Eating Thoughts + Infidel753’s Vegan COVID Ones

Posted on by da-AL
Little K-D girl definitely loves her meat — and anything else her people are eating. Here she works her hypnosis… Photo thanks to Khashayar Parsi
Little K-D girl definitely loves her meat — and anything else her people are eating. Here she works her hypnosis… Photo thanks to Khashayar Parsi

What kind of eater are you? Writer, reader, whatever you do for fun (I’m working on my novels, “Flamenco & the Sitting Cat’ and “Tango & the Sitting Cat”), you gotta eat, right?

I’m sort of vegetarian — more pescatarian — more accurately hypocritical — but definitely not vegan.

Whatever one is or isn’t, I believe the thoughtful — and emotional — life is best. The idea of considering one’s actions, being honest with oneself and the world at large mean a lot to me. Particularly because I believe not being so causes harm, i.e., people doing bad things to themselves, each other, their pets, the environment. I’m no expert, though. The only thing I know for sure is that generalizing generally gets me in trouble.

So for the rest of this post I’ll stick to worrying about myself. I’ve written about what my pets have taught me here and here and here…

For a long time, I didn’t really want to eat meat, but I ate it because the vegetarians I knew were so insufferable that I didn’t want to be anything like them. For one thing, they were awful to eat with, the way they’d badmouth nearby meat-eaters and discuss food in unwholesome ways. But as someone who too often bends backward to be understanding and accommodating, who am I to speak badly of vociferous vegetarians?

What I can say is one day I attended a BBQ. One where the hosts had purchased ribs as I’d never encountered them before; long racks of them, as boney and white-pinkish as mine! I can’t remember if I ate some to be polite. What I know is that very night I had a nightmare wherein I ate the little lovebird I owned at the time. It didn’t help that around then (in real life, I mean) it seemed convenient, tasty, and nutritious to once a week or so rinse a dead refrigerated Cornish game hen and dump it into a crock pot with veggies. How grown up of me — Voila! — dinner awaited as soon as I got home from work!

After aforementioned BBQ, the next time I rinsed a little boney pink-white-grey game hen — I thought of my ribs, my pet bird who was named Gumbie for her adorable putty green feathers, and the nightmare.

I can’t remember if I immediately — “cold turkey” harhar? — stopped eating flesh. Maybe I ate whatever was left in the fridge as it would’ve been beyond disrespectful to toss the corpse remains in the trash….

What I’m sure of is the convergence of discomfort woke me to the fact that I was foolish to eat meat only because I didn’t want to be like the sort of folks I could never anyway be.

It wasn’t hard to stop. The meaty meals I enjoyed had to do with the stuff on them, the sauces and such. And I’ve always loved veggies and fruit and nuts and beans and grains and the like. Good chance less meat would clear space for more of the better stuff, assuming I didn’t fill said “meat gap” with candy. That I could easily do as I love chocolate, but I didn’t. Not much, at least.

The first year, to be social, I ate a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches. I was taken aback by just how much meat some people consume when I heard lots of, “I would starve if I didn’t eat meat. What do you eat?” The trickiest situations were eating at people’s homes until I realized I should just bring a good veggie dish to share. As a result, I found people enjoy veggies a lot more than they think, so long as they’re prepared nicely. In fact, at parties, it’s the veggie pizzas that usually finish before the meat ones.

But I eat fish sometimes. So I’m a hypocrite. Though I don’t go out of my way to eat fish meals…

Eating is complicated. For all the health advice I’ve encountered, stress is hands down the worst thing for us. And eating can be super emotional. So if not eating meat is going to stress anyone out, not that anyone seeks my opinion on this, I’d say just go ahead and eat some, but try to do it with thought and compassion.

For sure don’t heap more of it than you can eat on your plate and then throw it away. That animal died for you, after all, unwilling as it was. And try to make sure it had a halfway decent life before it was led into a slaughterhouse or tossed into boiling water or…

Why am I telling you all this?

Because I recently stumbled onto “Infidel753: we are not fallen angels, we are risen apes,” a blog filled with so many genius posts that I asked Mr. Infidel753 to guest blog post here for you! The following post he wrote for us is what inspired my preceding aside. BTW, with all the quarantining, like him, between no social eating and exercising more regularly since now I do it on zoom without having to add in a commute, I’m now actually healthier.

