Vegetarians Taste Better

I always look out for bumper stickers.  I love them.  A lot of them are pretty banal or shallow: how many times to we need to know who drove the Coquihalla? or whose daughter made the honour role? or whose pet gerbil made the honour role? or whose Maine Coon Cat is more intelligent than your daughter who made the honour role? I use a voice mail service for people on low incomes.  For twenty bucks a year I have full service.  I haven't changed my greeting in years: "Tell me everything."  When my voice mail was my main, actually my only form of communication, and I was getting more phone calls since it seemed that I actually had friends in those days (how can you tell I feel a little bit neglected these days?) I would run a regular feature on my greeting called "Bumper Sticker of the Week."  This would include any kind of clever, unusual or off beat kind of bumper sticker I happened to notice that I was sure was going to make someone's day.  Here's one of my faves: "When I die I want to go peacefully and quietly in my sleep, just like Grandpa: not crying and screaming like the occupants in the back seat of his car."  I have also noticed various takes on being vegetarian, from "Meat Is Murder" to "Animals Are My Friends.  I Don't Eat My Friends," to my screaming favourite bumper sticker of all "Vegetarians Taste Better."  If you haven't figured out which one of those three made it as bumper sticker of the week then I'll give you three guesses; the first two don't count.
     I have been vegetarian for most of the last twenty years.  Notice I said I have been vegetarian, not a vegetarian.  It is an adjective, not a noun, at least in my case.  Not eating meat, or chicken, or turkey, duck, goose, or Jonathan Livingston Seagull, or fish or seafood does not define me.  It is one of many features in the person I am becoming.  I usually don't even think about it, unless I am eating out, which doesn't happen too often, and have to search and scrutinize the menu with a magnifying glass to find anything that I'm able to eat.  Restaurants here in Vancouver are generally pretty good and per capita there are a lot of vegetarians in this city.  It is also easy in Costa Rica for some reason, but not in Mexico.  In Mexico City, otherwise known for its foodyism and great restaurants, there is a little flexibility but not much and when I'm there I often have to be a bit creative.
     Someone recently asked me if I ever "cheat on my diet."  I didn't know what she was referring to till she mentioned if I ever like to sneak a tasty morsel of chicken or steak when no one's looking.  Well, no, never. You see, I don't like meat.  I find it gross.  I didn't specifically quit eating meat for ethical reasons.  I just didn't like it anymore.  One day in early July of 1993 I realized that I had gone five days without eating meat and realized I did not miss it at all.  I thought I'd try another five days, focussing exclusively on avoiding red meat.  Within weeks I gave up all forms of red meat without having to even think about it. About a year later, following my first trip to Costa Rica where I ate quite a lot of chicken I found myself looking at a photo portrait of the profile of the head and neck of a white peacock that illustrates the frontispiece of one of my many bird books.  Above is an image of a painting I did of a white peacock.  Not for sale, since a charming lady from Istanbul is now its proud owners.  I love birds, esthetically but also as fellow beings on the planet.  Seeing how much this peacock resembled a chicken I realized in less than a minute that I would no longer be eating birds of any kind, shape or form.  A year later in 1995 I gave up fish, thinking, yeah, well, in for a penny in for a pound.
     During this entire process of becoming vegetarian never once did I think about animal rights, nor of animals or sentient beings, nor of protecting the environment.  Simply put, I didn't want it any more.  I found it gross and disgusting.  I found it unnecessary.  I have long believed that meat, at least in the quantities that it is eaten in developed countries, is not a natural food for humans.  My reasons?  All anecdotal so I can't bore anyone with statistics and studies.  However, of any food group, it has always been hardest for me to try and learn to stomach meat coming from an unfamiliar animal.  This eventually led me to believe that maybe my body was trying to tell me something.  Just yesterday in the staff room of one of the mental health teams where I work one of our co-workers came in with her baby and mentioned that the only new food she has trouble getting a taste for is any kind of meat.  More recently it has also occurred to me that in every single human culture, no matter how "primitive" meat is almost always cooked before it is eaten.  (please do not ask, "And what about sushi?")  Raw meat is hard to digest and because of pathogens is generally dangerous to the health.  If we were meant to be meat eaters then someone please explain to me why we don't eat it raw, of why the very idea makes most people nauseous.  So to those who zealously promote the Atkins Diet or the Paleolithic Diet please try it by all means, only be sure to eat your meat uncooked.  Then tell us about it.
     The first time I became vegetarian I was eighteen and remained vegetarian for almost two years.  I read Frances Moore Lappe's famous book "Diet For A Small Planet" and was instantly won over."  Her argument for vegetarianism was and still remains flawless.  I was especially inspired by her findings of the huge ecological footprint left by meat production.  Sheep do less ecological harm than cows, pigs less than sheep, chicken less (way less) than pigs, soy beans less than chickens.  Resuming vegetarian eating seems to have helped reawaken and inform my concern for the environment, as well as the dignity and wellbeing of animals.  As studies have found that animals have more intelligence and greater emotional intelligence and moral sense than previously believed it makes killing and eating them, for me anyway, all the more odious.  On the other hand, it is easy for me to say this since I am not living with the Inuit in the Arctic neither do I live in a hunter-gatherer society.  Living in the lap of luxury that is Canada it can be so terribly easy to take ethical positions such as vegetarianism.  I sometimes remind myself that Hitler was a vegetarian.  And a non-smoker, so I take great care not to demonize carnivores.  Smokers are not so lucky.
     Full disclosure: I eat eggs.  Not free range organic.  Too expensive when you earn a low income.  And I am not giving up cheese omelettes.  I also wear leather, shoes and belt.  I suppose this makes me a bit of a hypocrite or fence-sitter.  Instead of rationalizing my compromises let's just say that I tend to accept trade-offs and even if I cannot play a full role in making life easier for nonhuman animals and the environment at least I can do a little bit.

