What I've Learned

While visiting Houston last month, I dropped by Brazos Bookstore and picked up a copy of Susan Bourette’s Meat:  A Love Story, a book that truly made me appreciate my own lack of street cred.  Bourette, a Canadian journalist, spent four days undercover in a pork processing plant and, disgusted by punitive working conditions and the sheer gruesomeness of the job, vowed to swear off meat.  Her vegetarianism lasted a little over five weeks:  despite her commitment to a nutritionally balanced meatless diet, Bourette developed a protein deficiency and (if her personal anecdotes are to be believed) rushed to the nearest diner, shrieking "Give me meat!"  Bourette's full return to meat, though, which she chronicles in the book, involved rigorous research:  hacking veal at a tony butcher shop in Manhattan, hunting whales with native Inupiat Alaskans, roping cattle on a family Texan ranch, braving carpaccio with New Age raw meat fanatics.  Bourette examines the anthropology, economics, and sexual politics of meat.  This woman has street cred.

My journey as an omnivore, by comparison to Bourette’s, was breezy, boring and journalistically unsound.  Rather than pursuing the hidden truth about meat, I clung to a naïve belief that meat in France was inherently better than its American counterpart.  I didn’t visit any abattoirs, make trips to any farms, or kill any animals.  I didn’t even taste any offal.   I just traipsed from one Parisian restaurant to the next, happily swallowing the delicious meats I found on my plate, so long as their purchase didn’t unduly deplete my bank account.

Despite the fact that I spent my meat-eating phase in an ivory tower, despite the fact that my research was limited to what I put in my mouth and what I read online and in books, I still cannot say that this phase was a mistake or a waste.  If nothing else, I have been able to answer one of the questions I had in mind when I started my experiment:  Why do people eat meat at all?

I get it now.  Meat tastes good; some meat tastes great.  (Now that I’ve tried real bacon, soy-based Lightlife Smart Bacon resembles stiff, slightly overripe bologna.)  Meat is a central component of countless culinary traditions, one of the ties the binds us to the past.  I don’t take that lightly.

But, above all else, eating meat is easy.  If anything shocked me about the experience of eating meat after not having done so for more than a decade, it was the readiness with which I came to do it.  I started out scared to death, but within a few weeks of my first bite of meat, I was gobbling down any animal flesh I was offered.  This is not to say I didn’t still entertain qualms away from the dining room table—I did, and some may say that I went a bit overboard in my hand-wringing.  But if a hand-wringer can, after a little practice, down a burger with gusto, how can she judge anyone who’s never felt compelled to go vegetarian?

The epiphany that eating meat is easy may not sound like much of an epiphany at all.  And, compared to pros like Bourette, I may not be the best candidate to give advice.  But if you'll indulge me, if you'll forgive my callowness and penchant for stating the obvious, I would like to share the very small amount of wisdom I've gained as an omnivorous Tiresias of sorts:

Eating meat is so easy that I wouldn’t be surprised if people assume that it must be difficult not to eat meat.  But I've always found vegetarianism easy and enjoyable.   And if you've ever had the slightest curiosity about what it's like to go without meat, if you’ve ever felt the merest desire to go vegetarian, I urge you to give it a try.  

Maybe you're scared of taking a step out of your dietary comfort zone—I was.  Maybe you'll have to endure browbeating from people you once considered your peers—I did.  And maybe, like Bourette, you'll find that you just can't live without meat, and there’s no shame in that. 

But maybe, like me, you'll find that it's easy and rewarding and thought-provoking to eat differently from how you always have. 

On Animal Liberation

If I have been quieter than usual over the past couple of weeks, I can blame it only partially on the fact that I’ve been traveling.  The other part is that now that I have returned to vegetarianism, the issues surrounding meat seem more complicated than ever.

In my search for clarity, I have finally gotten around to reading Animal Liberation, Peter Singer’s seminal philosophical treatise on the moral indefensibility of humans’ treatment of animals.

