Conscious Choice: Pride Goeth Before a Turkey Sandwich

March 1996

Pride Goeth Before a Turkey Sandwich

by Sheri Reda

If it weren’t for meat-eaters, chickens would be extinct. — Mike Spera

I remember learning definitively, at the age of nine, that beef was dead cow, pork was dead pig, chicken and lamb really were dead chickens and lambs, and hot dogs were...well, nobody really knew what hot dogs were. I decided then and there to become a vegetarian.

My mother said she didn’t care what I ate — as soon as I was old enough to cook my own meals. Until then, I would have to eat what the family ate, including Italian sausage (okay, just a small one). I spent the rest of my childhood trading steak for my brother’s potatoes, pork chops for my sister’s peas, and ham for anyone’s asparagus. I still could manage to eat almost anything that didn’t look like meat, so I ate a healthy (?) dose of bologna, beef dip, stroganoff, and bacon.

In my childhood cosmology of food, meatballs and homemade sloppy joes were okay because I could watch my mother make them and they tasted like sauce alone. Burgers from McDonald’s and Burger King were not okay, mostly because of their ubiquitous gristle. The white meat of a turkey was fine, but the family delicacy known as turkey neck was out of the question. I couldn’t even look at chicken cacciatore. And I stayed out of the kitchen when Grandma Connie made sausage.

Of course, my grandma called me to task for my attitude: she wanted to know what my problem was. I tried to explain that it seemed barbaric to stuff an animal into its own intestine; that the sausage machine pooped the meat out into the casing, and that I was going to be a vegetarian when I grew up.

She scrunched up her eyes and threw up her hands, and exclaimed, "You gotta eat!" then she shook her head and repeated, "You gotta eat somethin’."

After a moment of silence, observed while she reloaded the sausage grinder, Grandma Connie leaned over and said with the utmost emphasis, "When you gotta do what you gotta do, whattaya gonna do? You gonna do what you gotta do."

Then, after noting with satisfaction that I was duly stunned, she resumed her grinding. For my part, I picked at the sausage, ate the kohlrabi, and asked her to teach me how to make her fabulous honey cookies.

As high school approached, the issue of meat eating took a back seat in my life to the issue of calorie counting and unique dieting methods. I finally settled, for about a school year, on "the lunch diet," which I had designed myself. It consisted of one meal — lunch — spread out over the course of the day. That meant I could eat a sandwich (usually peanut butter and jelly on white bread), a carbo (usually potato chips), a sweet (sometimes an apple or orange but usually a Twinkie or Ho-Ho), and a glass of milk each day. Nothing more, nothing less.

It was an excellent diet, I thought at the time. It was measurable, easy to prepare and serve, a good fit with the family culture, and it gave me plenty to look forward to each day. It gave way only after I met Steve — record store manager, boss, idol, and all-around vegetarian hunk. If vegetarians look like their veggies, Steve ate a lot of carrots; he had a long, trim, inverted-triangle trunk, with a full head of long, vibrant hair on top (not green, of course: this was the seventies.)

In short, Steve was no health food wimp. He was a hearty, sturdy, pseudo-hippie, who played drums, knew music, got high, and ate pistachios and orange juice for snacks. He was clear, tangible proof that it was not only possible but potentially cool for me to become a vegetarian.

Dear reader, I followed his lead. In no time at all, I was walking over to Goldblatt’s and buying pistachios for lunch. And then I began retreating from meat. True to my long-standing predilections, I began by giving up those foods that looked most like dead animals. I refused to eat chicken, ground beef, or anything with a bone in it — though I’d still go for beef stroganoff whenever my mom made it. I began asking Portillo’s to "give me a beef dip, hold the beef." (I still liked the juice.) And I became a fan of Taco Bell: Addison’s best bet for vegetarian choices.

All in all, it was an easy transition. Steve encouraged me because he liked being a mentor. My friends encouraged me because they liked anything new and weird. My parents ignored me because they thought it was the best way to minimize my rebellion. And I’d kind of hated most meat anyway, for a very long time. So when I tired of "the lunch diet," I cozied into the vegetarian plan. Like a reasonably insane teenager, I lived on pintos n’ cheese, Campbell’s tomato soup, and lettuce with thousand island dressing. I was thin, happy, and very pleased with myself.

Then some time in 1974, I saw on Phil Donahue or some other talk show an interview with the ever-fasting Dick Gregory. Gregory was talking about peace, which was mildly popular in 1974. He was advocating not only a vegetarian, but fruitarian, diet — one in which people would eat only those foods that fall to the ground as gifts of God. (He didn’t say whether it would be O.K. to eat an animal that dropped dead of natural causes. But then, no one asked.)

