Changing My Relationship with Food

"If nothing matters, there's nothing to save"

I was born in South Africa to a father with a serious sweet tooth and in a culture obsessed with meat . My most vivid memories are nights spent at braaiis, chicken, boerewors, beef, beef, and more beef on the grill, and running to the corner shop with my sister to buy koeksisters - literally deep fried sugar. For most of my life, I've chosen to guzzle any kind of sweet thing over a real meal. When I moved to England, I hated their food. It all tasted like nothing,  and I remedied this by buying every available processed food - chemicals always taste like something. In England I became a chubby teenager, and I learned to separate food into food that makes you fat and food that makes you less fat. (More often than not, I chose to eat the food that made me "fat".)

My first year of high school in America, I was amazed to learn that people ate out ALL the time. Eating out had always been reserved for special occasions in my family, but my classmates seemed to stop for fast food everyday. And there were more restaurants than I'd ever seen. I quickly acclimated to the idea that food should be three things: huge, fast, cheap. After a few years, I moved in with an Italian family and food was the answer to everything in their home. We celebrated with steak, comforted with spaghetti. Our conversations, when we were just getting to know each other, centered around food: "Will you be home for dinner?"; "Are you eating enough? You look awfully thin!"

It was only when I moved out by myself that I realized how complicated my relationship with food had become. Often we fail to realize how important our relationship with food is and how it informs all other areas of our lives. We eat or purposefully don't eat when we're sad, happy, grieving, bored, tired, lonely; food is often the balm for our aches and the one thing we can still control when we are overwhelmed by everything else.  It is also the way we bond with each other.

Alone, responsible for nourishing myself, I decided to ask questions about food. I had never, ever questioned whether I should eat meat or not. I'd always eaten meat, everyone I knew ate meat - why wouldn't I continue to do so? I approached it as I do most things now: does eating meat compromise my values or conflict with my morals? Well...yes. Eating meat means the death of another animal, and that death cannot come without some measure of suffering; is their suffering worth my pleasure? Probably not. Why are some animals eaten and some kept as pets? What separates them? How come the animals we consider pets are considered food in other areas of the world and vice versa? There is no discernible reason; we have just created stories to justify our choices (as humans tend to). Pigs are similar in temperament and personality to dogs, but we eat them because pigs are made to be eaten. Same goes for chickens and cows. Dogs are not made to be eaten, and we will vilify the cultures that choose to do so. 

Still, everyone eats meat. It had been the center of all my meals for twenty-one years, and animal products were at the center of the Universe it seemed. Everywhere I looked I was being encouraged to drink milk for strong bones and meat for protein. Ah, protein: the major selling point of the meat industry. Morality is such an abstract idea when it comes to something as commonplace as eating; I needed facts if I was going to change my diet. 

So the next question: where does my food come from?

Factory farms. Factory farms account for over 90% of our meat in America (in some cases over 99%), and they resemble farms only if your idea of a farm is a huge industrial building in which the animals never get a glimpse of sunshine and are packed into such close quarters that they often trample each other to death. They're not run by farmers either; they're operated by billion dollar corporations. Corporations are not interested in our health or in animal welfare, they are interested in money. And because we have created a culture that thinks food should be cheap and easy, we are paying them to poison us and facilitating daily, unspeakable cruelty to animals.

"Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn't motivating, what would be? If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn't enough, what is? And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say not now, then when?"

What kinds of cruelty? Most of us have seen an undercover video of a slaughterhouse or factory farm and been completely horrified by it. I won't go into detail of the kinds of the practices taking place in the food industry, but I encourage you to research it. And if your response is: "I don't want to know!", which mine was for a very long time, know that it is your right to know. This is an industry you're contributing to with every purchase; they exist because you pay them to, and you should know what you're paying for and what you're putting in your body. Also understand that the videos of extreme violence are not out of the ordinary or an example of an employee acting out of order; these are standard practices. "CFE Common Farming Exemptions make legal any method of raising farmed animals so long as it is commonly practiced within the industry"; this means that factory farms can do whatever they want to animals as long as they're all doing it. They are literally not held accountable to any ethical or legal standards.

I learned everything I could about factory farming, and it disgusted and angered me. There is no question that it goes against almost everyone's moral code. But it's intentionally hidden from us; we cannot see it, aren't allowed to see it, and mostly we are glad. It means we don't have to make any choices and we certainly don't need to change. Still people argue that humans are more important than animals; we allow for their suffering; we call it necessary.

But even if we think like that, if we literally do not give a fuck about animals, we must care about ourselves. What are the health implications of eating genetically modified animals (to the point that they do not genetically resemble our idea of a pig or chicken or cow; they are born diseased, unable to live without being  pumped full of antibodies; they do not live even close to as long as they're supposed to)? Of putting their tortured flesh into our bodies? What are the environmental consequences?

"Scientists at Columbia and Princeton Universities have actually been able to trace six of the eight genetic segments of the (currently) most feared virus in the world directly to US factory farms."

"All told, farmed animals in the United States produce 130 times as much waste as the human population - roughly 87,000 pounds of shit per second. The polluting strength of this shit is 160 times greater than raw municipal sewage." (Earth cannot support it, and there is nowhere for it go, except into our large bodies of water.)

"Estimates suggest land degradation from industrial farming has cost America $26 billion"

To eat animal products is a choice not a necessity. We  are currently choosing to do it in such an extreme way that it not only causes untold suffering to creatures that cannot do anything to defend themselves, but also in ways which give us diseases (another multi-billion dollar industry — pharmaceuticals  — is there to apply band aids instead of going to the source) and  which is destroying the only place we have to live.

I know that there are other problems, and that the world is not going to change overnight because I refuse to eat animal products. But I also know making the decision to eat something other than animals practices compassion. I am being kind to animals; I am being kind to my body. It is the decision to choose conscience over ease. It is the way that I can, every single day, refuse to fund or participate in practices that go against my morals. I choose to buy  my fruits and vegetables from local, chemical-free farms, because it helps build the kind of world I'd like to live in.  With each passing day of conscious eating, I am happier. I can feel my relationship with food changing, and all the toxic stories I'd told myself (fat food vs. less fat food) unraveling.

"Two friends are ordering lunch. One says, "I'm in the mood for a burger," and orders it. The other says, "I'm in the mood for a burger," but remembers that there are things more important to him than what he is in the mood for at any given moment, and orders something else. Who is the sentimentalist?"

When people make cavalier comments about vegetarians or vegans, I don't get offended. I think that they — as I was for so long — are unaware of the practices currently in place. I think they're unaware of what eating meat means. I can't imagine that any compassionate individual would support factory farming. It's never about pointing fingers or making someone feel bad about their choices. It's about recognizing that we're all trying to do the best we can, and we all want to practice compassion and cruelty-free living; that means we have to educate ourselves before we can make proper decisions. Maybe making the decision to not eat meat, to not eat dairy, isn't easy; maybe it's difficult to no longer participate in the same meals as your friends or family; but the question isn't about what's easy, it's about what you can morally live with. Maybe giving up meat is a possibility for you, but you just can't part with cheese - it is no ones place to tell you what is acceptable or what is not. For me, eating animal products is no longer an option, and every day it's becoming easier.

This post is already ridiculously long, and I could not include as much as I would like. For example, what labels like "free-range" really mean, and the practices in dairy,egg and fish farming. If you want to find out more about the food industry, there are many great documentaries for free on netflix  and I recommend reading "Eating Animals" which is where all the quotations are from. The photo is an example of vegan meal found here.