Better Than Advertised

I can't explain it, but I seem to have a knack for attracting various food martyrs.

It wasn't worthy of being called an epiphany or anything like that, but the other day it struck me that, throughout my life, people who refuse to eat meat seem to gravitate toward me. I have no idea if this is actually true, but I read or heard something the other week that at some World Championship of Barbecuing or other there were over 100,000 people in attendance, a number that dwarfed some similar Vegetarian Convention that drew, maybe, 1,500. If ten percent of the population is vegetarian, a number that sounds reasonable, I'm getting more than my fair share.

It may be because I enjoy them. Not only am I fascinated by the whole concept of living a life of deprivation, but it's also fun to find out about them. Most, of course, do it for political reasons, and those can range from sincerity to hip parroting of bromides generated by peer pressure. A large number of them refuse to eat some meat or other for religious reasons, a notion I must confess to finding quaint. It was a challenge, when I worked with both a practicing Jew and a Hindu, to find pizza toppings acceptable to both.

The huge majority of these people in my life, at least those who stick around for longer than a week or so, do so without preaching to me about the horrors of my diet. Oh, sure, they make their points known in subtle or not-so-subtle ways and often find excuses to bring up how much better they are than I am, but I try my best to be agreeable. I don't propose the wholesale slaughtering of anything, but I have to admit it's hard to get as worked up for a pasta bean salad as it is for, say, a ham and cheese omelette. I don't think we'd be having so many of these problems if meat didn't, fundamentally, taste better than just about everything else on the planet.

Anyway, what struck me the other day is I may not be as bad as these people think I am. Sure I enjoy eating meat and I have no plans to stop, but a few times a week I'm a vegetarian. Some say this doesn't count, but I think it has to be taken into the mix (or the masala). While some mistakenly call me a carnivore, I can't remember my last meal the consisted entirely of meat.

In fact, as I thought about it, I shouldn't be feeling guilt at all. Out of the hundreds of animals on the planet earth, I regularly only eat about three or four of them. That's a very low percentage, and I believe I should be given a great deal of credit for my consideration. In fact, I don't think I've eaten more than a dozen animals in my entire life, many of them only once or twice.

Instead of picturing me as a ravaging, blood-soaked madman intent on murder, I'm actually quite moderate. Chickens and pigs can no doubt fear me, but giraffes can continue to graze in peace. Out of the entire bird population, only chickens and turkeys have any reason to look around with trepidation, and I'm not even sure I've ever eaten one of them that wasn't specifically grown for the purpose of ending up on a dinner plate or between two slices of bread.

Eating just four animals regularly isn't bad at all, especially when you consider the number of plants I consume.