eager vegan at the Green Festival this past Fall, giving up dairy would go a lot further in reducing animal suffering, I am not a vegan. If I were willing to take an instrument of death into my hands, stalk and kill a wild animal, and actively participate in the process that brought that animal onto my plate, I would, perhaps, eat meat again.

Still, you don’t see me with a rifle in my hands –although those hunting boots are pretty cute.
In this modern world, we are so far removed from the processes that fulfill our basic needs: food, clothing, shelter. Someone else –likely someone far away – has grown our juicy tomatoes, sewn iridescent sequins on our T-shirts, created systems to heat our houses. All we do is take it and use it as our own. Think of it! We press a button, and our heat comes out of the walls, into our homes. We go to a grocer, and there is food everywhere!

This awe is brilliantly portrayed by Tom Hanks in the movie Castaway. Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) has just been saved after years on a remote island. He finds himself in a hotel room, where he can’t help but flip the light switch on and off, on and off, on and off, and he is astonished at how simple it is for him to go from light to dark. He realizes what incredible progress humans have made, but I am not convinced that Chuck believes we are better for it.

An April 2001 article that worked to unravel my worldview followed three Sudanese brothers commonly referred to as the “Lost Boys,” because they, orphaned and under constant threat, wandered for years, seeking refuge. After living in a Kenyan refugee camp for nearly a decade, the boys were put into foster care in the United States. The article’s author, Sara Corbett, described their journey to an American grocery store, and I still remember reading for the first time the amazement of the boys as they moved through the store.

“Hornbacher's, a standard-issue Midwestern grocery store, proved to be full of wonders. The electric doors. The grocery carts. The riotous rows of brightly packaged food and the ample-bodied white people who filled their carts with whatever they wished to buy. With the eyes of nearly every shopper in the store on them, the boys wandered tentatively through the produce section, looking but not touching, until Riak discovered a bin of green mangoes, which triggered a round of excited Dinka chatter. As we made our way through the store, they recognized nothing else except a bag of rice, but each new aisle seemed to embolden them, and soon they were moving as a meticulous three-man inspection team, studying labels, squeezing boxes and quietly pronouncing the names of everything from Special K to Velveeta.

''What is this?'' Maduk asked, holding up a bar of Dove soap.

''That's soap,'' I said.

''What is this one?'' he said, hefting a fat block of Zest.

''That's soap, too.'' I waved my hand in a wide circle, top shelf to bottom, back and forth, encompassing the antibacterial soaps, the deodorant soaps, the soaps for men, soaps for women, soaps for babies. ''All of this is soap,'' I said.

''O.K.,'' Maduk said, appearing doubtful.”

The wonder! I learned so much from those boys.

I realized that I had choices to make. Each day, I can decide whether I will purchase yet another bottle of water, or will fill up my bottle from the tap at home. The concern is not simply for the environment, but it is also recognition that all actions have consequences, and that I can be an agent for change. I have learned that the little things matter.
Plus, Prince Charles is doing it, and with William single again, I’d like to be on his daddy’s good side.

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