Transportation You Can Eat

My wife Tammi (nee Riggins) has been reading Peter Singer's The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter and as she describes it, it mounts some well-reasoned and convincing arguments for being more conscientious about eating.

When it comes to mindful eating, it seems the burden of the argument now lies with whomever would eat carelessly.  I used to think that advocates for mindful eating put into the realm of consumerism and consumer choice the solution to an ecological and social problem that by all rights calls for  political engagement and rejuvenation, rather than for "lifestyle" change.  (As if the sovereign consumer of free market ideology weren't the substance of the problem to begin with.)

Singer pretty much demolishes this thinking. But because we're talking about eating, what's persuasive in this case is different than what's persuasive in other debates framed in utilitarian terms.  What's most persuasive is disgust.

Upon settling down to life here in the Veneto, Tammi and I were surprised to learn that the Italians enjoy a particular delicacy called equino.  You can buy as steak, you can buy it ground, you can even get it on pizza.  A little research tells me that the Italians are joined in their taste for equino by the French and the Spanish, the Chinese and the Japanese, the Belgians, the Indonesians, and the residents of Mongolia, Iceland, and my ancestral land of Luxembourg.  A veritable coalition of the willing-to-eat-horsemeat.



"I totally love the scene where Liz Gilbert pigs out on horsemeat!"

 At the grocery store the other day, when I saw equino shrink-wrapped in the meat fridge next to the suino and bovino, it occurred to me that I can't eat meat anymore.  Not if I can't draw a non-arbitrary line between beef and horse, or between pig and any other animal on Old McDonald's bestiary of the appetite.  At least, not if I don't know these animals lived well and died a good death. 

I don't know whether it's healthier to be a vegetarian than not.  Sometimes I think it must be, sometimes I think the opposite.  For now, nevertheless, vegetarianism seems the more mindful option.  As for its effects on running, I guess you don't need as much protein as you think you do.  Kenyan runners get about 10% of their calories from protein, freshly killed chicken mainly.  They eat a very low-fat diet and eat very little (about 2400 calories a day--not much when your daily mileage hits 18-20mi at altitude).  They take a surprising amount of calories from sugar and corn.

Yesterday, Tammi and I went to the track for a nice evening workout.  She did 4 x 800, I did 8 x 400.  This morning, I ran 11.5 and felt pretty good.  We're eating a delicious beet soup for dinner tonight. 

Eat Food.  Mostly Plants.  No horse.