Here's another one of my peacock paintings.  Yes I did paint this.  Check my website: thesearepaintings.googlepages.com, if you want to see some more.  And yes, they are all for sale!

     I can't say whether my health has improved significantly or that I feel better since giving up meat and anyway, those weren't my reasons for becoming vegetarian.  It hasn't kept me from gaining fifty unneeded pounds, given my love for cheese, butter and cream.  With my doctor's support I have cut a lot of dairy fat out of my diet and have lost nearly half the weight I've gained.  I have neither given up cheese or switched to the low fat varieties (insipid and boring).  I simply use less and savour more.  Still, I have to laugh whenever I think of a cartoon ad I saw in Mexico City.  There was an obese family stuffing their pie-holes with hamburger's and KFC or whatever and they were asking a family of slender and healthy looking vegetarians "but what do you eat for protein, or "Pero que comen ustedes de proteina?"
     Ultimately I think we are en masse going to have to accept some major changes in our diet and eating patterns and habits if we are going to survive the Twenty-First Century.  Emerging world economies such as China, India, Brazil and Mexico are consuming more meat than ever because, let's face it, meat is a status symbol.  It is expensive to produce.  If you're doing well you are likely going to eat it whether you really enjoy it or not. 
     We are all going to have to face the reality of giving up meat, of going vegetarian.  Switching to fish isn't the answer as our declining fish stocks and local extinctions due to changes in ocean currents from global warming can attest.  For those who really want to kill their food there are trillions of insects swarming the planet, many of them both edible and tasty.  (no, I haven't tried any of them.  I'm vegetarian, okay?)  Meanwhile our global human population is more than seven billion and rising fast.  I have read that the maximum human population that the earth can comfortably sustain should never rise about one and a half billion.  Hopefully we will figure it out one day soon before we eat our way to Armageddon. 

William Blake said in his Proverbs of Hell that the "Pride of the Peacock is the Glory of God."  This brings to mind how often we project our own human characterisitics onto other living things.

Instead of seeing the unmatched beauty of these gorgeous birds our vision is often eclipsed by conferring onto them  our own flaws and weaknesses of pride, vainglory and vanity. 

Here is another take on the peacock that I enjoy: they have historically been regarded as symbols of the resurrection of Christ and as symbols of healing, purity and eternal life.

Peacocks for me beg to be painted.  I have never tackled a subject so challenging nor from which in each painting I've learned something new about colour, composition and light.

I don't see the peacock as a proud bird and I am sure that they never look at mirrors.  Perhaps they can serve as a mirror for us to look into.

 

 

 

Another one of my peacock paintings.  This one is green.  They actually do exist, and the most dazzling live on the Island of Java in Indonesia.  Peacocks are a close relative to the chicken, but not as tasty, and anyway, who would eat a peacock?

thesearepaintings.googlepages.com.