EVOLUTION

ORIGINALLY POSTED IN 2012

I haven’t posted a blog in over a year and a half? We could blame the happy distraction of my dog (see my last post) or work, or both. I have drafts and notes scribbled everywhere. It takes a lot of time. Anyway.

THIS PHOTO below I took at the Madison Square Big Apple BBQ today. That truck. The event. All of it. I can’t even comment. SMITHFIELD, of all companies? “Helping Hungry Homes”?? What distorted reality is this? (Dear guy in the photo eating what I’ll assume is pulled pork since that’s what everyone else was eating, sorry you were standing there and are now a feature of this pictorial.)

Anyway. Today I took my dog Leon to the dog park at Madison Square, as I do most weekends. Usually it’s meditative time for me that I wouldn’t otherwise take, to sit quietly outdoors, and breathe. I just hang out and watch my dog and the other dogs, and sometimes make friendly conversation with other dog people about our dogs. In other words, it’s a nice relaxing escape from my usual preoccupation with my occupation. However. This happened to be day two of New York’s annual Big Apple BBQ event held in Madison Square Park.

Sitting on the bench in the fenced off dog area, I had to listen to a guy on a bullhorn stationed nearby shouting about the glory of the brand of grill he was promoting, about how well it grills burgers and juicy steaks, and the greatness of summertime barbecue, and on and on. The smells were strong enough but now this celebration of meat was also being forced in my head audibly too, and hard to ignore. As I listened to him I got angrier and angrier. I know the statistics about this annual meat party, as I’ve looked it up before.

According to a post on Eater.com, in 2008 the following was consumed at the Big Apple BBQ: 5,800 lbs beef ribs, 2,520 lbs whole hog, 8,460 lbs baby back ribs, 4,746 lbs beef brisket, 10,920 lbs pork butt, 2,700 lbs fresh ham, 12,125 lbs pork ribs, 1,500 lbs sausage. That totals almost FIFTY THOUSAND pounds of meat, in one park, in two days.

Who knows what the stats were for this year, but Madison Square Park was mobbed. I couldn’t take it anymore and had to leave. On my way out, I realized they allowed dogs in the main area of the fenced off event. I’m not sure why, but instead of exiting the park, I took Leon right through the middle of it. We waded through the crowds of people standing around drinking beer, listening to music, and eating glazed ribs and pulled pork out of paper trays. Then it happened. “Nice dog!” Something I hear all the time. “What kind of dog is that?” etc. I get a lot of attention when I’m with my dog Leon. He’s pretty cute. People always want to know what kind of dog he is. I don’t know, he is what he is. A pit bull mix of some kind. Point is, people ask me a lot about him. So, then it happened. A small-talk conversation ensues about my dog. And then… it comes out. Me: “So… would you eat him?”

Backstory: When I first changed to a mostly vegan mostly raw diet nine years ago, it was about health. That’s just how it was presented to me and what I was first exposed to. I was reading books and research mostly about the health reasons for being vegan/raw. I also read the compelling arguments about how cats and dogs and other predators are built to eat meat and we’re not. They’re not arguments actually, they’re just facts, and totally logical.

It was only later on that I was gradually exposed to animal rights issues. Including the horrors of factory farming and what it does to destroy not only the environment and people’s health, but also to the souls of innocent beings unable to defend themselves.

Then I adopted a dog from a shelter. My baby dog, with pale thin fur and a pink belly, and unusually big ears – he looks a lot like a pig. People say this all the time. He’s my love piglet. I love him so much sometimes I worry my heart might literally explode. I would do anything to protect him.

Years ago I read some amazing books, like Diet For A New America, with its heartbreaking stories about animals and the relationships they form with us and with one another. And I’d watched films like Earthlings, which opened my mind to things I hadn’t thought about so much, like the horrors of the fur and leather industries, and circuses, and more. Our Daily Bread is another good film. With no music, no narration, no words or text of any kind, it’s a visually compelling and stark look at the every day reality of our food systems. After watching that one, my boyfriend at the time said, “If aliens came down and took over, put us in tiny cages, bred and slaughtered us, etc. etc… we’d just totally have to be okay with that.” <=== right??

Those films were hard to watch, and I got tears in my eyes, and felt shitty about the world. But then, after I adopted a dog, my feelings shifted in a much bigger way. Mercy For Animals put out this video, of abuse in pig factories, and as usual, it’s nothing UN-usual they’re capturing on undercover video, it’s the reality of these places, and the reality of the lives of these animals. I won’t go into what happens in the video (please watch it, it’s only 2 and half minutes), but all the piglets look like Leon to me. If someone tried to hurt Leon, I’d hurt them. It was like watching a Leon torture video and it didn’t just make me sad, it made me cry—like tears streaming down my face kind of cry. And it made me angry. And depressed. And then only more determined. I started reading more books like Why We Love Dogs, Wear Cows, and Eat Pigs, and The Dreaded Comparison.

