Last Enchilada on LaBrea, or, How Might I Eat Flesh? · 8 November 2007
Tonight someone whose view of me matters a lot asked, and not for the first time, that I please eat six ounces of salmon.
If there’s a window when I could do that and savor it, I’m in it right now. I’ve built a great deal of muscle very quickly, am feeling the sudden chill of Los Angeles’ version of "winter," and ate a pint of yogurt in the past three days. (Usually I find dairy a little gross.) On Monday and Tuesday, I ate swiss cheese, and not a small amount. Instead of making me ill, it tasted amazing and made me feel strong.
“Hide it from yourself! Put it in a salad slathered with vegenaise!” This was my dear lady’s soft-sell.
But no. I think that if it happens I want to be ritual about it. Like, maybe to a corny degree.
I haven’t ingested red meat in 13 years. I didn’t even notice that I was suddenly being liberated from beef, when I drove away from the Ranch where my folks have two freezers for animal parts out in the garage and put flesh on the table twice a day. When I was small, my dad and a friend would go out to the herd which grazed out our back window, choose a cow, and then butcher it up together and split the food. Friends who had even less money would live much of the year on venison, mooseburgers, and duck. I never questioned meat before I left, but the day I had other socially-acceptable options, I quit.
Chicken and fish stayed around longer. But five years ago after a dinner I regretted at my adviser’s house, I stopped accepting them even when served by loved ones. That choice was much more difficult to make, but I felt to shitty to do anything else after that last heavy enchilada on the Miracle Mile.
I do not have an ideology of vegetarianism. None. I don’t refrain for ethical reasons; and for cultural reasons it would be much easier if I did not refrain.
This is not about an idea. I don’t even need to moralize because my viscera get to run the show on this one. We are talking about a strong physical revulsion, one that’s probably grown stronger as the habit of non-partaking reinforces itself.
Ok. Great. But I’m clearly craving animal protein for the first time in more than a decade. That might be significant. And I’m being asked by others to take some. And hell. It is a new moon.
I don’t know how to go about this. And I’m not completely committed to doing it. On the level of my mouth, the whole prospect still feels disgusting. But my mouth might be lying. I don’t know.
I don’t want advice on whether I should or I shouldn’t. That is my decision and what I am working out.
But I would love to know if anyone out there has broken a long term of vegetarianism because your body seemed to want it. (I am less interested in people who have flipped back and forth for reasons of social influence or general dietary experimentalism, which of course I see all the time).
How did you do it? What was it like? What were your emotions about the experience? Were you thankful you did it? Will you do it again?
Thanks sincerely to anyone who can help as I try to sort my intuitions from my reflex mentality on this one.
Posted by (0v0)
Categories: evolution
, having a body
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I am so much the vegetarian/non-vegetarian for nutritional reasons. i went vegetarian when i was 12 because my older sister did :). once i could actually THINK about things, i realized i was doing it because i belived in it morally. i remained vegetarian until i was 22, when i realized a was far too lazy to be a ‘good’ vegetarian and added chicken into my diet once a week (i had to ask my boyfriend, now husband, how to cook chicken!). i remained on the once a week chicken thing, until i got pregnant with my daughter two years later. talk about strong messages from your body. i went from ingesting broccolli like it was the only vegetable on earth, to dry heaving at the mere thought of it. AND after the first tri-mester passed in which the only ‘food’ i could ingest at all was fla-vor-ice (not the blue ones),i found i craved red meat all the time, and the closer it was to still mooing at me the better. this persisted through the pregnancy and through breast feeding, where a very strong craving for milk also popped up. the same thing happened with the pregnancy and breastfeeding of the boy.
these days, if i think about meat too much, i really grosses me out. but i am by no means a vegetarian. i will go through periods of giving it up, but mostly because my body is saying nonononono! but more frequently, my body is saying EAT A HAMBURGER!!!! and gosh darn it, i listen up!
