Tasty Is the Flesh
Sure, I understand why people become vegetarians or even full-on vegans. Once you’ve looked into the sad eyes of an innocent lamb just before it’s led, together with its tiny friends and the rest of its loudly bleating family, to a fully automated slaughter line, where it’s torn apart before the wide-open eyes of its loved ones, you start thinking differently about the piece of meat on your plate. I, too, tried to join the cult of supposedly better people. With my eating-disordered girlfriend, I grazed for months on broccoli, nuts, and hummus, until I dragged myself, starving, into a Burger King, where a kind employee revived me with cheap animal scraps before releasing me back into the wild. The relationship ended shortly afterward.
For years after that, I turned into a temporary vegetarian whenever I came across one of those cruel activists videos shot in slaughterhouses. Clips where newly hatched chicks went straight into the grinder because they weren’t the expected sex, or squealing pigs were beaten to death with shovels simply because the workers were bored at three in the morning. Meat has never been cheaper or more widely available, but it has also never been so low in quality. One food scandal follows the next. Who can still bite into a sausage, a steak, or a kebab without feeling guilty? And yet I keep eating meat. Why? Because I like the taste. And because my body screams for it if I deny it for a week.
When I once asked a Japanese friend at dinner why so few Japanese people are vegetarians, he calmly replied, Because everything has a soul.
What he meant was that every meal brings suffering to some living being, whether it can scream loudly or feel pain in ways we can barely grasp scientifically or socially. The future isn’t about total abstinence but increased awareness. The era of cheap, mass-produced meat must end, but a balanced diet with high-quality foods should be possible. Yes, I try to reduce my meat consumption and focus more on fresh fish, crunchy nuts, and crisp vegetables. But a good organic steak or a juicy cheeseburger from my favorite shop down the street is something I still can’t, and won’t, give up.