Born in the United States since his parents arrived here from Britain, Indfidel753 blogs from Portland, Oregon. He’s been to the UK, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Germany, Ukraine, and Japan, and hopes to travel some more. Though he earned degrees in Middle Eastern history, he works in something secret that’s other than academia. A blogging pioneer, he started in 2006!

An in-depth portrait of the author, Infidel753.
An in-depth portrait of the author, Infidel753.

Pursuing health in a land of sickness by Infidel753

It started with the pigs.

For most of my life I ate pretty much like a typical American. That included eating meat, with little or no thought to what meat is or where it comes from. But due to a long-standing interest in evolutionary biology, I steadily learned more and more about animals — including how similar they, especially other mammals, are to humans in many ways. Did you know, for example, that the other great ape species have the same blood types as we do — A, B, O, etc? In the case of chimpanzees the blood chemistry is close enough that transfusions between species would be possible, with individuals of the same blood type.

Around 2008 my reading made me aware that pigs, in particular, are at least as intelligent and emotionally sophisticated as dogs. This made me uncomfortable with the thought of eating their meat. Most people, at least in the West, would not be comfortable with eating dog flesh because we think of dogs as quasi-persons. But I realized that eating pig meat was no different — so I stopped doing it.

Over time, as I learned more, I extended the same principle to mammals generally. Cattle and sheep are not as intelligent as pigs, but they’re also self-aware creatures, and I could simply no longer blank out the knowledge that what I was eating was part of the corpse of a conscious being. Finally I gave up meat altogether. Even animals like chickens and fish seem obviously self-aware to some extent, and they certainly have the capacity to suffer.

And suffer they do. Most meat now is produced on factory farms, where animals are kept in horrific conditions of overcrowding and immobility, constantly dosed with antibiotics to suppress the infectious diseases which would otherwise run rampant under such conditions (and even so, disease is often widespread). Unlike many vegetarians, I don’t really like animals — they’re unpredictable, generally not very clean, and in many cases dangerous; I don’t like having them around me. But I don’t like the thought of them suffering.

But I still hadn’t grasped the implications for human health. If anything, I worried that eliminating meat might lead to malnutrition. I still ate things like eggs and cheese, as well as the wide range of processed junk that makes up so much of the “normal” American diet.

By the beginning of 2020 I knew I needed to do more. I had lost some weight, but at 225 pounds and 5’11″ I was still clinically obese, and I was about to turn sixty. That put me in the express lane to a stroke or a heart attack. I started educating myself about health and came to realize that animal by-products like cheese and eggs are probably even more toxic to the human system than meat is.

The pandemic was the final straw. It soon became clear that if you catch covid-19, overall health has a lot of impact on how badly it harms you. I observed rigorous isolation to avoid the virus, but I knew I couldn’t absolutely eliminate the risk of catching it. So I cut out all the remaining animal products and most of the junk food. It was, I suppose, partly a way of feeling proactive and taking action rather than being passive in the face of the viral threat.

I also became something of a fanatic for learning as much as I could about the effects of various kinds of food on the human body. Human anatomy and biochemistry are those of a herbivorous animal, not an omnivorous one, and our pervasive problems of obesity, diabetes, arterial damage, and a dozen other scourges, are simply the kinds of things that happen to an animal when it eats the wrong kind of food. Such problems have historically been rare in populations which traditionally ate a mostly starch-based diet with very little meat, as in much of Asia — but as prosperity brought American-style eating to those cultures, American-style health problems have followed. Conversely, among Americans, it’s vegans — those who eat mostly vegetables, fruit, nuts, and legumes, eschewing animal products and keeping processed stuff to a minimum — who statistically suffer least from such ailments. All this self-education helped me stick to the new path.

The results far exceeded expectations. By the end of 2020 I had lost thirty pounds, and the joint inflammation flare-ups and chest pains which had plagued me for most of my life had almost disappeared.

This isn’t a “diet” in the sense of a temporary program to be followed until its goals are achieved. It’s a reversion to what should be the norm. I consider it analogous to quitting smoking.

In terms of popular thinking and moral consensus, I think meat-eating today is about where slavery was around 1800. Most people still accept it as a normal part of life without giving it much thought. Only a small minority recognizes that there’s a serious moral problem, to say nothing of the health issues. But that minority is growing with time. There is, at least, fairly widespread awareness of how much animal farming contributes to global warming. But that issue is only the tip of a very large, ugly, and dangerous iceberg. Over time, I hope and believe, the reality of the problem will become widely understood despite the dense fog of misinformation, propaganda, and wishful thinking that now obscures it. Until then, at least I personally am no longer implicated — and no longer harming myself.