Posted by: cranky housefrau · Nov 9, 06:01 AM · #
with the exception of occasional fish, i’ve gone veggie for the past 2 years and some. but i remain meat-eater when i go to my parents’ place because veggie just does not make SENSE there, so i play along. i notice when i’m there that i say to myself, pre-flesh, “ok, you have a 6/wk practice, you can eat ANYTHING. this will not make you ill.” and it doesn’t. i don’t crave animal, really, at all, but maybe that’s because i do crave, and readily permit myself, massive quantities of dairy and especially raw nuts. flesh-wise, i got some salmon into my body yesterday and it was fine, i didn’t even have my conscience trip about it. for me, veggie with rare instances of fish is cool; vegan is out of the question (forsake ice cream and cheese, are you MAD???). good luck!
Posted by: patrick · Nov 9, 07:07 AM · #
I will offer no advice or insight, just support: I am an ovo-lacto for undefinable reasons. About 4 years ago I decided to eat consciously – really paying attention to which foods made me feel good and which ones made me feel bad. It’s all about body awareness. And while at times my ego has touted moral or environmental superiority, that was a dishonest position.
When my beloved was pregnant I marvelled over how smart her body was – it subconsciously created cravings and aversions based on nutritional needs.
You have an amazing level of body awareness. Meditate on what your body needs and embrace the answer. Good luck!
Posted by: cody · Nov 9, 08:01 AM · #
What Cody said. The more you can weed out your “mind” and “ideas,” the clearer this will get.
Posted by: karen · Nov 9, 08:17 AM · #
Yeah, Cody, moralizing can be fun when your tastes are conveniently the right ones, huh? I’ve had the same thought. But I do “think” that when it comes to the environment, our bodies/intuition doesn’t have information about that. So there’s some call for analysis there. Our bodies may crave stuff that fucking decimates an ecosystem or hurts people. Back to the individual rationality = collective irrationality thing. So there is space for politics in this, at some level. But I think it’s at the level of McDonalds (goodbye Brazilian selva) and the Taco Bell (hello, Immokalee tomato pickers let me thank you for your time, you work a 100 hour week for a li-ving…).
Whether I have a salmon steak every now and then—that’s little more than a personal choice and like you amazingly intuitive people are all saying, I’ve got to work it out for myself. It’s actually a very interesting place to observe attraction/ repulsion and query the more feral survival drives that might underlie that conditioning.
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 9, 08:48 AM · #
By the way, when my 86-year-old neighbor listens to his body, it tells him to ingest a whole batch of just-add-water brownies a few times a week. (I think Betty Crocker added some scent packets, cos they sure smell good.) My in laws’ bodies tell them to breathe Diet Coke and Nabisco products. If I walked to the campus coffee shop and had a cinnamon roll for breakfast, my mouth would scream—a thought-deafening scream—for another one for lunch. And the “asking” would increase from there.
Are you people presupposing that some bodies are more worth listening to than others???
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 9, 08:55 AM · #
Why am I commenting? Probably some ego powdered in with morning coffee and chocolate. I descended into red meat this last summer like a Sioux warrior returned from the hunt. Got into buffalo burgers and let them get into me. Did a whole ritual over the grill out back that I lifted from Daniel Day Lewis in the first scene of “Last of the Mohicans”,shameless. Strip down,smell the smoke, mumble my respect for power of the bull,etc.
Certainly you will be ingesting some testosterone if you go red. Big time yoga mercantalist Ana Forrest says she eats wild game and craves its energy. Says something about drinking in the power of the animal. I say that all sounds vampish and hideously New Age. The ‘me first’ burger. Then again you can check out her yoga masturbation on YouTube and she does manage to heft her considerable hips skyward and with lots of yang.
I suspect you will ‘get’ a little energy shot from flesh eating. Then again for what its worth, SKPJ has said it inhibits flexibility. Medically thats probably related to all the lactic acid in the meat of the creature at the time of its death. Who knows?
Posted by: tristan · Nov 9, 09:20 AM · #
What an intense little quandary you have for yourself! The ethic of self-identity versus intuitive sustenance. I never vegetarianized 100% but do it when I feel inspired to make major dietary adjustements. It happens that I’m thinking that way this week, coincidentally. I never figured out how to dissipate the crazy steak cravings without eating alternative animal protein. In fact, that’s the key that prevents me from going all the way. The cravings are not so hard for me to deal with but the ensuing melancholia can be pretty rough.
