What might be the reason for such a reaction from a girl who usually prides herself on being a carnivore through and through? The meat industry knows that the only way they can sell their products is to remove all thought in the consumer as to the source of their food. Chicken is breaded and shaped into dinosaur figures, ham is carefully cut up into neat little deli slices, and burgers come pre-shaped and pre-packaged, ready to be thrown onto the grill. The days of ground meat are numbered. Nobody wants to come to terms with the reality that the pool of red liquid at the bottom of the styrofoam plate underneath the hamburger meat is actually blood, or that those chewy pieces in your prime rib are fatty deposits from the cow that provided the meat you are eating. Why, that would be totally unappetizing. The meat industry has found incredibly sneaky ways to mask the fact that what you are eating was originally from a living animal. The food becomes processed, disguised. For those with a strong sense compassion or just a vivid imagination, thinking of meat as meat seems to be enough to stop an appetite in its tracks.
As if it hasn’t been clear enough already, I fall into both of the aforementioned categories. You are hearing from the girl who, at age 10, bawled for two hours straight in the middle of Red Lobster after realizing that those pet lobsters on display at the front of the restaurant are not really pets. And that was just the beginning. I decided to become a vegetarian in seventh grade after grappling with my conscience while eating meat one too many times.
Unless you are my boyfriend, who enjoys pushing my buttons by making snide little side comments about how a strange hunger comes over him while we are driving by farms with grazing cows, you probably don’t find the animal side of meat very appetizing. The meat industry has this all figured out. You didn’t think that chicken meat was naturally dinosaur-shaped, now did you?
Erin Devine
Business & Enterprise Management (Marketing)
Music minor
Really interesting! That reminds me of so many people who like eating meat (or fish) but who hate touching it, cutting it, cooking it when it is still raw. I am not really easy with that myself… Which is strange because eating something (that is to say putting it into your body) goes beyond simply touching it... Therefore, I do agree that the change in the actual aspect of the meat once it is cooked or prepared is critical (which -I think- is fairly hypocritical). It is interesting to see some people feeling uncomfortable or panicked when someone else points out the animal behind what they eat -some even react a bit aggressively, or seem readily annoyed. Such reaction may be due to the fact that this idea of being monstrous is disturbing, though eating meat is the norm.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think that an important barrier to considering going vegetarian is the following prejudice that you could hear from most people: “If they don’t eat meat, then what do they eat? Only vegetables? ... Boring!”. As an omnivore myself, I only realized very recently that vegetarian cuisine can be extremely diverse and tasty and simply GOOD (think about Indian food… yuuum…). I actually think that vegetarians -as they are concerned with the source of what they eat- probably pay more attention to having a diverse and healthy nutrition.
I am actually considering going vegetarian myself. Unfortunately, that would be a big betrayal to my country’s cuisine -which could also be a substantial barrier!
Alicia Lafage