A World Without Meat? Or How About A Little Less of It
I’m not impervious to a guilt trip. You can ask my mother. She thinks I worry for a hobby, and she’s probably right.
So imagine my thoughts today, when I wake up to NPR’s Morning Edition, and an interview Mark Bittman, a cookbook author and a columnist at the New York Times who recently wrote a new book called Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating. In it, Bittman argues for us to eat less meat. As I’m listening to this, I couldn’t help but appreciate the irony that that my review of Bib’s Downtown ran in relish today, too, in which I was rather glowing about the restaurant’s many meats, in particular, its wonderful ribs and beef brisket.
Not that Morning Edition or Mark Bittman know or care. But it got me thinking about how many mixed messages float around out there in Medialand about food. We have such a love-hate relationship with so much of it.
Now, I used to not eat meat. I was a vegetarian (albeit a lazy one, meaning I often relied on cheese and eggs, not loads of tofu and leafy greens) for part of my teenage years and into college. I think years of missing bacon was the straw that broke my back - that, and lamb, and generally being fed up with the worry about eating meat in restaurants or at friends’ houses. I know many vegetarians and applaud their efforts, but it’s just not for me anymore. And I never stopped eating fish. So perhaps my heart wasn’t really in it.
Bittman doesn’t argue for any meat. He argues for less of it as a means to a healthier body and planet, and it’s not a chain of thought I disagree with. It’s just that if I’m going to have meat, it’s going to be good. No wasting meat consumption on dry hamburgers, or boring barbecue.