I’m really curious to know how your little dilemma pans out for you.
Posted by: Carl · Nov 9, 10:40 AM · #
oh my god! i was cracking up about your neighbor and your in-laws! i just had that discussion with my husband. the other night in the hotel at which we were staying, he woke up at 1am got dressed and padded down the hall to get a pop. in the morning i asked him why he just didn’t drink the tap water, and he replied his body wanted a pop. i just can’t belive that ones ‘body’ would ever ask for pop, allthough the brain sure does make you think things like this. ummm fla-vor-ice?
Posted by: cranky housefrau · Nov 9, 11:15 AM · #
ORANGE Fla-Vor-Ice!!!! And then the PURPLE!!! (No blue, though: My body also does not want blue.)
I will keep you posted.
For some reason, Tristan’s image of primate man communing with buffalo souls over the barbie is slightly working for me right now. I’m ASKING my mouth if it would be ok with this.
But if I let it into me, will I want into it regularly?
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 9, 11:21 AM · #
The primitive imagery begs to be cooled down,my apologies. For this I recommend Allison Krause singing “Carolina” on the YouTube.
Posted by: tristan · Nov 9, 11:31 AM · #
My very first girlfriend—and vegan of 10 years’ experience—recently, suddenly snapped and within 24 hours had an albacore tunamelt, a world-class hamburger at Portland’s Slowbar, a smoothie, and—like every female lapsed vegetarian I’ve ever known—a helping of bacon strips with breakfast.
We knew it was coming, and it was similar: bodily craving/need for it. She, however, had always been an ethical vegan, and once the social pressure ebbed (strangely, upon moving back to Portland from the Midwest) reverted to what her body very much wanted.
She’s never felt better, she says.
Posted by: dailymiltonian · Nov 9, 12:58 PM · #
If you really MUST find a way to avoid eating the animal flesh, you can probably turn yourself off to it by trying a trick I learned by accident. I was camping with some wacky theater friends whose headlamps all had colored gels installed in them. I had no such headlamp so after dark I borrowed one of theirs — with green filter — when I went to prepare some beef for stewing. Beef looks horrible under green light. Truly. I didn’t eat beef for a while after that. Place whichever variety of animal flesh under a green light and then have a good look at it. It’ll probably curtail the cravings.
Posted by: Carl · Nov 9, 01:12 PM · #
Yeah, cos clearly bar food is the natural order of things.
I’m sure her body was depleted in B12 and a whole lot else after that many years (considering that she might, like many dumbass “ethical” vegans, have subsisted all that time on bagels and bugles), but give me a break with this idea that regular meat on a bun has finally put her in touch with her body and freed her from the coercion of hippies. At best, meat is a very small part of a nourishing diet. She’s as likely to be buzzing on the garlic and onions in the patty.
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 9, 01:44 PM · #
One of the better, more conscientious eaters I’ve ever known, actually, and had taken care of her nutritional needs extraordinarily well, as well as the demands of her palate. I’ve eaten any food she’s prepared, pre- or post-vegan, gladly.
No need for you to defensively slather on the insults at random, dearest, nor place quotation marks around once-strongly-held beliefs that nonetheless softened or changed over 10 years, just because somebody feels better after re-introducing animal protein (and thus occasional essential enzymes and fatty acids) into her diet.
I promise a year of feeling physically better and more energetic is not an “onion buzz”, nor any other reaction to sulfates.
And FWIW, the only bar food involved in her initial ecstasies was the Slowburger, as a result of my own long-running commentary on just how goddam good this particular burger happened to be, a point on which every food reviewer in Portland seems to be united. She’s not, as I am, a longtime sucker for the Vietnamese fatty beef, nor a bar habitue of any sort.
