not eating animal X

[mellowtigger]

I have a question more about eating than "healthy" eating, I suppose, but it is heavy on the "diet management" aspect.  Are there foods that you will not eat as an omnivore? 

I've finally taken the time to write down my thinking on this matter.  Please critique if you find flaws in my reasoning.
http://mellowtigger.dreamwidth.org/210437.html

Comments

[claire_chan]

Anything that doesn't smell right - namely spoiled milk and the rubbish in the back of the fridge that has been sitting there for a long time.

This probably needs a bit of work.

[raze]

I have always found the sentience argument a bit flawed in general; something about "well I won't eat the SMART animals" leaves a bad taste in my mouth, namely because a) cognitive research on animals is in its infancy as a science, and if we've learned only one thing so far, it's that virtually every animal continues to reveal greater depths of mental ability than we once believed b) it's a really arbitrary thing to base moral decisions on, as compared to a capacity for suffering, environmental impact, socioeconomic factors, etc. and c) if you're speaking in terms of a defensible ideological argument, it has fewer legs to stand on than say, an anti-exploitation argument, which if nothing else is at least consistent and not based on factors that are still pretty open to debate - which sentience/intelligence in most species quite definitely is.

IF this is how you plan to base your dietary ethics, I will say one thing: do a lot of reading in a lot of cognitive ethology and behavioral science journals if eating intelligent/aware/suffering creatures bothers you - and set some extremely specific criteria for yourself for where you're drawing the lines. It is increasingly popular opinion in the scientific community that most animals are thinking, feeling beings - so if that bothers you but you are committed to this type of eating, it may be better to accept that you will indeed be eating things that are intelligent and that suffer not just physical but mental anguish in modern food production systems.

On your topic, were I an omnivore, I would probably be basing what I would or wouldn't eat less on the species and more on things like, What is the impact of this item on the environment? On human rights? On my health? On my finances? - this is how I base my choices as a vegan. I would not, for example, buy industrially farmed animal products (for environmental, health, and human rights reasons), nor fish species that are markedly declining in number or harvested using methods that have significant bycatch. I would avoid fish species known to have high levels of pollutants. Were I selecting terrestrial flesh, I might go for something like grass-fed bison steak over corn fed ground beef due to a combination of environmental and health reasons. I may decide to raise my own chickens for eggs and meat - I might even elect to hunt, especially if I lived in a state were deer were overabundant and CJD risk low.

As a vegan, there are some foods I avoid for a myriad of reasons. I won't eat anything with palm oil in it, because the methods producing the VAST majority of palm oil at present are extremely unsustainable. I do not buy chocolate unless I am certain it is fair trade, because there are a *ton* of human rights issues surrounding chocolate production. I forage and/or grow a good deal of my produce because I quite frankly can't afford most local and organic produce, but don't particularly like the thought of my food being shipped vast distances from countries with even poorer regulations than this one. I have been recently avoiding gluten-heavy products because I find they seem to contribute to my joint pain. And so fourth.

[raze]

I can't edit to add, but: bear in mind that humans eating a primal diet had a primal lifestyle as well. Most of the diet-related illnesses linked to a protein-heavy diet observed in western nations are not really about the level of protein at all, but the lifestyle as a whole. Early man was constantly physically active, likely didn't have daily access to ample calories, and everything he ate, he had to run down and kill or forage for, first. He operated more like other wild predators; it was a tough lifestyle, not one that involved being largely sedentary. This allowed early man to consume copious amounts of meat without suffering the ill health effects linked to such behavior in modern times. The only modern cultures who still consume animal products on this level without ill health effects are cultures that still live a very "primal" lifestyle - see nomadic horsemen of Mongolia, for example.

The caliber of the meat was also different; the meat of a freshly culled deer versus a corn fed factory farmed cow is extremely different nutritionally. These things are significant, so I'm not sure if by "primal" you merely mean "higher meat" or if you mean "consuming mostly wild game such as deer, bison, salmon, etc."

I don't mean to imply that you've not done adequate research, and you may be doing this because you are an athlete and need a diet that will let you be active and build muscle. I just have seen folks embark on diets like this without that understanding in place and wind up with ill effects (much as an uninformed vegan suffers ill effects), and felt it prudent to mention.

[mellowtigger]

All voluntary restriction diets are arbitrary. Ultimately, there is no free resource of any kind throughout the universe. Valuation of one kind of resource over another requires a subjective evaluation, which is arbitrary when viewed from anyone else's perspective.

