Given the magazine’s suggestions of what to eat in place of meat—lentils in white sauce, walnut roast (basically walnuts, breadcrumbs and rice), and curried nutmeat (tinned)—this lapse of interest is hardly surprising. Indeed, for most of vegetarianism’s existence in Australia, its recipes have represented a triumph of reason over pleasure.
TO START, LET ME SET DOWN my credentials. I am not a vegetarian. I respect vegetarian beliefs while not necessarily sharing them. To vegetarianism in theory and to vegetarians in general I am sympathetic. I’m very fond of vegetables, but I also like meat—and fish, and poultry, and game. I’m fond of animals, too, and I’m not convinced that by blackballing them I’d be doing myself, and the world in general, a favour. While I balk at eating dog, I guess I’ve managed to abstract myself from natural shudders as rabbits are clobbered inside sugar bags and sheep have their throats and then their bellies slit while hanging ignominiously by two shanks. I still eat and enjoy my roast free-range chicken and lamb fillets with quinces.
The gastronomic philosophy pronounced by Brillat-Savarin would seem to espouse eating anything that is potentially edible. ‘The Creator, who made man such that he must eat to live, incites him to eat by means of appetite, and rewards him with pleasure.’ Nowhere does this suggest that the domain of our taste preferences should be bounded by a dingo-proof fence, nor that to refuse the potential pleasure of eating pork sausages or roast lamb is morally strengthening. I don’t subscribe to the belief that all other species are at the mercy of man, but I recognise that eating is essential to survival. Like novelist Italo Calvino’s Mr Palomar, I share in the ‘man-beef symbiosis [which] has, over the centuries, achieved an equilibrium … and has guaranteed the flourishing of what is called human civilisation’. I⇣understand Mr Palomar’s mood as he stands in line in the butcher’s shop:
at once of restrained joy and of fear, desire and respect, egotistic concern and universal compassion, the mood that perhaps others express in fear … Though he recognises in the strung-up carcase of the beef the person of a disemboweled brother, and in the slash of the loin chop the wound that mutilates his own flesh, he knows that he is a carnivore, conditioned by his alimentary background to perceive in a butcher’s shop the premise of gustatory happiness, to imagine, observing these reddish slices, the stripes that the flame will leave on the grilled steaks and the pleasure of the tooth in severing the browned fibre.
To be vegetarian is an individual choice. We all draw the line somewhere, marking off edible from inedible. For some it might only be insects—larvae, grasshoppers, cicadas—that fall below the line; others admit above it only vegetable products: fruits and vegetables, grains and seeds. To be able to choose how one eats is a luxury not available to those impelled by hunger or with barely enough to survive, nor to those captive of religious convictions and obliged to conform to the edicts of their faith. And today when vegetarianism is consciously chosen, it is usually for one or more of four simple motives: ethical, environmental, health or economic.
At one period during our stay in France we feasted on a near-vegetarian diet—for economic reasons. A few minor glitches had interfered with the expected automatic transfer of funds and we were obliged to shrink our spending. I’d been reasonably frugal (except when it came to cheese) but for a few weeks there I had to be super-thrifty, and decided that the most expendable component of the budget was meat. It was fortuitous that soon after we moved into the first floor of Madame’s house in Provence, near Carpentras, I had stocked the pantry with wine, oil, rice, pasta, chick peas, lentils and beans—the small white beans the French call haricots de Soissons. Madame’s spring garden provided us with broad beans, there was fennel growing by the sides of the roads and wild leeks in the vineyards (though I decided against using these, since the vines had just been sprayed with copper sulphate).
On the other side of the village I could buy fresh eggs, from real, dirt-scratching hens, and at the Carpentras market vegetables were almost absurdly cheap, especially the small tomatoes newly in season. The charcutier’s pâté was relatively inexpensive, so it was still bread and pâté for lunch. On these rations we ate extraordinarily well, and some of the necessary inventions have remained amongst my favourite dishes—such as a ratatouille-like mixture minus the aubergines (which weren’t quite in season at that time), in which I make an indentation with the back of a large spoon and drop in an egg to softly poach. We ate risotto, and pasta with tomatoes; we ate lentils in salad and with rice, in the Lebanese manner; we ate bouillabaisse d’épinards, using the roadside fennel; fresh broad beans with tomato sauce; and lots of bread. Our diet was virtually meatless and wonderfully diverse.