Posted by: dailymiltonian · Nov 9, 02:05 PM · #
“... recently, suddenly snapped… within 24 hours had an albacore tunamelt, a world-class hamburger at Portland’s Slowbar, a smoothie, and…bacon strips….once the social pressure ebbed…reverted to what her body very much wanted….She’s never felt better.”
That is a narrative of seeing the light after years of self-denying, socially coercive delusion.
Your second version of the story is great, explains the thoughtfulness and incorporative TIME [not "recent," sudden snapping] involved, and lacks the distinct testosteronified/ meaty air of superiority. There is a difference between a testosterone buzz from a burger and a year-long incorporated feeling of wellbeing, naturally.
Good for her. I am sure she’s as beautiful and vibrant as that night circa ’96 at Starving Artists. And I suppose that if I get my gag reflex to harmonize with my muscle fibers tonight, I’ll also feel happily energized for it.
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 9, 02:21 PM · #
Pre- or postlapsarian, I meant, not -vegan.
Posted by: dailymiltonian · Nov 9, 02:21 PM · #
And the socially coercive delusion part is actually true, though not on her part. She had been an animal-rights activist, and had always been weary of the violently myopic, morally overdetermined worldview of those who nonetheless shared a number of her goals and views.
And just as in any number of other identity-forming subcultures with views of self as “outside” and in some way superior, any sign of weakness in the cause is pounced upon with cult-like fervor and resultant smug self-satisfaction.
On her part, it was pretty thought-through, the stopping with the veganism—because the ethics or movement had ceased make much sense to her—but when she did so, she did pretty much hilariously try everything at once, and to anyone around her it seemed quite sudden indeed.
So both narratives do apply to the same person, however distasteful you find the first of them.
Posted by: dailymiltonian · Nov 9, 02:33 PM · #
“And just as in any number of other identity-forming subcultures with views of self as “outside” and in some way superior, any sign of weakness in the cause is pounced upon with cult-like fervor and resultant smug self-satisfaction.”
Preach it, brother.
That’s really not my deal at all. What a shitty stereotype.
Interesting to know that this is how you see me. I'll have to think about this more and try to figure out how to bridge distances I may have unintentionally created for some people in my life. It's sad to be seen this way. And it's REALLY sad to think I've alienated anyone by appearing to take either myself or any subculture too seriously.
Meanwhile, the stereotype you articulate about smug subcultures permeates your seeing-the-light/ learned-her-lession narrative too; and it is to this attitude that I have responded. If you'd read the comments before yours, you might note that ashtanga practitioners, rather than harboring the anal-retentive self-image issues of the stereotypical account manager/hatha yoga practitioner we discussed recently, are way more interested in eating what they feel like eating than in following any particular rules. This is not a "weakness in the cause" and I'm not sitting here legitimating some dogma.
Huh. Apparently years of passing on the veal canapes haven’t depleted me all that much.
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 9, 02:43 PM · #
woah guys. deeper.
Posted by: R · Nov 9, 03:09 PM · #
The ashtanga cooking blog.
Now those are some weirdos allright.
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 9, 03:14 PM · #
And please don’t say not to take personally your comments that vaguely referred to the animal rights “cult.” The paragraph was placed there and made ambiguous because that is how to insult someone in a clever register. Obliquely.
Maybe I don’t need any more testosterone. Eh?
This seriously bums me out because what interests me here, and as always with respect to my diet, is to eat what nourishes me best. And to figure that out by listening internally. That is actually pretty interesting and rewarding. And most of the time, for me, it honestly means meat is a bad idea. Sometimes it turns into a good idea, though, and that is interesting.
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 9, 03:37 PM · #
Oh, the perils of internetting.
I was very much only thinking with specific reference only to the unconsciously single-minded activists my friend was unfortunately lumped in with, who would have excommunicated, slandered, libeled, and ultimately pilloried if they found out she ate a cheese curd and thus “betrayed” them.
If the paragraph I wrote was vague—and thus potentially implicating—it’s because I was also thinking of a specific line in Didion about “the coarsening of moral imagination to which such social idealism often leads.”