I am hardly the first reader to peruse Singer’s arguments—the book has been reissued twice since its original publication in 1975—and many authors and thinkers have responded to the claims in Animal Liberation with more skill and insight than I can hope to achieve. 

I can do little more than echo what many have surely thought after reading Animal Liberation:  this book is moving and troubling.  Its philosophical reasoning is airtight, and its descriptions of factory farms and scientific laboratories are horrifying.  I finished the book wanting everyone I know (and everyone I don’t know) to read it—not because I want to indoctrinate them to be “vegangelists” (as some have cleverly and accurately put it), but because the book raises issues that aren’t often talked about yet that every conscientious person ought to consider.

The trouble is that Animal Liberation is not high on most people’s literary to-do list, and that, taken out of context, Singer’s claims sound laughable or offensive. People do not like to be accused of “speciesism,” to use Singer’s neologism, just as they don’t like to be accused of racism or sexism. People do not like to think of themselves as tyrannical human overlords cruelly exploiting hens for their eggs.  People particularly do not like hearing comparisons between modern-day treatment of animals and Nazi treatment of Jews and minorities during the Holocaust.

When faced with these claims and accusations out of the context of a coolly logical argument, the average omnivore understandably feels estrangement from and anger towards his or her vegetarian accuser.  (I speak from personal experience.  It’s not fun to be harangued for one’s dietary choices.)

So what can be done to bridge the gap between those Singerite vegetarians who wholeheartedly wish to reduce animal suffering and those who choose to eat meat?

Obviously, there are many potential ways to answer this question, but one important move that shouldn’t be underestimated is for animal rights activists to lay off their moral absolutism, self-righteousness and judgment of meat-eaters.  Animal Liberation is far more levelheaded and unemotional than the average anti-meat propaganda, but even Singer is prone to asking readers to

recognize the moral necessity of refusing to buy or eat the flesh or other products of animals who have been reared in modern factory farm conditions.  This is the clearest case of all, the absolute minimum that anyone with the capacity to look beyond considerations of narrow self-interest should be able to accept.

I beg to differ.  Many thoughtful and compassionate people choose to eat meat for a variety of reasons, not all of which are trivial.  I think that anyone can make small dietary changes, short of forsaking all meat—and even short of forsaking all factory farm meat—to reduce animal suffering.  The simplistic view that anyone who eats meat is necessarily selfish accomplishes nothing but division and resentment.

Utilitarianism, the philosophical school to which Singer subscribes, holds that the consequences of an action determine its moral value.  The consequences of educating people about where their food comes from and in listening compassionately and respectfully to their reasons for eating meat cannot be anything but good.

Judging, lecturing and accusing meat-eaters of selfishness, on the other hand, will lead only to more alienation and reluctance to change.  What’s utilitarian about that?

Apologia

I really appreciate the comments people have made on Bitten and other online forums about my writing and my project, and (without stooping to pettiness, I hope) I'd like to respond to some of the interesting criticisms I've seen.

Many took offense at my assertion in my Bitten post that “Taking the life of an animal for food is a morbid, ironic affirmation that we are alive.” I admit that, as Luke put it on Bitten, "that entire paragraph about meat, culture, and tempeh is a bit muddled.” This is in part because, of all the discoveries I've made about meat, this is the one that I find most difficult to articulate. It has much to do with the symbolism of meat, its sacrificial connotations. I find an emotional charge in sharing meat with others that comes from the fact that an animal had to die for our meal - the stakes are higher, as it were, when you're eating steak. Certain vegans replied that they sense a higher bond in sharing a vegetarian meal with other vegetarians, which is certainly valid, but I must admit that tapping into the tradition of eating meat has been more intense and rewarding than I expected. However, this is meant to be an experiential observation, not a moral defense of meat.