In similar financial circumstances about six months later I developed a new respect for potatoes, of which there was then a glut following the shortage and consequent high prices of the previous season. For a bag of 50 kilos I paid five francs, around one dollar. Not being Irish, I was obliged to be inventive, to produce as much magic as possible out of this brown sack in a wheelbarrow in the darkest part of the cellar, where the potatoes duly sprouted hairs and whiskers and did all they could to awaken my latent horror of red-backs and funnel-webs. I worked as much magic as I could with fifty cents worth of salted or smoked belly pork from the local charcuterie, or with chestnuts and brussels sprouts (the local vegetable—by this time we were in the north of France). I used them in thick, creamy soups with watercress which, unlike me, loved that damp, dank climate; in a crusty gratin, with the best comté cheese; and in Spanish omelettes, using farm-fresh eggs (delivered to the charcuterie every Tuesday and Friday). By Easter, when the sun occasionally showed itself and the monthly deliveries of heating oil could cease, we had demolished about two-thirds of the 50 kilos. One night we guiltily unloaded the remaining potatoes into a vacant ditch, where they became food for the hedgehogs.
Vegetarianism is, to say the least, topical. Health propaganda presents vegetables and fruits as far more important components of the diet than red-blooded meat, subtly demoting the latter to also-ran. Indeed, vegetarianism has almost attained gastronomic respectability; most restaurants naturally include vegetarian selections on their menus and some vegetarian restaurants achieve top-ranking status. This restores a balance that for too long has been over-weighted by meat—though there are good reasons why special-occasion restaurants should highlight meat, while at the local pasta palace meat dishes are exceptional. But to over-correct, to tilt it too far in that direction—by labelling meat ‘unhealthy’, for example—is to display an equally inappropriate chauvinism.
Food arouses passions, and what we choose to eat or not eat often represents passionately held personal ideologies. This tends to preclude any objectively reasoned debate. And issues become clouded when the argument takes place within a black-and-white frame that permits no shades. In the typical dichotomy the choice is between ‘no meat’ (or any other animal foods) and ‘meat’, as if these were the only possible choices available to us—when in fact most humans are omnivores. It depends on how far back down the evolutionary ladder you want to go, but there is clear evidence that chimpanzees, the species most closely related to primitive man, enjoyed animal snacks (insects, rodents and small mammals) and even preferred them to their basic diet of fruits, nuts, leaves and other plant products. According to anthropologist Richard Leakey, significant meat-eating was one of the characteristics that differentiated early Homo from his predecessors.
The evolutionary argument holds that vegetarianism is somehow more ‘natural’, based on the belief that primitive man was essentially vegetarian. But our cave-dwelling ancestors also enjoyed their taste of meat. In his history of vegetarianism, The Heretic’s Feast (1993) Colin Spencer reports that ‘hunting provided only a relatively small proportion of a tribe’s food’ (the proportion, he implies, being around 20 per cent). Perhaps 20 per cent is only a small proportion, but the proportion of animal foods in average Australian diets today is hardly different. According to the 1983 dietary survey in Australia, meat, meat products and fish accounted for 17 per cent of the total mass of foods (excluding tea, coffee, milk and other drinks) consumed by the average female, and 22 per cent for males. In terms of their contribution to the energy value of the diet (excluding energy contributed by alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages), animal foods were far less important than the foods from the vegetable kingdom—cereals, fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds—which together supplied nearly half the energy, compared with only 21 per cent from meats. (Most of the remainder came from milk and milk products, eggs, fats, sugar, snack foods and confectionery.)
Emotional appeals based on the assumed ‘naturalness’ of a vegetarian lifestyle are somewhat irrelevant today. Current debate on vegetarianism must start with the fact that, almost always, it is a conscious choice—a luxury that early hominids might not have enjoyed. Or rather, it is a conscious choice in the secular societies of the western world, and of the English-speaking world in particular, where food choices are markers of individuality and where vegetarianism is not part of a common background culture as it is in India, for example, nor of a dominant religion. When it is adopted as a deliberate choice, vegetarianism (or the rejection of meat) is usually justified by arguments that are sane, logical, credible and persuasive. I’m not convinced, however, that a total rejection of meat and other animal products is necessarily the only solution.