But your idealism isn’t social, duh. It’s personal. Your social imagination is anything but idealist, you’ll admit, as is mine.
So cool the jets, and stop bumming me out.
We like you over here in the NW offices, and are in general feeling entirely unalienated.
Posted by: dailymiltonian · Nov 9, 03:57 PM · #
Oh. You were revamping JD. QED.
Glad that’s over.
I’m going to Whole Foods in a while. Their meat selection is vast from all that catering they do to the fashionably healthy. No coppa, though. We’ll keep to flesh with fins.
I’d invite you for dinner but the last time I said “Why don’t you drop in?” I was not 1000 but 5000 miles from Portland and you said, “OK.” And soon showed up in the dead hot dust of the tropics still wearing your polyester pants and your Kenneth Coles.
Besides, I’m not sure you want to be here when I thank the animal for the life it had no choice in giving me. Might get a little weird.
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 9, 04:12 PM · #
Well… at least we learned some new words!
Posted by: Carl · Nov 9, 04:25 PM · #
wha???? you think we are weird?
really?
Posted by: cranky housefrau · Nov 9, 04:29 PM · #
why can’t i html on you blog?
is it because i eat weird food?
Posted by: cranky housefrau · Nov 9, 04:31 PM · #
Oh my god, Carl. Oh my god. It’s been too long since I visited Seattle.
Cranky, you are the sanest of the sane. I love the cooking blog even though you haven’t posted photographs of your children in a little too long. People: word in the ‘sphere is the minestrone is as good as it gets.
More stripey socks for you, Cranky. That part is weird.
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 9, 04:39 PM · #
It is because I use textpattern, which simplifies the comment language.
If you google “textile help” in the future, it takes you here
The code for making a link, rather than all that href stuff, is this: “linktext”:http://example.com . For italics, write _word_ and for bold write *word*.
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 9, 04:43 PM · #
word?
Posted by: cranky housefrau · Nov 9, 06:01 PM · #
awesome!
Posted by: cranky housefrau · Nov 9, 06:02 PM · #
One the conveyor belt tonight at the Westwood Whole Foods Market:
1 small container sliced young coconut
2 pomegranates
1 cantaloupe
1 butternut squash
1 wild atlantic salmon steak
Ray Liotta was hanging out by the meat display, and I brushed past him as I left.
This is a sign, but its meaning remains unclear.
Massive hit of masculine energy?
Indiscriminate slaughter?
Transforming into a mobster?
We will see. Squash and fish are in the oven.
Posted by: (0v0) · Nov 9, 08:40 PM · #
Funny threading. I’d make sure that Atlantic salmon is wild and not some fat ass,color dyed barrel fish chasing its tail in slow water off a farm in Bennington.
Best meat market for price remains Wild Oats since its much,much cheaper due to their supplier in Colorado. But now that they are part of the Whole Foods food chain that won’t last for long.
Seems like owl-woman has found her edge somewhere upside the Milton dude’s odd head. I for one enjoyed the testosterone shot off the bow.
love to all among the ruins,t.
Posted by: tristan · Nov 9, 11:07 PM · #
Hi Owl, dont know if can say anything of use that has not already been said.
I was a vegeterian for many years until Christmas 2006 when I developed a severe allergy to something unknown. Intially I was put on an elimination diet, the first two foods you are allowed to eat are lamb and pears apparently they are just about hypoallergenic. At first it horrified me but the allergy was life threatening so I had no choice. Gradually I added foods in and the majority of the initial foods were meat as we are less likely to be allergic to dead things for some reason !!!! The allergy was found to be dairy with a sensitivity to oats and nuts. Now at that point I could have gone back to being vegeterian and taken protein from legumes and I did try for a while but like you I found I was literally screaming out for protien, I also ran the risk of sensitising myself to legumes if I ate them every day. So I returned to meat eating. It was a strange transition to go from vegeterianism to eating more meat than I ever had in my life. I still have guilt pangs about it but I feel better than I have for years. Its ironic that when I was listening to my logic that said eat this the books say its good for you avoid that its bad I was actually making myself ill. When I stopped following a “healthy” diet I got well. I guess what I am trying to say in a long rambling verbouse way is I would place money on the fact that your body knows what is best for your body.
