The NY Times, Meat Eaters, Ethical Eating, Lazy Thinking

Let's chat about this contest in the NY Times Magazine, asking entrants to reason out the strongest ethical argument for meat eating.

As someone who is currently embroiled in a battle with myself to make it okay to eat anything (steak, macaroni & cheese, oatmeal, whatever), I read this from a very specific point of view.  Short version: "Animals are sentient beings and I try to eat ones that I know have been treated well.  However, right now, I have to pay most attention to eating protein in appropriate amounts and to getting re-attuned to my own intuitive eating cues."  (You should know by now that this is what passes for a "short version" with me.)

So from that somewhat specific yet hardly unique standpoint, how do I read this contest?  (Literally read and figuratively "read.")    First, I kinda dig the winning entry.  I particularly appreciate what many vegetarians and vegans I've known tend to ignore in chat (with me, at least): soy production is not necessarily much less stressful to the earth than some forms of meat production.  A soy farm using petrochemical fertilizer is above and beyond a small or mid-size organic, cage-free poultry operation, in terms of damage to the local ecosystem.

Unfortunately, the winning essay doesn't actually correlate with the real world most U.S. citizens live in today.  If you're living in the Sonora Desert in a yurt, then yes, you presumably have access to the ethical options the author describes.  But if you're living in a Sonora Desert in an adobe ranch house with your Honda Civic taking you back and forth to Whole Foods, then going out and hunting lizards is not for you.

Let's skip back to the contest wrap-up piece itself. (Emphasis mine.)

Some critics insisted that even contemplating a life without meat was an indulgent luxury, a silly game for a wealthy first-worlder. I found this puzzling — as if the poor feast nightly on roast suckling pig and only the 1 percent eat boiled tubers. Over all, rich nations eat much more meat than poor ones, and raising animals for food takes more agricultural resources than raising crops. In any case, a vast number of the world’s ethical vegetarians live in India. Caviar is a luxury. Ethical discussion is not.

Problematic statement is problematic.  Actually, Ariel Kaminer, what the poor in the U.S. do is cut high-fat hamburger meat with rice and vegetables to stretch the protein farther, whereas the middle class and rich buy the 90% lean ground beef and mix in free-range eggs when making their Italian meatballs.

What the poor do is buy ham and bologna cold cuts that are such a high percentage water and sodium that their texture resembles rubber more closely than pig or cow flesh, whereas the middle class and rich get the stuff sliced at the deli counter that's antibiotic free, fresh roasted in the store, etc.  Ethical discussion is, at some point, a luxury.  Deal with it.  Moving on.


A few months ago Mark Bittman (I think it was him - he's a heavyweight in the NYT Dining section, and one of the judges here) noted that McDonald's has requested that its pork suppliers phase out their gestation crates, and he rightly pointed out that this was, as the kids say, kind of a big deal.  McDonald's is a huge buyer of animal products of all kinds, and what they say essentially goes.  People can rant and rave against the ethical evils of McDonald's, but their new policy on gestation crates will create huge, forward-moving waves in the hog and pig farming industry.

Having said that, this was an interesting snark inclusion:

The contest is anti-pig-istI don’t get why the contest graphics failed to include a pig. Pork is a more popular meat than goat, lamb or veal. Lobster, fish and squid are not meats. Since there was no pig shown in the graphics, it made me feel people who eat pork were not welcomed to participate. BLASMAIC, WASHINGTON, ON THE 6TH FLOOR BLOG

Honestly, it is strange that a pig isn't included, since gestation crates are one of the better-known ethical violations going on in factory farming, and this is a discussion on the ethics of meat eating.  I'm not sure where the writer jumped from "no pig" to "pork eaters not welcome," but the point stands.


People saw conspiracy in this contest, and misogyny, and racism, and more. Honestly, all I see is lazy thinking.

The Vatican Wrist-Slaps Nuns, Because Women

Allow me to change the subject.  Let's talk about nuns.

Yep, you read that right.

Last night I was reading this, thinking to myself, "These guys are scum, but even so, most of them were around before the Church as we know it even existed."

*cough cough*  *cough cough coughcoughcough*

Then this afternoon, Marzie linked to a story that MSNBC headlined "Catholic nuns group 'stunned' by Vatican scolding for 'radical feminist' ideas."

Covering the same news the Huffington Post interviews a nun who volunteers escorting women into abortion clinics, and yeah, I can see where the Vatican would call that a "radical feminist" thing to do.  (I just don't happen to agree with them, is all.)