I was surprised by the outrage expressed on a forum on the vegan site Post Punk Kitchen, mostly because I think, ideologically, I have more in common with vegans than with meat-eaters. Many objected to what they see as hypocrisy; as mollyjade wrote on Post Punk Kitchen, "The blog is one post after another of 'I ate X, here are all the reasons not to eat X.'" It's a pithy summary, but, in my defense, I've been trying to look at meat from a variety of standpoints - moral, culinary, social, psychological. I prefer to think that the self-contradictions on this blog are a result of the complexity of the issue at hand rather than insincerity on my part.

Over on Bitten, Audrey commented, "Faced 'temporarily' with peer pressure, you've compromised conviction, and animals pay the price." I am sorry that some see this experiment as a compromise or a betrayal. Certain vegetarians see the "exploitation" of animals for food as an absolute wrong, which is their prerogative, even if it's not an opinion I share. I think that more good will come from trying to understand the reasons for which people eat meat than from dismissing them entirely. (And I appreciate the more nuanced view of the Erik Marcus at vegan.com, though I wouldn't call this experiment a "mistake" so much as a learning experience.)

I've been charged with other offenses, too: naïveté, narcissism, elitism, stupidity. Perhaps some of these accusations are not entirely without basis, but be kind, please: I am relatively young (though I don't think this fact automatically invalidates my opinions, as some seem to think), I am practicing my writing, and I am trying to find an appropriate balance between the personal and the political in what I write. In any case, no one is obligated to read this blog if they find it to be drivel.

There are also comments in such a low register that responding seems futile. (Although to the person on Post Punk Kitchen who called me "an arrogant bisque," I will say: I welcome your corny puns, sir, but I'm probably not the only one who wishes you would leave your casual sexism at home.)

But I'm always up for a discussion of ideas, so thank you to everyone who has responded thoughtfully and eloquently. You've given me a lot to think about, and I hope to sort my thoughts out and write more about it here in the near future. And by all means, let's continue the dialogue.

Good Fortune

Mark Bittman has been so kind as to let me write a post for his blog at nytimes.com.  If you’re not familiar with Bitten, you should change that—it’s a great source of recipes and culinary musings by Mark and other food writers who know what they’re talking about but don’t take themselves too seriously.

Tout burgers, tout le temps

Sometimes it feels as though The New York Times dining section is speaking directly to me, and it's a wonderful feeling.  Take yesterday's "In Paris, Burgers Turn Chic," which rocketed to the top of nytimes.com's "Most Emailed" list almost as quickly as last week's chocolate chip cookie recipe.  This week’s article, and its hauntingly gorgeous accompanying slideshow, left me with just one question:  Which of these haute cuisine burgers should I pursue?  The $56 bacon burger at Le Dali?  The wagyu patty with blackberry ketchup at Black Calvados?  The foie gras-topped sliders at L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon?  I do know one thing:  It will not be the shrimp and squid burger at Le Relais du Parc.  I'm obviously not a burger connoisseur, but I have enough of a sense of common decency to know that some things are just wrong.

On Diner's Journal, commenter Kevin responds, "I'd like to see the trend where the Food section stops writing about hamburgers all the time!"  Not I, Kevin.  Not I.

Pork Week's Blind Spot

This week was Pork Week at Salon.com, and it marks either one of the most brilliant editorial decisions ever made or the beginning of the end for Salon—only time will tell.

The four articles and one video in the series are a frequently self-congratulatory celebration of pork from pastured, organic, preferably acorn-fed animals.  There’s a personal essay about making bacon—as in, starting from the entire stomach of a pig—and what it’s like to “hold an animal’s insides in your hands, big and fresh and smelling of nothing but flesh and fat.”    There are Q&As with celebrity chefs who slam wan pork chops and hail bloody offal.  There’s hand-wringing about the proletarianization of bacon. 