Meat itself doesn’t gross me out, and I’m not squeamish or horrified by the blood and guts of it. When I was little, I chewed on chicken bones. Then later my favorite dinner was lamb chops off the bone. I liked my steak rare and bleeding. In high school I once ate a whole roast chicken, with my hands. My mom had left a rotisserie chicken sitting on the kitchen table. I turned on the TV, started tearing pieces off of it with my hands, and before I knew it most of it was gone and I was flipping the carcass over to get at those little ‘oyster’ knobs of tender meat with my greasy fingers. (Sidenote: maybe I was high?) Later in culinary school I formally learned butchering, and was good at it. Moreover, I liked it. I’m not sure why, but I did.

Also. I still totally get the appeal of eating a giant sizzling Flinstonian steak on the bone. I get it. Even though I wish so many people didn’t eat meat. And it was only a few years ago that I was photographed (by someone I was dining with) at Peter Luger’s with bone in my hands, gnawing at the meat on it (because of course the meat closest to the bone is tastiest?) The waiter told me I looked like a hungry lioness. It was the first time I’d eaten meat in a year or so. And if you asked me at the time, I’d still say I don’t think humans should or need to eat meat. But that was at a different time in my shift. Again back then my reasons for not eating meat were mostly health related. Even though I felt it was wrong, I’d still end up eating some kind of meat on occasion. But after Luger’s it was only at farm-to-table restaurants, or “grass fed” — that was part of the shift.  Now it’s totally different. Now I sort of want to run into Peter Luger’s and freak out on everyone, and throw the doors open to a herd of stampeding cows to trample everyone in there. Is that a little extreme?

Animals eat other animals. If you want to go out in the woods and shoot a wild elk, and drag it home, clean it, butcher it, eat it and use everything you can, well knock yourself out. The elk lived a free and hopefully happy life just as it would out in the wild before a lion might take it down, and you’re doing the deed. One of my favorite TV shows is/was Big Cat Diary. It’s horrifying when the baby tiger cub “Little Toto” is in danger of getting eaten by a wild hyena. But Little Toto (here) will grow up and take down beautiful gazelles, and watching that is stunning, and part of the life and death of nature. It’s a far cry from factory farming, or raising animals in captivity for consumption, no matter how “humane.”

The question I want to ask these people sweating in Madison Square Park gnawing on ribs is, “What gives us the right??” And I wish someone had asked me that as I sat in Peter Luger’s with the bone in my hands. I wonder how I would have reacted. A few years ago I probably would have walked through this barbecue meat party and thought more about the obesity epidemic and rates of colon cancer, and while I would have found the glorification of meat consumption vulgar, I wouldn’t have been freaking out inside like I was today. This is relatively new territory for me. I kept looking around wondering where the hell is PETA!? Why aren’t they here calling these people out? And then the dog conversation. A guy working the event noticed Leon as we walked by, and asked me questions about him. Yes he’s a boy. A pit-mix. Leon. About two years old. Yada yada. Then I get to it: Oh hey, doesn’t he kind of look like a pig? Do you know it’s been studied and turns out pigs are smarter than dogs? They can learn to play video games and know their names? Wait, you wouldn’t eat a dog? I don’t get it, what’s the difference between eating a dog and a pig?

At first he laughed. And said things like “well, pigs are tasty!” But then my heart pounded faster. Then he started to get mad, I started to get mad. He said “Wait a minute! Are you a vegetarian?” and I’m like “What difference does that make, I’m just asking a question! Why wouldn’t you eat my dog?” and he stormed off into the crowd, and there I was, heart pounding, yelling after him, “YOU DIDN’T ANSWER MY QUESTION!!!” I was yelling. As in, people all around saw and heard me.

Who was that? I never yell. I’m pretty shy, and quiet in public. And here I was, yelling at this guy in the middle of a crowd of people. And for what? I’m not going to change his mind, right there in the middle of this event. What was I doing? I don’t really know, and it was totally depressing. I just know I’m new to this. I never before understood what would possess someone to lie naked on a Styrofoam platform covered in fake blood and wrapped in saran wrap, to make a point. Wait, that’s not true. I understood it, and have for years appreciated that people do it, and have been supportive of groups like PETA even if I worry some of what they do publicly only perpetuates the image of vegans as “crazy” just as this guy dismissed me as “vegetarian” and therefore different from him, like an enemy. But now I feel different. And I’m not a different person, I’ve just been exposed to more information, more truth, and reality. And I kind of want to lie naked on Styrofoam covered in blood too.