But what are they mostly talking about here?  Spending too much time on "social justice" issues and not enough time promoting pro-life and traditional sexuality issues.  (The Leadership Conference of Religious Women, the group the Vatican's ire is focused on, even has a "Social Justice" drop-down menu on their homepage, o noes!)  One of the big issues?  The LCRW was a big Obama supporter in the health reform wars.  The Vatican didn't like this, presumably because access to stuff like chemotherapy isn't as important as lack of access to contraception.

Other issues highlighted on the group's website include Haiti earthquake relief (where there are a lot of Catholics), immigration reform (which would, demographically speaking, probably benefit a lot of Catholics), and issues where they're totally in step with the Vatican (things like climate change, nuclear proliferation, war and refugees and torture, and potable water access (a huge, huge issue in the developing world where there are, you guessed it, a lot of Catholics).  Annual resolutions over the past decade include "Strengthen Bonds Among Religious Women Globally" and "Reduce our Carbon Footprint."  In 2001 they released a resolution on human trafficking.  Some seriously radical-feminist stuff, I tell you.

Longtime, detail-oriented readers already know that I grew up Catholic and left that faith by the wayside.  Even though I had to keep going to school Masses, I stopped receiving the Eucharist, which is the entire point of the Catholic Mass, in 1998, so that's when you can say I really stopped being Catholic, if you want to split hairs.

Even so, I still feel an... I guess you could call it an attachment to Catholicism.  I still have some kind of proprietary feeling toward it.  I don't know if you'd break it down that I feel it's "mine" and I ought to defend it, or the other way around - that I feel it still defines me or reflects upon me in some vague way.

I don't really know.  I do know that when I see stories like this, I kind of go Hulk, at least on the inside. Stories of men, rich men for the most part, set up in mansions and townhouses and Bruno Maglis - of men essentially telling women to ignore the poor, ignore injustice, ignore thirst, ignore hunger, ignore violence, ignore wounded combat veterans - or at least don't pay quite so much attention to those things so you can pay more attention to undermining access to healthcare for millions of Americans, and the access to institutionalized recognition and support for millions of others.

I just... what?  WHAT?  How does that even work?  Where is the reality of the world in that worldview?

I am by no stretch of the imagination a religious person.  It's not just that I don't believe in Catholicism anymore (if I ever really did), it's that I am an agnostic atheist in terms of belief, a secular humanist in terms of action.  So while it might be my personal bias to look at an organization like LCRW and shrug at the emphasis on God in their work, but that's not the point.  The point is that they do the work.  "We risk being agents of change within Church and society," their site says.  And the point is that that is NOT the point to the Vatican.

Because if there's anything we know for certain about Jesus, it's that he that he thought all those early Church Fathers were right.  Women are gross and scary and wrong, because, women.

Eating Disorder Recovery: Check-In

As you might have noticed, I haven't been around much during the slide into the worst part of my relapse, nor much so far during my early weeks striving for recovery (again).

This is mostly because the worst part of my relapse tied directly into things I can't get into on this blog for my own privacy (for all that this blog is at least semi-anonymous).

It's also also because ~dearth of interesting ideas~

As a general update for those who are playing along at home:

- My weight has finally started to go back up.  I had my annual GYN exam Friday and (in jeans) I was back up to my weight from about October.  If you saw me in October, you're going, "Seriously, that's it?" right now.  And yeah, seriously, that's it, but I'm calling it a win.  (Point of interest for longtime readers: my doctor actually laughed [with me not at me] at what a painful-looking job I did on my last wax.)

- Today I had my first ever super exciting echocardiogram.  (Pro tip:  it was cold.)  I meant to ask for the pictures to be emailed to me (because who doesn't want to look at their own heart? I sure as shit do) but I forgot.  Pretty sure I forgot because I had to fast before this appointment.  I may have a history of anorexia and all, but I do not do well with fasting.

- Last night I had an intake meeting for a NYC-based organization called the Center for the Study of Anorexia and Bulimia.  This will be to find an individual therapist who is more effective for me than the one I was seeing in 2011, as well as possibly for group therapy.  I'm going to a separate monthly support group for the first time on Thursday night, through a group called ROAED.

- I have been (for a whole 8 days now) going to the gym in our building's basement.  I can say without exaggeration that this is - for whatever reason - the first time in my life that I've gone to the gym without undue obsession over calories burned.  No idea why, but I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth.  [redacted]'s jaw will hit the floor when I tell her that I actually ran today.  (Okay, I ran for 4 of the minutes.  What.  It counts.)