There’s a short video profiling Veritas Farm in New York, where two former Wall Street workers now breed heritage pigs whose meat they sell for $10.50 per pound.  One of the owners, Paul Alward, describes the typical industry method of raising pigs:

Usually, commercially, the mother would be locked into a crate and the babies couldn’t have access.  And the first thing they do when a pig farrows is take the piglets and pull their teeth and dock their tails with a pair of pliers and you clip their back teeth out, cut their tails off, dock their tails, and give them an iron shot...the main reason to dock tails commercially is for cannibalism, and they start chewing each other, and becomes a problem.

Veritas pigs, by contrast, seem to be deliriously happy, if the video is to be believed.  They wander around the farm, their floppy ears falling over their eyes.   They lounge on piles of hay as their owners scratch their bellies.  They roll around in patches of mud, emitting satisfying baritone grunts.  I defy anyone to listen to those grunts without wanting to  go kidnap a Veritas pig and keep it as a companion for the rest of its days, just to be able to listen to the noises it makes (and to rub its ears).

It’s no wonder, given how appealing these creatures are, that the journalists narrating the video devote only one sentence—something about killing the pigs “as humanely as possible”—to the topic of slaughter.  And this is the irony of Pork Week, and of the movement that places such extraordinary value on the provenance of meat:  everyone talks about the welfare of pigs and the glory of getting in touch with innards, but few people talk about the killing. 

But I wonder:  Would it be so easy to laud free-range pork if more people witnessed the slaughter of pigs, “humane” as it might be?  I support the work of farmers who take great strides to ensure their animals’ well-being, and it is glaringly obvious that the pigs at Veritas are infinitely better off than the miserable pigs on factory farms.  But it seems to me that, as much interest as locavores take in the origin and quality of their meat, they are willfully ignoring one crucial part of the process.

On a side note, my favorite new piece of information gleaned from Pork Week is that notorious vegetarian-hater Anthony Bourdain (who has also called vegetarians “the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit”) has dubbed “bacon the ‘gateway protein’ for its astounding ability to lure vegetarians back into the carnivorous fold.”   That sounds like a challenge to me, so I bought a package of bacon at Monoprix last night.  I doubt that eating it will make me want to keep eating pork for the rest of my life, but, in case I falter, just show me some of the footage of Veritas pigs frolicking in the mud.  That ought to bring me back to my senses.

Image © Morozova Tatiana | Dreamstime.com

Salmon Woe

I so enjoyed my sushi on Friday that I ordered even more last night, this time from Matsuri.  The phase of squeamishness about fish had passed; qualms about eating animals didn't even enter my mind.  I just enjoyed the surprisingly tender texture and mild taste of raw salmon and the smug knowledge that it was providing me with a good deal of protein and omega-3s.  I felt great.

And then all my good energy was quashed this morning when I got to work and looked at nytimes.com:  Taras Grescoe, the author of the cheerfully titled Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood, had written an op-ed listing all the reasons for which it is evil to eat salmon.  There are a quite a few:  the approaching extinction of wild Pacific salmon after decades of overfishing; salmon's high price; overcrowding, disease, and parasites on salmon feedlots; unregulated nerve-deteriorating pesticides in supermarket fish...you know, complete and utter unsustainability.

Eating animals seems more and more to be a losing game.  Either the moral weight of killing an animal seems too heavy to justify the benefits of animal protein, or, in the cases in which it seems difficult to muster much moral concern for the welfare of an animal—the case of salmon, for instance—the environmental consequences are inexcusable.

Vegetarian food is by no means wholly without bad consequences, but it seems (except in a strictly literal sense) less thorny than meat.  Sure, there are pesticides and migrant workers and GMOs and greenhouse gas emissions to worry about when it comes to plants.  But somehow these problems seem dwarfed by the aggregate evils of eating animals, and somehow they seem more easily avoided by conscientious shopping, too.