I was thrilled; moved; inspired. This would be my goal. I resolved, during that show, that someday I would live a life of complete nonviolence. I would continue to eschew meat. I would give up fish. And some day, I would eat nothing but the fruits of existence. Strangely enough, I didn’t consider giving up milk or cheese — except in the far-distant fruitarian future. In my suburban naïvete, I considered those foods to be part of our compact with the animal world. I was less than fond of eggs, though — ever since a neighbor and sometime prom date had called them the menstrual fluid of hens.

In college, my compact with myself got even easier. At the cafeteria, everything but peanut butter tasted — there was no word to describe it. I ate the peanut butter. And pancakes, and the odd grilled cheese. I still made Campbell’s tomato soup in the dorm. And Normal, Illinois, had a Taco John’s. I gave up fish, and stroganoff, and beef dip juice; those cosmopolitan suburban dishes were nowhere to be found in Normal. And I met some people who were very impressed that I never ate meat.

I began to call myself a vegetarian. I began to advocate a vegetarian diet. I went on cleansing fruit-juice fasts. And I publicized my (adopted) dream of living a non-violent life. During the first semester of my sophomore year, I even gave up walking on the grass. There were little worms and bugs under there, getting crushed, I was sure, by my trampling feet. I didn’t want to do them harm, so I got out of the way. This policy meant that Dr. Burda wouldn’t call me a "true romantic" anymore, but every good deed meant sacrifice; Catholicism had taught me that.

Then one lovely, warm fall day, a Thought (with a capital T) occurred to me. What about all those tiny, invisible microbes and bugs that live on the surface of the sidewalk? Wasn’t I killing thousands — maybe millions — of them as I trod back and forth on the sidewalk? And what about the bugs that lived in the air? Were they not smashed by my air pipes, crushed between my teeth, murdered by my own white blood cells? Like another kind of Steve, I’d had an epiphany: there was no escaping it, I was a killer.

I stood still in horror. Classmates rushed by on their way to class, but I was unable to move or blink or breathe. Then my autonomic nervous system took over, thank God. I let out a breath, and took another, and let it out. It was murderous, I knew, but breathing felt good. I’d learned that for me, at least, non-violence was an impossible, if endearing, dream.

Still, I resolved to do no more violence in my life than necessary. That in itself, I decided, was a laudable goal. For a strong-willed woman of Italian temper, it is also a significant challenge. Thus, my life and my path remained unchanged. I separated myself from the epiphany but remembered it fondly, as proof of my sensitivity, insight, and extremely high intentions.

When I got back to Chicago after graduation, I embraced ethnic food and learned to eat well. During grad school in Oklahoma, heart of cattle country, I managed to live on Bama pies and white bread. I returned gratefully to Chicago afterward, and when I got pregnant years later, I refused to set foot inside a place that cooked meat. The idea made me ill, and I couldn’t bear the smell. I began to toy with adopting a vegan diet — or even a macrobiotic diet, in touch with the seasons and the land. I put it off, of course, until after the baby was born.

True to my meat-eating American roots, I was concerned at the time with getting enough protein as I "ate for two." And indeed, I was constantly hungry. I counted grams assiduously each day; I made protein powder; I drank a quart of milk a day, and I gorged myself on peanut butter and frozen yogurt — not to mention all the other foods I inhaled. Still, I was famished. I remember making a snack to eat on the way to Chicago Diner, sitting down to order, sending my husband, Rob, across the street to the Bread shop for a snack to eat while I waited for my entree, and then eating until my jaws hurt — crying because my jaws hurt, and chewing anyway, because I still wasn’t full.

Despite myself, I remembered regretfully that meat had been filling in a way that vegetables and grains were not. Yet I knew that life is full of trade-offs. I didn’t really think of meat as something edible, anymore. I still admired vegans for their superior habits, purity of body, and indubitable health. I yearned for a diet free of animal entanglements. I began to research the macrobiotic philosophy of harmony in eating and preparing foods so that I would be ready "when the time came." Even as my Rob pointed with pride to my vegetarian "lifestyle," I was planning, dreaming, expecting bigger things.

Eventually — and I do mean eventually — the baby was born. I kept up my prenatal diet while I nursed her and mulled over whether I’d "make" her a vegetarian. What choices should be free choices, I wondered? What values are parents responsible for instilling? Would I kill my baby by making her a vegetarian? Or by putting her in a draft? Or by exposing her to those monstrously large two-year-olds down the street? Or by taking her out for a walk during the polluted rush hour? The question of diet sank in a pool of worries. I would make that decision when it was time.

