Man suffers heart attack while eating at Heart Attack Grill

[jsmirman]

36. Gluttony

I'd like to at a minimum speak against. And I say that as one who was a glutton.

But back to that in a second.

I have, indeed, heard about this cultured meat stuff, as animal advocacy issues occupy a very large part of my days/consciousness. I still care about other important stuff like, you know, people, but this is a fight I intend to be a soldier in one way or another. There will be arguments back and forth about cultured meat, and people are certainly going to see this all going down the path that takes us to Firefly (the show) where "real food" doesn't exist any longer. For me, I think, sure, it's worth exploring. Removing the damage to our environment is very important to me. There's some places out west, I think, as well, that are experimenting with shrimp farms that are not ecologically harmful. Many animal advocates would disagree with me on this - and I may very well come to think I'm wrong, but honestly, so long as there's no prolonging of the moment of death or the like, I could handle regularly eating shrimp raised in this fashion. I may not have thought that position out well enough, but that's my gut reaction to ecologically-sound shrimp farming. The current shrimp industry, though, from what I understand, is an ecological menace...

I know that personally, I just reached a point where I could no longer participate in a food economy where torture of the animals was the norm and where unsafe conditions and environmental roulette were part of the industry doing business. It's been more than three years now since I stopped.

Back to gluttony, I know people "enjoy" eating meat, and you and I both have our thoughts on that, and I think people should only eat meat if they go to the actual farm where it is being raised and decide that they are comfortable with what is happening (and I'm not suggesting that this is in any way impossible, particularly with *real* local farms - but I think most meat eaters couldn't spend a day inside a factory farm and continue as they were). I'm obviously not in charge, so that's just my opinion, but it doesn't seem that unreasonable (to me).

But gluttony is wrong. In my meat-eating days I used to think it was some kind of feat to eat football player-sized men under the table - I could similarly drink beer prodigiously way back when. That's a hard memory to deal with. It wasn't funny. It was wrong. Unless people move over to veganism, it's obviously about where you draw the line. Is it at baby calves separated from their mothers and jammed into veal crates for some number of months before slaughter? Is it a chicken living in a space smaller than half of an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper for all of its life, or is it horrifying mechanical beak removal? I know no one is going to be berated into going vegan, but I damn sure will raise a ruckus about the evil ag giants industrializing suffering and perverting the word "farm." That's hardcore corporate fuckery, and when you add in the games they play with their consumers' health, and their shitty labor practices, it should be a pretty DU-friendly topic, imo.

But gluttony? Gluttony, no. If you spend even a moment thinking about what your food was, where it came from, what that bite at the end of your fork not only represents, but what it is, I just don't see how you could continue to give gluttony a pass. I'm definitely among those who see eating less meat as healthy and a step toward being more humane; I'm pretty certain that gorging one's self indiscriminately on chickens, pigs, cows, etc. is a step in the wrong direction.

Oh, and thanks for the links - the second one is directly relevant to a conversation I had with a friend the other night, and I'm going to forward him your link.