Grescoe, perhaps to avoid being seen solely as a bearer of bad news, suggests putting slightly more sustainable sardines on one's bagels instead of salmon.  It's a kind offer, but I think the next time I'm at Absolute Bagels on Broadway, I'll stick with cream cheese.  Maybe even Tofutti.

Are Locavores Sadists?

Chicken farmer and San Francisco Bay Guardian columnist L.E. Leone has written a truly excellent piece for Slate about the reality of killing chickens titled “There Will Be Chicken Blood.”  (Why can’t I have a crew of witty copy editors writing my post titles?  I’d be much better off.  Let me know if you’re interested in the job.)

Leone examines a pseudo-trend that has tagged along with locavores’ worship of Michael Pollan:  “hip, young, smart, liberal-arts-college graduates” raising and butchering their own chickens.  She also describes, with elegance and humor, her own experience caring for and then beheading her chickens:

When I do what I do with a hatchet and a chicken, I feel like crap, and I feel like God. I feel alive and in love and closer than ever to death. So I guess that is, for me, mixed feelings, yes. And the mix itself is welcome and intensely gratifying. In fact, it's almost too much. Too swirly, too soupy. I can tell you that the part of this swirl which seems "good," as opposed to "evil," has absolutely nothing to do with foiling the chicken industry or saving the environment or taking personal responsibility for my role in the food chain. It has to do with getting a little bit bloody and gross, like the complicated, hungry animal that I am.

And this is where, despite the beautiful writing, Leone loses me.  I simply cannot imagine feeling gratification from killing an animal.

After I wrote about foie gras, I emailed back and forth a bit with a journalist I know who’d spent time on a foie gras farm in the south of France.  He told me that the farmers there treated their geese with great care and almost loved them—but that they force-fed, slaughtered and ate the birds without reservations.  I had the same reaction then as I do now to Leone:  Isn’t that just a little sadistic?

Hypothetically, I have great admiration for farmers who kill their own animals for meat.  It goes without saying that chickens like Leone’s, who are serenaded by their owner every evening, are far better off than the birds in battery cages from which Americans obtain most of our chicken meat and eggs.   And it goes without saying that it takes great fortitude to face the unpleasant underbelly of meat—the fact that it necessitates the death of an animal—in a day and age when a person can eat hundreds of hamburgers without ever having seen a cow in real life.   In theory, I think more omnivores should be killing chickens and cows and pigs.

But feeling pleasure, power, from slaughtering an animal?  I imagine that the feeling that Leone describes so deftly, which seems to be on a par with Pollan’s feelings after killing a boar in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, is a psychological necessity:  the ego’s way of processing the magnitude of causing the death of another being. 

But it’s not a feeling I want to feel, which is why I think I’ll be perfectly happy returning to vegetarianism once this trial period of omnivorousness is over. If I have an inner sadist, I’d rather not know about her. 

"She was, like, 'What did you do to my mouth?'"

Today the Times dining section chronicles the cult phenomenon of “flavor tripping parties” at which certain yuppies, jaded from having taken too many real drugs (or maybe just too uptight to try real drugs), consume miracle fruit, which “rewires the way the palate perceives sour flavors for an hour or so.”  Give $15 to a lawyer-cum-dealer who calls himself the Supreme Commander, swish a small West African berry around your mouth for a minute, and virtually every food will taste sweet, from Brussels sprouts to oysters to goat cheese to Guinness mixed with lemon sorbet.  The lawyer/dealer, who’s seriously rocking a blue track suit in the video accompanying the article, claims that people under the influence become “literally like wild animals” around food. This might be a bit of an overstatement. As far as I can tell, all the guests in the video look uncomfortable to be surrounded by forty strangers who are swigging Tabasco and vinegar.

All right, clearly I’m incredibly jealous.  Eating under the influence miracle fruit has officially replaced dining in total darkness as my number one trippy food fantasy.  Who wouldn't want to bite into a Brussels sprout to find that it tastes like fruit?  Seriously.  Even though I think it might be a bit of a buzz kill to have to consume the berry with someone who insists on being called the Supreme Commander, I would go to a flavor tripping party in a heartbeat.  

