In Douglas Adams’ The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Chapter 17, the characters meet “a large dairy animal… a large fat meaty quadruped of the bovine type with large watery eyes, small horns and what might almost have been an ingratiating smile on its lips.”
The animal tells them that, “it was decided to… breed an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am.”
Having become a vegetarian almost by default, in that I cut meat from my diet in order to lose a bit of weight as opposed to cutting it from an animal that didn’t really want to be eaten, I was struck by the fact that we do have things on this planet that actually want to be eaten.
If you think about it, the whole point of fruit and vegetables is to be eaten. The plants offer us this bounty as a means of using us, the animals, to help them spread and multiply.
That juicy apple you are eating was created to appeal to your tastes so that you would carry the seeds off to another location where they could, perhaps, grow into another apple tree. The juicy steak was as much part of an animal as your own backside, and no more likely to be voluntarily parted with.
Like Arthur Dent, the main character in The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series of books, when he saw the steaks that had been cut from the animal that wanted to be eaten, I feel “slightly ill” when I contemplate eating meat. Especially so when I consider that the cows, pigs, sheep or chickens that formerly made up part of my diet had no more desire to die than I have.
That’s why my vegetarian diet is going to stay – plus the fact that I feel much healthier and have become considerably leaner by not eating meat.
Yesterday, one of my students, a 14 year old, argued that only from animals could we obtain certain essential proteins and other necessaries of life. I pointed out that I used to share her opinion, but that I had modified my opinion in the light of the fact that I had not died by not eating meat and that my health had actually improved.
Here is the scene from the BBC television series:
And if the bell was around the other neck:
Posted under Health
Author: Richard : August 28, 2008
This is really nice, RIchard. I have been a vegetarian for eleven years and vegan for five. I have regular blood tests done and there has not been any indication of any nutritional deficiency
I think what we think about our food is more important than what we actually eat. For example, if I believe a vegan diet would give me iron deficiency anaemia, this would indeed be the case.