How do you feel about eating these days?

Published by da-AL

Happiness Between Tails blog/podcast speaks to and from the heart. It connects lovers — of pets, authors, reading — and of my still-unreleased novels. “Flamenco + the Sitting Cat” and “Tango + the Sitting Cat,” are my love letters to all who fear they're too odd, too damaged, too old, too whatever to find love and happiness with or without a partner. HappinessBetweenTails.com • ContactdaAL@gmail.com • BuyMeACoffee.com/SupportHBT

92 thoughts on “Eating Thoughts + Infidel753’s Vegan COVID Ones”

    1. An admirable feature of the culture, and I’m sure beneficial to the people. I hope you can keep things that way and not be seduced into unhealthy American eating habits, as so many other countries have been.

      Liked by 1 person

    1. I hope you recover quickly and your sense of taste comes back. Eating healthy food is important — even if you don’t have much appetite because of the virus, good nutrition and energy are essential for regaining health.

      Liked by 1 person

  3. This is most certainly food for thought. I think that one of the things that may help people to be more concious of their desicions is to call meats like pork, bacon, mutton, beef, etc. what they really are: pig, sheep, cow. This will help people not to disassociate the meat from the animal so much.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. That’s a good point. Because of the history of English, most words for types of meat come from French but most of the words for the animals are native English words — so they sound different. But pig, sheep, and cow are what they really are.

      Liked by 2 people

  4. I never liked meat as a kid cos all mum (single parent to 4 kids) could afford was the cheaper cuts which had gristle and fat and bones — just like the ribs and belly pork that are so popular and expensive these days.

    Although I love fish and seafood I’m put off when I prepare it – having to remove the insides and the intestines from prawns – yuk!

    Fortunately, I love all fresh fruit, veg and salad together with nuts and pulses.

    Liked by 5 people

    1. Those things like gristle and fat, and the seafood insides and intestines, are yucky exactly because they’re reminders that what you’re dealing with is the dead body of an animal, or part of one. The very fact that most humans find things like that disgusting is yet another way in which, as with our teeth, digestive tract, etc, humans are fundamentally herbivorous.

      Truly omnivorous animals like bears don’t find things like gristle and intestines disgusting — they relish them. Herbivores like ourselves are revolted by stuff like that because we didn’t evolve to register animal flesh as food. Most people are only comfortable eating meat in a more processed form which doesn’t contain any obvious reminders that it comes from an animal.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Yeeeewww! Yes I know, in many countries they eat the entrails 😦

        You’re right – if everyone had to cut up their own pic/cow etc, I’m sure it would put them off. However I know people who even eat hearts and brains!

        Liked by 2 people

    2. I loved gristle & cartilage & bone marrow when I was a kid lol so here’s where one of the many times my mind goes crazed with nature vs nurture… but then I was obese & bullied & was an unhappy nervous child…

      Liked by 1 person

  7. I think it’s important to understand how all food is grown, gathered, farmed, harvested, processed, and marketed. Ancient people used to thank the spirits of the animals they ate for the sustenance they now enjoyed. It’s impossible to imagine people living near the North Pole not eating meat. Tribal people in rain forests still gather grubs and insects because they are some of the easiest ways to get protein. Undernourished children fed a life saving product called Plumpy Nut regain their health very quickly. Children scavenge the garbage thrown out from fine restaurants so their family can eat. Chemical sprays are not only very dangerous for workers, but bad for consumers. We can make our own choices but only if we are safe enough and wealthy enough to do so. Hungry people eat what they like. Starving people eat what they must. All else is hypocrisy.

    Liked by 4 people

    1. There are some populations like the Inuit (Eskimo) who have no choice but to eat grossly-unhealthy diets because they live in extreme environments which are really only barely habitable for humans. That doesn’t make such diets any less unhealthy, it only means that their living situation leaves them no choice. Here’s a quick video overview of actual scientific study of the health effects of the Inuit diet, including in prehistoric times before contact with the West.

      If I were starving and had no other option, I would eat animal flesh. Hell, if I were starving and had no other option, I’d eat human flesh. But the vast majority of people in the modern world aren’t in that position, and I’m sure no one reading this blog is. The things people need to do in desperate circumstances don’t tell us anything useful about the ethics (or health effects) of the options available in normal life.

