Food has always been at the center of cultural discussion - even our
country's anthem gives it a nod with amber waves of grain - and the
varying floods of popularity and thought have flowed up and down every possible
eddy. There has perhaps been no time in
history, however, when food has been more at the heart of heated debate than
today.
Some people won't eat anything that has meat in it, and others won't eat
anything without meat. Some people
refuse to eat anything that hasn't been processed in some way, while others refuse to buy
any food item with more than three ingredients.
Some argue that our diets are oversaturated with grain and causing the
current waves of gluten-intolerance or thyroid dysfunction as our bodies are
overwhelmed with gluten, and they advocate cutting down on the grains in our
diets. Some are fully vegan, eating no
by-product of animals which includes everything from meat to eggs to
honey. Some take it a step further and
eat nothing but raw, vegan meals. The
most extreme examples, I suppose, would be the few subjects who have determined
the exact half of food required by the human body for normal cell regeneration,
and eat only that in the hopes of slowing their cellular turnover and living
with a lifespan twice as long as the normal human being.
That is pretty extreme.
But where do we, the "normals," fall in all of this?
Everybody has reasons and assumptions driving their food habits - some
of them unconscious, others laboriously developed over hours of research or
painful testing. Money, preference,
opinion, local availability, commercials, popular sales, far-away droughts -
millions upon millions of factors pour into our decision-making.
 |
| A rich winter stew topped with pasta, cheese, and fry-bread - but no meat |
Sometimes the decisions come about slowly and gradually, over the course of
years - like the evolution of eating our home. I noticed that we weren't eating
as much meat as we once were, and with our declining consumption of it my
interest in it was also waning. I found
myself picking it out of dishes or asking for the tofu replacement when we went
out, and when we were eating it at home I would slip my pieces of meat onto my
husband's plate (who told me, "No matter what, I will always eat meat!"). The decision to cook
less with it at home was birthed from an amalgam of reasons, as most decisions
in the kitchen are - in the early stages of this decision, I was doing my
research on plants, growing conditions, pesticides, and this all leaked over
into the meat department where I learned more than I wanted to know (but never
as much as I could know) about meat production.
This trickled down into a decision to buy only the finest meat, grown on
open pastures in organic country and butchered and packaged in clean
environments. This turned into expensive
cuts of meat that became ever dearer to buy, and eventually it was simply
easier to cook most dishes without meat than shell out the hefty price of
high-quality meat every night. I'll
reassure those of you who were worried that I'm not vegetarian (you meat-lovers
can breathe easier for a moment!). I still enjoy meat, and eat plenty of it in my opinion. Just not at every meal, or every day.
But, I didn't even know what I was up until recently. I was a nameless mutt in a world of
pure-bred, pedigreed eaters - people who knew their dinner-plate identity and
could sum it up in a brief sentence. You
could toss a word out and their food preferences were clear to everybody. I, on the other hand, required a stumbling
paraphrase and some odd looks.
"Why," people would say, "are you picking the meat out of
your dish?" Or even more humorous,
"Why are you eating vegetables, are you vegetarian?" I would falter, "I like meat, you see, I
just don't eat it much, so I don't like it as much as I used to."
Horrified looks as my omnivore friends realized they were in the presence
of an Other. "You don't eat
meat?" I would try to explain: yes,
I do, just not often. But they were
already confused.
Finally, I learned I was not the only one in this twilight zone of
uncertain pedigree - there were others sharing my plight, and for the same and
various reasons. Health, cost,
availability, interest. And somebody, somewhere, came up with a name for it. Definition: A person who eats meat less
frequently, that amount to be determined by the individual. Term: Flexitarian.
Ah, I am a flexitarian. I
have a name! A name that is not
solidly defined yet, but a name, nonetheless - and I can grow in to this name!
Eventually, I presume percentages and quantities will be attached to the loosely-defined Name so that stastistics and health recommendations can be made. But, until then, I'll just casually use my
new name and hope that, with a term to wrap the definition around, my pedigree
will be soon accepted and I can prance with the rest of them.
Chewing the fat,
Mrs H
twitter.com/_mrs_h