Maybe that guy I yelled at will stop eating meat one day. But, it’s not likely to happen from my confronting him the way I did. In fact, I probably just reinforced his feeling that vegans/vegetarians are angry freaks to be avoided.  And then I only felt much worse.

Leon and I made our way out of the sweaty pork-munching crowd. We got home and I flopped down on the couch and started to cry, for a good ten minutes, at least. Like contorted-face sobbing crying. I’m confused, sad, angry, discouraged, frustrated, and heartbroken. OK maybe I’m heartbroken in more ways too, but that’s another story. So. I sat down to write all this, even though now it’s getting late and I’m freaked out about all the work I’d planned to get done that I haven’t done.

What is my ‘work’ anyway? Whatever it is, I just know I want to have maximum impact on the shift. On everyone’s evolution to better health and eating more plants and less animals. I don’t want to judge, I never have. Again, it wasn’t so many years ago that even as a ‘mostly’ vegan, I was sitting in Peter Luger’s bone in hand. I think even proving a point in some way. Like hey I’m mostly vegan but I can still tear apart a steak. But yeah, no. Not anymore. With a fair amount of chef friends, and friends and acquaintances in the food/restaurant business, I always felt defensive about being labeled as ‘vegan’ and maybe I took pride in being more ‘open-minded’ that I would occasionally eat meat. Like I was being rebellious, because I have a tendency to do that. And I generally don’t like labels, which is why I still don’t refer to myself as vegan.

Anyway. What’s my point. Who knows. I may contradict myself all over the place, now and over time. I don’t know. I just know I’ve been called a “bee hater” and a hypocrite because sometimes there’s a dish on the menu of my restaurant with honey. Well, that’ll probably shift too. And, interestingly, not out of sympathy for bees, more to avoid the controversy and be consistent and courteous to any strictly vegan guests, since I do understand that honey is not technically vegan, and for lack of a better description, my restaurant is called vegan. I like “plant-based” better. But anyway. Maybe one day I’ll be full of fury and outrage on behalf of bees. But I’m not there yet.

I just know I love my dog. I want to protect him, and other animals. And I want people to be healthy. I don’t want our planet going to hell in a hand-basket from the pollution of the way we live, which includes the atrocities and environmental destruction of factory farming. My dog and cat are not vegan. (More on that another time.) I want kids to grow up knowing the truth, and making their own choices about what to eat and what not to eat, based on truth, not the allure of a Happy Meal toy, the addictive nature of MSG and sugar in fast food, or their favorite athlete in a Burger King commercial. One third of kids in this country are obese. Not just chubby, OBESE. One in three. That’s about 9 million children. What chance do they have starting out this way? McDonald’s spends $2 billion a year in advertising (I think). Is that truth? Is Ronald McDonald reality? Do people really understand the compelling truths when it comes to disease and diet? (No, they don’t and I went off on that and Bain Capital’s fast food investments a few years ago, here).

If someone locked the gates on the Big Apple BBQ, and forced everyone to sit down and watch that one particular Mercy For Animals video, would they all feel the same way about pulled pork and pork ribs and keep on chowing down? (Sidenote: I think most of the pigs in this weekend’s meat fest were not factory farmed, despite the Smithfield truck there, and I do appreciate and want to support ‘farm-to-table’ restaurants, and the shift to grass-fed more ‘sustainable’ meat, but… only because it’s a step in the right direction. Anyway.) Anyway. ANYWAY.

I’m still confused. Food is emotional. Our relationships to our pets and animals are emotional. I’m emotional. And I’m really tired too. Now and in general. I’ve seen people’s faces go blank and then turn into anger even when just gently questioned about meat eating. What I did today was so out of character. I’m not one to create conflict, or judge. I’m even worried about posting this, because I don’t want to offend anyone. A lot of the people who come to Pure Food and Wine aren’t vegan or vegetarian, which is how I like it.  In the winter, there are always fur coats belonging to guests in our coat closet. Much as I might now feel like strapping those people down and forcing them to watch a fur horror video, if one of our staff made even a gentle critical comment, they’d probably be fired (or, I’d just make sure it never ever happened again). We don’t make it our job to judge. But either way, fur-clad people coming to the restaurant, in itself, doesn’t upset me at all. It actually makes me happy, because I just want people eating more plants, and less animals, for a lot of reasons. And if they come in because they want to lose weight, or because they’ve read that going raw will make you look younger, or they’re curious, or because they think it’s fashionable or trendy, or they’re on a ‘cleanse’… whatever the reason, I just want them to please come in, and to have a good experience, and then to want to come back again. For it may just be the start of their own evolution.

Goodnight!

p.s. This quote is buried in the back of my first book and am repeating it here:

“Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” – Albert Einsten