Also:  Is it just me, or does a Guinness and lemon sorbet float sound like it would taste great no matter what?

A Temporary Herbivore in Chicago

Jezebel.com reports that Oprah Winfrey is planning to spend the next three weeks as a vegan. The Queen of America, who’s referring to the diet change as a “cleanse” and an “inner makeover,” is blogging about her newest weight-watching scheme.  Here’s what Winfrey wrote on Sunday:

[T]his first day wasn't hard at all. For breakfast, I had steel-cut oatmeal with fresh blueberries, strawberries, chopped walnuts and a splash of soy milk and some agave nectar. For lunch, chunky mushroom soup with wild rice and pecans. As a snack, a handful of roasted almonds. And for dinner, a baked potato drizzled with olive oil, salt and pepper with a salad of shredded lettuce, cranberries, pine nuts and tiny orange slices with a vinegar and oil dressing.

Yes, well, I might have found it easier to stay vegan, too, if I had had a personal chef and an infinite staff of attendants.  My vegan days were a little different. I recall eating a lot of cold cereal with soymilk and spending all of my free time experimenting madly in the kitchen with margarine and egg replacer, trying to create palatable cookies and cakes. 

Even though I’m well aware that this three-week cleanse will soon be tucked away in the back pages of The Many Diets of Oprah Winfrey, I applaud Winfrey’s efforts to raise awareness for what she refers to as “the animals whose lives are sacrificed in the name of gluttony”.  Perhaps she’ll inspire a few millions to try giving up animal products.  For them, and for any vegans out there without personal chefs to present them with a dazzling array of healthy dishes, I’m posting the pièce de résistance from my vegan days (with American measurements).

Vegan Cinnamon Rolls

-1 package active dry yeast

-1/4 cup warm water

-1 cup potato-cooking water

-½ cup mashed potato

-½ cup plus 2/3 cup organic sugar

-½ tablespoon salt

-¾ stick (6 tablespoons) vegan margarine, plus one stick (½ cup) margarine, softened

-1 ½ teaspoons Ener-G egg replacer mixed with 2 tablespoons warm water

-4 to 4 ½ cups all-purpose flour

-1 tablespoon cinnamon

-2 cups organic powdered sugar

-one to two tablespoons soymilk

-1 teaspoon vanilla extract (or almond extract, if you so desire)

Combine yeast and warm water; let stand for a few minutes.  Add potato-cooking water, mashed potato, ½ cup sugar, salt, ¾ stick margarine, and egg replacer; combine well.  Add flour, a little at a time, until dough forms; knead dough until elastic, then let rise for an hour or until doubled.

Punch down dough and roll into 14x8-inch rectangle; spread remaining margarine (1 stick) onto the dough.  Combine 2/3 cups sugar with cinnamon; sprinkle over the buttered rectangle.  Roll up dough lengthwise, and cut into twelve rolls; place rolls in a greased 9x13-inch pans and let rise until doubled.  Refrigerate overnight.  In the morning, remove rolls from refrigerator, preheat oven to 350° F, and bake rolls for 30 to 40 minutes.  Combine powdered sugar and soymilk until smooth, and stir in the vanilla or almond extract.  Drizzle slightly cooled rolls with icing. 

Makes 12 rolls.

Not Everyone Is "Meatless Like Me"

When I first read Taylor Clark’s explanation of vegetarianism on Slate.com’s infrequently updated “Travel and Food” section, my reaction was:  Is this necessary?  Do Americans really still need someone to tell them that vegetarians are people that don’t eat anything that once had eyes?

Clark apparently thinks so:

Those of us who want to avoid the social nightmare have to hide our vegetarianism like an Oxycontin addiction, because admit it, omnivores:  You know nothing about us.  Do we eat fish?  Will we panic if confronted with a hamburger?  Are we dying of malnutrition?  You have no clue.

