6 years ago :: Mar 11, 2012 - 9:34AM #41 | |
I like a little meat in my diet, and I enjoy the occasional "meat indulgence," but I long ago gave up the not uncommon American practice of having a big slab of meat on my plate as a dinner staple. I find that just a half pound of meat works splendidly to "spice" a blend of mostly veggies and rice and makes a quite tasty meal that lasts me for 4-5 dinners. |
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6 years ago :: Mar 11, 2012 - 10:22AM #42 | |
Yes, food really can be "disgusting"! Or, rather, eating in general can be. Some years ago I was sitting and having a lunch of baked chicken at a Boston Market. And as I sat there rending the meat and flesh and sinews from the haunch of chicken bone with my teeth and the grease from it stained my mouth and fingers I had this sudden flash of revelation of "eyooooo!" But it did not slow me down! That was a tasty piece of chicken! I have reflected on that experience often, and I think the source of it is a kind of squeamishness which we have about being animal. Eating, of course, is a very animal process - there is nothing particularly refined and lofty and poetically noble about macerating and swallowing once living organisms and subjecting them to further indignities of the digestive and alimentary processes (as Marge Simpson exclaimed while changing Maggie's diaper, "Eyooo! How did you turn cinammon apple sauce into that!"). I find it interesting that we shroud our most basic animal behaviors in rituals to try and mask their crude animality. The messiness of eating is cleaned up by table manners (and having others far away take care of the nasty, messy business of butchering and cleaning meat). The alimentary process is done in private, perfumed rooms where the evidence of the crime is hastily flushed away (the hilarious denial of animality here is perfectly captured by my sainted mother's exiting a recently used bathroom which had an "air freshener" and saying, 'apparently somebody sh*t a pine tree.') And the messy (but really so very pleasant) business of sex is also done in private and heavily veiled in secrecy (though granted less nowadays than ever before!). I am not advocating abandoning our standard social proprieties - I just think it is interesting to reflect i what they mean - and I think a lot of their meaning has to with our squeamishness about being animals ourselves. It would hurt us not at all to be less squeamish about that because for all its messiness, biological life is a very good thing! P.S. Erey, I liked your work playing Purdey in The New Avengers very much when I was a teenager. You were wonderful. |
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6 years ago :: Mar 11, 2012 - 10:58AM #43 | |
We indeed have some ambiguous Feelings / Thoughts / Attitudes about our Food ... When delicious inviting Food is on my Plate, I positively RELISH digging in and chowing down on it ... But ... If I inadvertantly spill some of that delicious inviting Food on my Necktie, the Tie has now become "dirty," contaminated ... Go Figure ... |
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6 years ago :: Mar 11, 2012 - 11:36AM #44 | |
We're only trying to discourage you from lying to us. Leave out the mythinformation, the hyperbole, and the personal attacks, and people might start to take you more seriously. Now you just come off as a holier than thou preacher.
Dave - Just a Man in the Mountains.
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. Isaac Asimov |
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6 years ago :: Mar 11, 2012 - 11:38AM #45 | |
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6 years ago :: Mar 11, 2012 - 11:45AM #46 | |
Compare what we eat today with what they ate just a hundred years or so ago. The average working man would have meat and potatoes at breakfast, lunch and dinner. But then they worked it all off during the day. With the lifestyles we have today, we just cannot eat like that. More veggies and less meat is the way to go.
Dave - Just a Man in the Mountains.
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. Isaac Asimov |
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6 years ago :: Mar 11, 2012 - 4:28PM #47 | |
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6 years ago :: Mar 11, 2012 - 4:45PM #48 | |
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6 years ago :: Mar 11, 2012 - 10:46PM #49 | |
Every single person I've spoken to over the past couple of days are now saying they will not eat another burger (or any other food that is made with ground beef) unless the restaurant clearly indicates, to them, that the meat they serve does not have pink slime. And, that they won't buy ground beef unless the store they shop at clearly indicates that they do not sell meat with green slime. It is rather amusing to see another one of people's sacred cows pierced by knowledge, brought to us by the media reports of the things that activists find out for us! McDonalds's wouldn't do that to us, would they? sniff.sniff. As they say "Knowledge is Power!" We'll see if the fast food places will actually suffer a decline in patronage...or will they lie about what they're selling now that (part of) the truth is out!! Dr Dean Ornish is a physician, a researcher and a nutritionist and is a strong advocate of veganism and a no-fat diet lacking anything the comes from a being with a face or a mother. Is he an hysteric professional. And I do have to wonder what those who are lucky enough to have never had a "problem' due to elevated cholesterol, and never WILL have a problem due to elevated cholesterol have to say to those who do have such a problem, or to those who have lost family loved ones due to an early, sudden heart attack or stroke? I know......American's favorite quip: "Sucks to be YOU"
Black Lives Matter
Muslim Lives Matter There is no such thing as "illegals" LGBT Lives Matter Poor Women's Lives Matter "If we jump too quickly to the universal formulation, 'all lives matter,' then we miss the fact that black people have not yet been included in the idea of 'all lives.'" --Professor Judith Butler |
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6 years ago :: Mar 11, 2012 - 11:25PM #50 | |
Is there a "Vegan" Equivalent Substance, i.e., "Green Slime" ... ??? "Pond Scum" ... ??? |
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