Meat! (etc.)

I was cruising past a food blog I enjoy and noticed they had posted the winners of the 2005 Food Blog Awards. I don’t really know how wide a circle food blogging is, or how wide the award-givers cast their nominee net, but at the very least I figured the winners may have some fun-to-read postings.

Naturaly, this one caught my eye: “Best Post – Meat Comes From Animals…, by Barbara at Tigers & Strawberries.” I just had to read it!

And I’m glad I did. It started out as an amusing entry about meat and peoples’ response to meat-on-the-bone and morphed into an excellent justification for why the American meat supply system is just plain broken and why we should seriously consider organic (etc) meat.

Bear with me here, I’m going to try to make this well-worth reading.

Barbara lays out an excellent case for why she makes this claim: “People have forgotten, that in order for us to eat a hamburger, a cow dies. Most Americans live sheltered lives where the fact that in order for us to celebrate Independance Day with fried chicken and barbequed ribs, chickens and hogs must die.” On that note, ever wonder what happens to the rest of the chickens when you order 30 wings? Do you even realize (at the time) that there were other parts of the chicken?

So she continues on, getting to the best part of the whole post, which I highly encourage you to go read for yourself. But I’m going to slightly spoil it by repeating part of the story here. So go read Barbara’s post first, if you don’t want to have it spoiled for you now. Or skip a few paragraphs, if you must.

The story is set at a Thanksgiving table, and as the bird is sitting on display, ready to be eaten, one woman states, “I cannot stand to see meat that looks obviously like it is from the animal. It upsets me so.” (This sentiment was the topic of the post initially, btw)

Well at a table of people who, shall we say, don’t agree with this lady’s sentiments, they let the elder — the woman of the house — handle the response. Which just makes me giddy, imagining the scene playing out. The response…

Selma, a lovely older woman, looked down her elegant nose at the other woman, and raised one eyebrow. The corner of her mouth quirked up and she took a sip of wine then said, “Oh, that is so strange to me, because you know, I grew up buying live chickens at the market and carrying them home by their feet. And then my mother or father would butcher them out in the backyard in the summer, or down in the basement in the winter, and I always helped pluck them. They were lively birds, you know–the livelier, the better, my mother always said, and she would wring its neck and then we would bleed it–you know, you have to bleed it all out to make it kosher.”

And as if that wasn’t enough, it goes on: “Selma continued to describe the process of going from live chicken to matzoh ball soup, and then shrugged and said, ‘And they were the best tasting chickens I have ever eaten. Really, until you eat such a fresh bird, you do not know what you are missing.’” (italics mine)

Isn’t that a Thanksgiving table you just wish you were at? It’s like a thing of the movies.

Anyway, I do have a point here. First of all, the post made me think of my ancestors (butchers/grocers on my dad’s side, farmers on my mom’s and in-law’s side). And the post made me really consider how dramatically the food supply has changed in the U.S. in the last 50 years.

But let’s go back to those simple italicized words above. It sounds like a foreign concept, something we could all probably brush off easily, not putting much stock in the theory. But what happens if we replace “bird” with tomato? Or raspberry? Or apple? Or just about anything that isn’t meat?

I dare say, the whole reaction does a 180. Suddenly we’d be saying, “well of course! There’s just no replacement for fresh!”

Now I’m not saying we should all start raising chickens or have a herd of cattle. But if you have a choice between the farmer’s market tomato and the flown-in-from-across-the-country-or-continent tomato, which do you pick? If you have a choice between local (and often organic) or far-away (and usually covered in pesticide), which do you pick? Why is it that we don’t think about our meat the same way?

Food — sustenance — is one thing the entire world shares in common. We all must eat, and very few (if any) people can grow or raise everything they need to sustain themselves. Where should we get the food we eat? From across the globe, or right next door? Do you want the food produced by a factory farm, or the food from the family farmer who you can talk to at the market?

The ingredients we put into our food matter. This is why rIAm and I think carefully about what we buy at the various markets and grocery stores. Life really is better when you eat high-quality ingredients. Which doesn’t mean we do all of our shopping at Whole Foods Market (aka Whole Paycheck Market), but it does mean that we go to the ethnic markets, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, farmer’s markets, and only for some things, do we go to Jewel or Dominick’s.

It’s not a perfect system; some food we eat is probably of questionable origin. And we’re certainly in better position to avoid the major chains by living in Chicago (or any big city). Anybody, however, can make smarter choices. Like avoiding the center of the grocery store — the processed foods area — and stick to the perimeter, where you find the fresh things (e.g. produce, dairy and meats). Or choosing Jay’s chips over Lay’s or others because they contain ony 3 ingredients: potato, oil, salt. Heck, you could make those at home, if you were ambitious.

For us, it is a regular decision about what’s worth buying organic (and likely pay more for it at Whole Foods) and what isn’t so bad as non-organic (and likely pay much less for it at an ethnic market).

But isn’t a little extra effort and attention worth it for something so basic — but so vital — as the food we eat?