It's the Food

When I asked for questions, the lovely Robin Raven asked me to follow up on something I had Tweeted recently about veganism. The story goes like this:

I haven't eaten meat more than ten times since I was fourteen. Eggs, yes. Milk products, yes. Fish, no. Nothing with a face.

[Although I should clarify I eat Peeps.]

I do this for a couple of reasons. Reason one is that I never much liked meat anyway, so it's not much of a deprivation, save one; I think most soy products are credible enough to fill the need but I wish bacon came from a plant. I do miss bacon. But the other reason I don't eat meat is that I don't like the mega-farming industry. The animals suffer. The environment suffers.The independent farmers scraping out a living on the margins, forced to cut costs to keep contracts with large companies, suffer. I'm not so naive that I think death is avoidable if I skip the branzino; it's my adding to suffering which bothers me. If I could afford to eat nothing but animals who lived a good life with one bad day at the end, I would. Since I can't afford to eat those animals who lived decently, I choose not to eat any at all. Until she was about eight, Daughter was a vegetarian. Because I don't want this to become a thing -- a thing her mother was a maniac about and held her hostage to -- I always swore if she understood why I didn't eat meat and still wanted to eat meat, she could. About 30% of the time, she does.

A few weeks ago, the family was eating dinner together. I had made Consort and Daughter a dish which involves kale, whole-wheat pasta and Italian sausage. They dove in happily; I ate my kale and looked on, pleased. Daughter waved a fork of her dinner at me.

"You should just try it," she implored. "It's delicious."

"Thrilled to hear it, honey," I said. "But you know my feelings about the meat industry. Just be happy I'm not dragging Chew on This [The kid's version of Fast Food Nation] out for a little light dinner-reading."

She clucked her tongue. "You wear leather shoes, you eat cheese and butter. Eggs, too." she noted, "You think those animals are happier?"

The books on parenting never mentioned the age when your child would shine a Kleig light on your hypocrisy. Consort said firmly, "Leave your mom alone" which, you will note, is not the same thing as saying, "What you are saying isn't true." What she was saying was true, and it merited attention. My shoes are leather. My cheese and my precious butter comes from cattle who have milk to give because their calves were separated from them. Those eggs aren't coming from chickens living in small cheerful coops in someone's back yard. My food and my fashion involve some misery. I've tried being vegan a grand total of eight days in my life and stopped because I felt deprived and because I grew tired grilling waiters about food preparation. But I am ready to start thinking about it again. But there's so much to think about.

So, we begin with leather. I got a wonderful purse from Dean in Silverlake for Christmas, which I won't junk because that's wasteful and, candidly,that cow is already quite dead, but won't replace with another leather purse when it wears out. I've been skimming vegan-shoe websites and while many of the shoes are adorable, they're adorable in a "Grad student at Berkeley" kind of way. I'm the Venn diagram where "Concerned about reducing her carbon and suffering footprint" crosses over "Hopelessly preppy" and there are very few shoes in that category. Thanks to Payless, I can get leather-free espadrilles for the summer, but the winter will eventually arrive, as minimal as it is in Los Angeles. Where, oh where, are the cute preppy loafers for the vegan crowd?

Wool might be a challenge. What am I saying? I live in a city where you wear a wool-sweater because you feel like pretending to be Ali McGraw in Love Story, not because it's actually necessary.

I'd miss cheese. I'd miss cheese a lot. When you don't have much of a sense of smell, as I do, you don't have much of a sense of taste. Big cheeses make me very happy. On Thanksgiving, we sit on the beach and have a picnic. I have no turkey. I don't like stuffing. Sweet potatoes taste like paste-glue to me. But I have a big stinky cheese or two and am thankful.

And then there's butter. I love butter. Just search the word toast in this blog and discover it's a miracle I haven't had massive myocardial infarction already, such is my love of butter. And then I look at my child and see my hypocrisy and realize that even though she's already forgotten about it, I haven't. Vegatarianism was easy; if I take the next step, it's going to be with a chorus of my own whining. It might be the right thing to do, but it certainly won't be the gracious thing to do.

I'll tell you this, though; if gin and tonics turn out to have animal by-products in them, I'm going to just live as a hypocrite.