      The vast majority of the world’s meat is produced in factory farms where the conditions are unrelentingly ghastly. It’s not an industry that can ethically be supported.

      Also, animals don’t have “spirits” any more than humans do, and no animal knows or cares about whatever mumbo-jumbo is going on inside the head of a human who is killing it.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. nature vs nurture is something I think about often. my doggie certainly is more interested in whatever I want her to eat if I ‘sell’ it to her… spirit or no, the will to live is universal…

        Liked by 1 person

    2. well said, Sharon. not quite related, but the other day I came across cricket flour on amazon. am always appalled by my own naiveté – when I 1st read a blog post from Africa where a woman lamented that her uncle wanted to eat her dog, I thought she was joking…

      Liked by 1 person

  8. Thanks for sharing Infidel753’s post. I was a vegetarian / pescatarian for several years before I finally committed to becoming 100% vegetarian in January 2019. I have no fight with the meat eaters around me, but it would be better for our planet if all meat eaters could at least reduce their consumption to once or twice a week only.

    Liked by 5 people

    1. Congratulations. It is certainly true that reducing or eliminating meat consumption would be better for the environment. Aside from the well-known contribution of cattle farming to global warming, animal farming results in a tremendous waste of agricultural land. The same land that could produce 1,000 calories of food for human consumption instead produces 1,000 calories of food for animal consumption in order to produce 10 calories of meat for human consumption. It’s inefficient. A vegan world could support a much larger human population with better health and food security and far less impact on the global ecosystem.

      Liked by 2 people

  9. I visit Infidel’s blog often, so I’m aware of his successful journey toward better health (and continue to learn from his always provocative, original, and informative posts). I have been trying to make the same transition but have not evolved to his status yet.

    I think the measure of the man is evident in his stating that he doesn’t even like animals—but doesn’t want them to suffer. I love animals, have a penchant for anthropomorphism, but still struggle toward my goal. This essay will make me try harder.

    Liked by 5 people

    1. Annie, thanks for the kind words. No matter how one feels about animals, it’s impossible to remain unmoved by the horrific conditions under which they exist (one can’t really call it “living”) on modern factory farms — to say nothing of the inevitable problems with disease. Something like 80% of the world’s output of antibiotics is used not by humans but on farms, to keep the sickly animals alive long enough to grow to full size and be killed for food. I’m convinced that if everyone knew the truth about the conditions there, and about what goes into the meat being produced, the great majority would abandon eating such stuff very quickly.

      But I know it can be a long journey. It took me more than a decade. Habits do die hard.

      Liked by 2 people

  10. I don’t think that having a pleasant meal out with friends should be used to being a missionary for one’s own eating habits or for having a go at other people. Once I had decided not to eat meat, I would not make compromises though. I didn’t try to convince the meat eaters, and I didn’t want them to discuss this with me all the time either. I never had many problems with that, actually. Usually people just accepted it, without even asking why.
    Fun fact: on summer parties, which we used to have when we were younger, I used to make a fine vegetarian buffet, and the meat eaters didn’t even notice it was vegetarian.
    But I also eat fish here and there. If I had to kill the fish myself, I would not eat it. So in that respect I am a hypocrite too. I am trying to reduce it though and phase it out.

    Liked by 5 people

    1. You’re right that being preachy, about food as much as about religion, is generally rude and, more to the point, ineffective. It’s curious that meat-eaters sometimes have a preachy and even bullying attitude toward vegans, but there we are. On the other hand, having become aware of the serious moral and health issues here, I do feel compelled to speak out about it on occasion — but I do so on the net, not when eating out with people.

      Ich gratuliere Ihnen zu Ihrer ausgezeichneten Englischkentnisse. Ich weiß daß es nicht leicht ist, eine zweite Sprache so gut zu lernen.

      Liked by 3 people

      1. I usually didn’t have any discussion. I never mentioned a reason when I said that I don’t eat meat, and people usually accepted that. But I have seen in some blogs that some vegetarians feel obliged to give a reason to meat eaters. I don’t. I take the discussion up with people who are genuinely interested in the topic, from whichever persuasion … 😉 .

        Und vielen Dank fur das Kompliment! Wir hatten im Gymnasium sehr gute Lehrer, und später im Arbeitsleben habe ich fast immer English benutzt. An zwei Arbeitsplätzen war English sogar die tägliche Umgangssprache, die alle beherrschen mussten.

        Liked by 3 people

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