Posted by: skelly · Nov 10, 05:15 AM · #
I’ve been a vegetarian for over 30 years. There have been moments when I ate fish — notably when there was a scare that I had TB and once very recently when, like you, I hd a big craving. I ate a small bit of salmon. My shoulder, which had been really hurting me for weeks, no longer hurt during practice the next day. I won’t be alone when I suggest that you listen to what you’re craving.
Posted by: knl · Nov 10, 01:37 PM · #
This is all fascinating! I can’t offer any answers of the kind you’re looking for. I can only say in my own case that while vegetarianism feels SO right from a moral & ethical point of view, my body won’t let me do it. I tend to lose all my muscle tone within 2-3 months and I start looking REALLY unhealthy.
A lot of the times meat or fish will gross me out, but I find a way to keep eating it.
Posted by: boodiba · Nov 11, 04:27 AM · #
Just a note of caution to those vegans who fall off the wagon. If you make the transition too radically and start mainlining whole slabs of cow flank see this site,www.zenofzombie.com for a possible and unfortunate consequence. Living amongst us are many prominent zombie flow teachers, mutant creatures who were once curious about the ashtanga tradition but who then strayed into meat and fish markets and became the Undead, immensely popular yoga mercantilists with zombie cult followings,global celebrity status and stratospheric opinions of self-worth.
Posted by: tristan · Nov 11, 10:20 AM · #
Thanks for the sentiment back there, Tristan, but there was no upsiding of any heads, only a few missed targets.
Which, among old friends, sometimes glance off into a nerve or two.
Posted by: dailymiltonian · Nov 11, 08:32 PM · #
I’m a little behind on answering, here, but I went several years without eating meat (after being about 95% vegetarian for quite awhile)and then returned to being 95% vegetarian. It was a conscious decision, and I did feel a lot better after I started eating a little bit of meat, once in awhile. As for how it felt, well… for awhile, the smell of it completely disgusted me. I’d smell something like a pepperoni pizza someone else had and want to barf. I started with pretty innocuous things like chicken breast strips and white fish and little shrimp. The less it looked and smelled like meat, the easier it went down. Your body remembers liking it, though… it’s the mental block you have to get past.
There are many things that I can’t and won’t eat to this day — things that remind me of a carcass, such as ribs, lamp chops, chicken wings, etc. As for physical effects, there were none — I just noticed that I immediately started eating less and craved a lot less starch. But I never had any trouble digesting meat. Perhaps I wasn’t without it long enough.
We eat a lot of wild seafood, living on the coast of Alaska, and I honestly do feel a lot healthier for it. Wild salmon is great stuff.
Posted by: Sara · Nov 13, 07:03 PM · #
okay, owl, i’m late on this post and I haven’t read all the comments, but cody’s and karen’s advice to really listen to what your body wants is good advice. I read a few comments on up to the point where the cinnamon rolls and diet coke came in and had to comment (cuz I’m so smart). If you really do want to answer this for yourself, it is true that you might want to be an observer of your mind and body for a while. Through the comments that I read from you, it seems that you do not believe that your body will find some wisdom. yes, there are people that eat badly. But are they conscious of what they are doing? If they tried a period of conscious eating, what would they learn? I am now realizing that food is the final frontier for me. it’s the only ‘vice’ I have. Don’t drink, smoke, do drugs or even herbals. But I do eat food. And a lot of times, I eat food for the sake of eating, for a craving, for a taste, whatever. I realize that how I feed myself is the next subject at hand. Ugh! I’ve been a vegetarian twice so far and both times it was for health reasons, not ethical ones. I don’t believe it’s possible to live ethically. That doesn’t mean one shouldn’t try. I found it easy to be vegetarian, but when I was ready to be done, I was DONE—health benefits or not! Anyway, I don’t know what I’m trying to say. It’s something that has many facets, this veg-non veg thing…
Posted by: laksmi · Nov 17, 06:18 PM · #