A quote that has long influenced my thoughts comes from within a science fiction story by David Brin. Even this piece, however, was written before the meme became a popular abstraction. Not even thought is "free" because memes require energy to fuel the mind that perpetuates them. It's a fictional scroll of religion/philosophy/science from a pan-galactic civilization that states:

"The right to live is tentative. Material things are limited, though the mind is free. Of protein, phosphorus, nor even energy is there ever enough to slake all hungers. Therefore, show not affront when diverse beings vie over what physically exists. Only in thought can there be true generosity. So let thought be the focus of your world."

In my case, I come from a lineage of humans with life-threatening digestive problems resulting from the grains and beans that vegetarians promote. My great-uncle had a colostomy because of the large holes in his intestine. My mother is now on a medically required gluten free diet because of the small holes in her intestine. My own gut problems have continued for more than a decade. I intend to adopt an "anti-vegetarian" (as I affectionately refer to primal) diet to delay my own ill health.

Your "food" is my "poison", vastly oversimplified. Since I have to eat more meat against my own natural inclination, then I intend for it be the healthiest and least objectionable meat that I can find. Uncaged, local as possible, not given hormones or medications, and not from animals that could mourn their fate as food.

[mellowtigger]

p.s. Oh, and another related thought. As Daniel Quinn makes clear in his Ishmael books, humanity's crimes against nature began long ago with the invention of agriculture.

Pulling a weed to plant a seed teaches us that we get to choose which species must live and which must die for our benefit. The other crimes follow naturally from that first simple garden.

[raze]

Thanks for the insight on why you've chosen what you are referring to as a primal diet; I didn't mean to assume or insult, which is why I noted that I do know some folks have quite legitimate reasons for pursuing as much - I only figured I would offer a bit of caution since I have known folks who have followed such a path for reasons as oversimplified as "wanting to eat like a cave man!" and have wound up quite ill as a consequence.

I do agree that all restriction is ultimately arbitrary. I just think that while you can quantify things like desertification, decline in fishery populations, incidences of specific food borne pathogens in given foods, statistical frequency of human rights abuses, etc. it's a little less cut and dry to try and focus on something like the potential mental state of another species in a food production system. That's not to say there isn't science there as well - I just think that it's hard to stick a pin in how much a pig suffers mentally compared to a dolphin, and thus a dodgy thing to base an ethical argument on. At any rate, that's just my opinion; you asked that people give input on what you'd posted.

Re: no resource being free, oh, absolutely and an excellent point. I am keenly, perhaps excessively aware of as much - I do not consider veganism to a guilt free or death free diet like many of my perhaps more idealistic comrades are. The reality of all consumption is that it requires resources, and those resources came from somewhere and at the cost of something or someone else. Conscientious eating is enough to drive a person mad. I'm glad to hear, at any rate, that you're carefully considering the SOURCES of your meat - if nothing else it will definitely benefit your health in the long run.

*de-lurks*

[rydra_wong]

Just wanted to mention that there's a little comm for people interested in primal/paleo eating, playeatsleep. It's quiet but could use some love.

[majoline]

I will second the spoiled/gone off, but otherwise, I don't know that my opinion will be the same as most people's.

I grew up on a cattle ranch/orange orchard and we ate our homegrown meat as well as what we could catch/grow because you haven't been poor until you've been Western food producer poor.

The thing about the primal diet is the fact that it involves eating the whole cow. You totally can live a long and healthy life eating only beef you grow. It also involves eating liver, tripe, bone marrow, heart, etc.

Not to turn you off of your goals! Because all of those things are yummy, but they also aren't the typical diet here anymore and you might have just as big a squick factor on those as bugs for example.

[raze]

Speaking of bugs: they are actually a phenomenal source of nutrition, if one can get over the cultural squickiness!

[majoline]

Oh yeah! I completely agree. If I tell you I grew up eating ants, corn grubs, and crickets you can probably figure out what my cultural background is. *g*

[rydra_wong]

It also involves eating liver, tripe, bone marrow, heart, etc.

Mmmmm.

Gratuitous link to my offal-promotion post, in case it's of interest to mellowtigger.

[majoline]

I'm gratuitously informing you I love that post ♥

[thegorgon]

I really feel like "can this animal suffer?" is a question whose answer is almost always yes, and anytime people try to tell you the answer is no it's because they have a vested interest in the suffering of that animal -- see, the meat industry.

If I ate meat, I'd focus less on "is this animal capable of suffering?" as a criteria, and more on "was it raised in a humane environment?" And then look at environmental impacts, etc.

[ex_daily276]

Spoiled food, of course.
Dogs and cats are also on my no eat list.
The older than average the wild creature is, the less likely I want to eat it. Not so much as wanting to avoid toughness, but respect for their ability to survive. Anything that survived for over 80 years, I wouldn't want to eat.