I like to give omnivores a little more credit, and not just because I’m temping as one.  I can’t remember the last time an American mocked, harassed, or looked askance at me for being a vegetarian.  Maybe I’m detached from the reality of Middle America—New York, where I lived before I came to Paris, boasts 85 vegetarian restaurants—but vegetarianism isn’t exactly a new trend anywhere in the country. 

Yes, I recognize that Clark is trying to be funny (though forgive me if I don’t think “And hot dogs … I mean, hot dogs?  You do know what that is, right?” is much of a punch line).  And yes, I happen to agree personally with much of what he says:  PETA is obnoxious, bacon smells delicious, tofu and Gardenburgers can be kind of unappetizing.

But I take issue with the first-person plural, us-versus-them, “Let me tell you what we’re really like” shtick.  Vegetarians aren’t really like anything -  they're a diverse group.  Some of them regularly liberate lab animals, are disgusted by the scent of meat, and keep their freezers stocked with Gardenburgers.  And some of them don’t think that authors who make sweeping generalizations based on their own experiences are all that relevant.

Foie Gah!

The Chicago City Council has decided to repeal its municipal ban on foie gras, the French delicacy of fattened duck or goose liver, nytimes.com’s Diner’s Journal reported last week. The ban had originally been instated in 2006 in response to animal rights groups who claimed that the treatment of poultry raised for foie gras—which includes force-feeding the birds fats and starches to make their livers swell—was excessively cruel. 

I wrote an article about the foie gras controversy last year and found the topic to be slightly more nuanced than I had expected.  Sticking pieces of metal down animals’ throats is undeniably appalling, but the abuse that goes down on chicken farms is both more inhumane and more widespread.  Foie gras producers have claimed—perhaps not entirely unfairly—that they have been made scapegoats in a system that favors agribusiness over small-scale farmers.

As soon the ban’s reversal was announced, Diner’s Journal readers made their voices heard in the comments section as pompously, caustically, and redundantly as can be expected from Times-reading food snobs and activists with too much time on their hands.  The PETA crowd piped up with heartfelt defenses of “innocent animals.”  (I suppose ducks with a criminal record are fair game.)  In response, one Robert Rothman wrote:

Come to think of it, [force feeding] sounds like a wonderful thing to do with those who insist on dictating what other people can and cannot eat. The liver would undoubtedly be inedible — prohibitionists are full of bile — but at least it would get them to mind their own business and stay out of other people’s kitchens … Then again, if we allow people freedom to eat what they want, next they might demand freedom to think what they want, and then where would we be?

I don’t quite follow how Rothman can be both in favor of cannibalizing people who disagree with him and in favor of the freedom of thought, but I’ll try to let it go.  In any case, he misses the point entirely.  A foie gras ban is not a paternalistic policy presupposing that citizens need assistance to do what’s best for themselves.  No one has credibly suggested that we should ban foie gras because it is in the citizens’ self-interest not to be able to consume the delicacy.  I can’t speak from first-hand experience, but I’ll take others’ word for it that foie gras is delicious, and that consuming it increases one’s happiness. 

The trouble is, the suffering that goes into making foie gras seems to outweigh whatever joy it may bring to the eater.  It may be a mostly symbolic gesture to prohibit a product that most consumers never taste.  Still, I’d be prouder of a government that takes small steps to minimize agony than one that panders to whiny self-styled gourmands who naïvely think of eating as a form of free speech affecting no one but themselves.

It’s a tough call, but I think my favorite Diner’s Journal comment comes from Jon, who defends foie gras by asking, with singular rhetorical brilliance:

Have you ever seen a duck write beautiful music or build a space shuttle?

Take note:  If you’re not a composer or an engineer, you, too, deserve to be force-fed with a with a metal tube.  Then, finally, we musical prodigy NASA technicians can feast on your fattened livers in peace.