Food choices are an outward expression of the beliefs and values that shape an individual’s lifestyle. Vegetarianism is thus a natural complement to a belief in the rights of animals or in the importance of preserving the environment. These are honourable concerns. But while abstinence from meat by motivated individuals might mean fewer animals slaughtered and less environmental destruction, the rights of animals (to enjoy living) might be better served by a more humane treatment during their life and at the abattoirs. Surely intensive animal production which treats animals as mechanical feed converters—battery chicken is one example—is less humane, less respectful of the animals, than allowing sheep and cattle to graze and grow fat on natural pastures. Yet would-be vegetarians tend to give up red meat before white.
As for preservation of the environment, in Australia kangaroos are an alternative to cloven-hoofed destroyers of native grassland. Arguments about the relative economics of meat and grain production are inappropriate and misdirected. While it might make sense in America to argue that one acre under wheat, or soybeans, or some other vegetable crop, would feed more people than that same acre devoted to meat production, here most of our meat is produced under conditions where crop farming is simply not an alternative. This is not to deny the environmental ‘cost’ of grazing—and overgrazing; but it is sheer obstinacy to ignore that otherwise unusable natural pastures can be converted into food for human consumption by animals, native or not. In parts of outback Australia prescribed stocking rates—two head of cattle per square kilometre, for example—are calculated within the limits of sustainability.
Grain production can be even more environmentally disastrous than raising of livestock. Each kilogram of bread we consume costs seven kilograms of irreplaceable soil, according to Tim Flannery in his book, The Future Eaters (1994). Further, grazing animals on pasture is probably less wasteful of non-replaceable energy sources; pasture beef production takes 30 calories of energy to yield 50 food calories while intensive grain production takes 40 calories of energy and intensive horticulture (northern hemisphere glasshouses) requires 5000 energy calories for 50 food calories.
Economic arguments for vegetarianism hold good when meat is a comparative luxury—which is not always the case in Australia where the less reputable portions (such as liver) might cost less than the broccoli that accompanies them. Health arguments carry more weight, though the concept of ranking diets in terms of ‘healthiness’ is about as relevant as a search for the most effective slimming diet. As far as I know, all the studies to date have compared groups of vegetarians with matched groups of people eating average amounts of meat, and there has been no research comparing the health benefits of a totally vegetarian diet with one that includes small amounts of meat and animal foods—red meats two or three times a month, say, as advocated in the Harvard model of the Mediterranean diet. There are entire communities living almost meatless lives—on isolated Greek islands, for example—whose citizens easily achieve the three-score-plus-ten despite a healthy intake of nicotine. Their diet, however, is determined more than it is chosen, and I’m not sure that longevity per se is a meritorious goal.
Individual objections to eating meat can be justified by aesthetic repulsion—the sight of blood, the idea of eating flesh (which can carry intimations of cannibalism or of eating one’s own mother). There are people, too, who honestly prefer the taste of vegetables and in refusing meat are simply following natural inclinations—though it’s just possible that these preferences are culturally and ideologically influenced. Fifty years ago, there were some whose ‘natural inclinations’ were for people of the same sex, but whose inclinations were not expressed because they were culturally unacceptable. Today they are, because it is—and vegetarianism could be a similar story. A preference for vegetables might also be motivated by the images associated with them, one of the most potent of which, in this New Age, has been ‘health’, in whatever shape and form it is conceived.
From my non-vegetarian perspective I see the other side to the pro-vegetarian arguments. There are reason and valid evidence on both sides, and even the sanest Solomon would have difficulty granting one side more ‘right’ than the other. Believing is what matters. What and how one eats depends on individual convictions, and no amount of persuasion from the opposing side will change this. People have consciously chosen vegetarianism at least since the sixth century BC when the Pythagoreans, renouncing meat because it was linked to the sacrificial slaughter of animals to the Gods, reverted to the more primitive wild plants that, in some earlier era, might have been ‘the food of the Gods’. Paradoxically, they also avoided the highly nutritious broad bean since the broad bean plant, having a hollow stem, was assumed to be directly linked to the Underworld. What the plant took from there was directly passed to the bean, so that eating a broad bean was tantamount to eating a soul, or cannibalism. (Others have since argued that renouncing broad beans was a way of avoiding potential illness, since a small proportion of Mediterranean peoples have a genetic abnormality that interferes with their ability to digest broad beans.)