I have more to say.  About marriage and recovery and how it's a whole other beast recovering while partnered than recovering while single.  About trying not to play the Cassandra with hand-wringing over, "Oh, it's not so entirely horrendous now, but it's going to be, oh, it's going to be!" About things that are more interesting than bullet-pointed lists, generally.

But that can come later.

Birth Control: You're Talking About It Wrong

I know this is yesterday's news (literally), but.... how do some people not understand how the Pill and its non-oral counterparts work?

Not just their mechanics. No matter how little or much sex you have, you take the same number of Pill doses, insert the same number of Rings, stick on the same number of Patches, get stuck with the same number of Shots within the same amount of time.

No, NOT just the mechanics, though confusion over that boggles the mind.

The pricing.  How do people not understand the pricing of hormonal birth control, and still dare to chime in on this "debate"? (Scare quotes because it's actually a FARCE.)

If my insurance didn't cover my birth control pill, that would be every month of the year I'm spending $92 for birth control, rather than just the first two or three months of the year.  (My Rx deductible is $300, so if I'm taking other medication at the time, obviously the deductible is met by February instead of March-and-then-some-in-April.)

$92 x 12 months = $1,104.  Voilà.  Over $1,000.  And my Pill, while not a generic, isn't one of the most expensive ones.  It's not Alesse, for instance.

How anyone can not know the above and still have the temerity to contribute their verbal diarrhea to any discussion of birth control is just...  I almost want them to keep going because they're digging the anti-woman side's grave so very effectively.

But you know what?  All that is beside the point.  I wish that the people on "my side," debating right back at the idjits who think I pop three Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo every time I get busy with the husband, would quit it with the "but PCOS and acne and PMS assistance and dysmenorrhea, oh my!"  I honestly wish they would stop.

Most women who use hormonal birth control?  Use it as birth control.  

Sure, the reason I didn't stick with a generic was that it didn't provide the same off-label benefit of skin clearing up, and I went, as the kids say, cray-cray with PMS symptoms like I'd never had.  This is despite every doctor I've ever spoken to swearing up and down that generics are identical.  (Most of the pharmacists I've asked and my own experience tell me that those doctors are full of shit.) (Also some other doctors think so, apparently.)

I love me some off-label benefits to my birth control.

I know many women who have taken or now take the Pill because of cysts, anemia, PMDD.  I, with my history, know women who take the Pill simply so they get periods, because their BMI's are so low.  (This protects your bone mass.)

That's all the beauty of modern medicine, and thank Big Pharma that the Pill can help all those things.  It's wonderful.

But talking about birth control:  you're doin' it (w)rong if you seem publicly afraid of acknowledging it as what it is.  BIRTH. CONTROL.

So as much as the one side needs to Get A Freaking Clue, Like Whoa about the pricing and mechanics of being a sexually active woman in the modern world, I feel so much right now like my own side needs pony up and quit being scared of calling BIRTH CONTROL, not just treatment-of-medical-problems, a good thing.

Eating Disorders: Magical Realism

I am really, super tired of feeling like I want to scratch off my own skin.  I haven't even been feeling that way that long, really only about 48 hours.  But it's here.  The mental piece of knowing I'm consuming more nutritive things is no longer alone.  Now it's being slowly but surely joined by the feeling of body parts filling out, just ever so slightly.

The husband has been asking me how I'm feeling.  Tuesday I told him that I was still mostly feeling fine, that perhaps this wasn't going to be as uncomfortable as the formal weight gain I've gone through in the past.  Those programs (partially because of insurance limits) tend to focus on high calorie meals all the time, as much weight gain as quick as is physically healthy.

Realistically speaking you have to expend serious effort to gain any more than about 2 pounds of fat/muscle (as opposed to water) in a week.  (The same is true for losing fat/muscle as oppose to water.)  Realistically speaking the things that recoup "padding" first are things like organs (ever seen a healthy heart in autopsy photos? it has some fat on it).  

When the husband asks how I'm feeling and I share that there are moments of discomfort, he reminds me that the discomfort isn't based in reality.  And that's true, of course.  It's not.  But simply knowing a feeling isn't based in reality is, of course, not enough to just stop feeling it.

My fear is now, as it has been before, that I will continue to gain weight (which I will) but that I will not get used to it.  That I will hit my body's natural set point, and just never feel comfortable there.

Realistically speaking, there are a lot worse ways to feel trapped in your own body and mind.  Magically, that reality does not make me feel any better.