Historically, the forces of vegetarianism have waxed and waned. The word itself is not much more than a century old—previously, people who refused meat called themselves fruitarians. The movement was relatively strong, especially in Anglo and predominantly Protestant countries, in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the New South Wales Vegetarian Society was established in 1891. It seems to have faded around the 1920s, until another burst of interest saw the Australian Vegetarian Society formed in 1948. This enthusiasm again seems to have been ephemeral, since the Society’s journal apparently ceased publication in the 1950s. Given the magazine’s suggestions of what to eat in place of meat—lentils in white sauce, walnut roast (basically walnuts, breadcrumbs and rice), and curried nutmeat (tinned)—this lapse of interest is hardly surprising. Indeed, for most of vegetarianism’s existence in Australia, its recipes have represented a triumph of reason over pleasure.
In its early heyday, vegetarianism was touted as being more healthy and more humane—just as it is today. However, more fire seemed to be reserved for the argument that meat had a stimulating effect and was therefore to be avoided—as though it were a magic mushroom that could make decent citizens lose all control. ‘Flesh foods being more stimulating than nourishing, inflame the lower desires and passions,’ wrote the Food Reform League in 1913. Meat was a poison, a cause of cancer; it encouraged intemperance, evoked cruelty, incited wars. All in all, meat was considered a thorough baddie. Such values can be difficult to discard.
Today’s vegetarianism sometimes still represents meat as a nasty, as if to encourage feelings of repulsion. Becoming a member of the Australian Vegetarian Society is like taking the pledge. Members must swear that they have abstained from eating the flesh of animals for three months or longer.
Unfortunately, the legacy of the lunatic fringe still hangs over vegetarianism. Vegetarians are often singled out and expected to justify themselves and their choice of diet when others with non-mainstream food preferences are not. If I refuse a ham-and-mustard sandwich and am asked why, I can give any one of a number of explanations: I’m not hungry; I don’t like mustard; I’ve given up ham for Lent; I’m on a low-salt diet; I have an allergy to wheat products; my religion forbids me to eat pork. All of these would be perfectly acceptable and would be sympathetically received. On the other hand, if I replied, ‘I’m a vegetarian and I don’t eat animal products’, I suspect the response would be different. Not only do past images and popular perceptions (holier-than-thou zealots who measure out their lives in kidney beans) come into play, but vegetarians, consciously or not, set themselves apart from the mainstream by their non-conformity to prevailing mores, just as did Pythagoras all those centuries ago. (There are also those who use the unchallengeably high-minded principles of vegetarianism as a pretext for attempts to lose weight and a cover-up for anorexia).
The solution to the concerns motivating vegetarians is not necessarily a denial of meat. People could simply eat less of it. There are valid historic reasons for the status of meat, and dethroning meat in western culture would be difficult. But we could take a couple of steps backward and return to a more respectful appreciation of meat, as in the times when it had religious and sacrificial associations. This implies also encouraging a different approach towards slaughtering, and the development of less stressful slaughterhouse environments and possibly different systems of killing and butchering. Those who have eaten meat from farm-reared, humanely slaughtered animals remark on its flavour and tenderness. There are also valid historic reasons for the lowly ranking of vegetables (anyone could grow a few vegetables, but only the wealthy owned livestock). But the status of vegetables is changing, and could be raised even further if restaurants and cafés featured more vegetable (which is not necessarily to say vegetarian) dishes, especially as a first course, and more dishes in which vegetables were a necessary and substantial part of the dish.
I would like to think that there is a way of eating that reconciles many of the concerns motivating vegetarians—humanitarian, ecological and health—yet does not totally exclude meat and other animal products. That it is possible to develop a philosophy that respects these concerns and rejects the extreme of asceticism in favour of a healthy sensuality. And that in an environment of mutual respect there would be more tolerance of others whose eating habits are not our own.