I never did buy jars of desiccated chicken or mashed beef or miniature of pork‘n’ beans. They were too gross, and my baby was too pure. But as time went by, I let her taste some free-range chicken. My husband discovered she loved diner ham. My grandma fed her meatballs. And I could find no right in restricting her freedom as my parents had done mine. A little meat, I decided, was her right, if she craved it. Yet I couldn’t prepare the stuff; I could only stare.

And standing there in my grandma’s kitchen, paralyzed like the college girl on the sidewalk, I came face to face with a larger truth: that I didn’t know animals well enough to love them, but I "knew" their flesh was gross. This was a nasty little insight, this new way of feeling my revulsion toward meat. Suddenly, I saw that I was not a vegetarian because I pitied animals; I was a vegetarian because I despised them. I could pretend that my diet was part of a code of non-violence, but it really wasn’t anything of the sort. Instead, it was part of a hatred of blood and sinew, tissue and bone, flesh and life, and death and...nature.

The revelation continued to unfold. So that was why I never gave up junk food! That was why the thought of fruit, which never touches soil, was always so attractive. That’s why, in Tulsa, after a month of destitution and Bama pies, I couldn’t even make myself eat a salad: it seemed at the time so improperly — alive! I forced my attention back to the table and stared at the flesh on my daughter’s plate. It was innocent stuff — the stuff of somebody’s life. It deserved to have a purpose, to continue in life: to be eaten.

At that moment, I decided in all seriousness that I would rather be eaten than left to rot. I would rather be devoured by a tiger than knifed by a mugger and left to bleed. If I were on an Andean mountaintop with six or eight or ten others, I would hope they’d eat me if I died first. And I’d be willing, if not exactly glad, to eat them, if they died first. I’d eat them with lots of gratitude (and whatever condiments I could find), but with little or no guilt on the side. I thought: in every case, even in death, it’s better to serve than not. Isn’t that the reasoning behind organ donor drives? Why isn’t the same with flesh?

So this revelation took me farther than the first one I had, back in college. Probably, I’ll admit, it took me a bit too far. Certainly, there are important health, environmental, and spiritual reasons to avoid eating lots of meat. Too much meat clogs arteries, despoils arable land, and hogs food (pardon the pun) for the few while many starve. The conditions under which commercial food animals "live" are stress-provoking, filthy, unhealthy, and cruel. The vicious impersonality with which they are killed is inexcusable.

Yet it doesn’t have to be this way. Many country people regularly give names to the animals they raise to eat. They pet them, feed them, give them treats. They play with their animals on occasion and worry over their health. When the time comes, they slit a throat, or wring a neck, or maybe pull out a gun. They love their animals, then eat them (then love them again, in a way). There’s irony and paradox in the relationship, but there’s no real contradiction of terms, and the gratitude they express at grace is not a posture. It’s real.

In the same vein (the unintentional puns abound) Catholics are taught from an early age that the communion "meal" is the body of Christ, and a piece of wheat, and the blood of Christ, and some wine. It’s no symbol; it is the thing — just as an animal is a manifestation of consciousness and a steak. One and the same. Both things. Catholics eat Christ and hope to become more like him. Carnivores eat their neighbors and bow to their inextricable part in nature. Our estrangement from nature could be linked, I think, to our increased dependence on factory farms, processed food, and — maybe — our vegetarian choices.

Shortly after I stopped nursing, I found that my "hormonal" aches and pains — discomforts that began with pregnancy and childbirth — were not, in fact, going away. I began searching for solutions, beginning with the conventional medical treadmill, and winding up on the fold-out table of a traditional Chinese doctor. This doctor listened as many do not, and he nodded and hmmed and felt my pulse and studied my tongue. Then he told me I had way too much yin (energy that is cold, weak, yielding, listless, dark.) It seemed plausible. What I needed, he said, was to increase yang energy in my life. I needed energy, warmth, light. I needed a certain meditation, specific herbs, acupuncture, and a yang diet. He recommended ginger, cinnamon — and meat. I balked; he countered: "It’s not in the Tao to force yourself. But plants are alive, too, like animals. And meat is the best way to get yang energy in to your diet.

"See what you can do," he advised. I promised I would. And I followed through.

Today, I work with a health-conscious, environmentally aware urban crowd. Most everyone I work with eschews all meat. At least one is a vegan. When someone asks whether I’m a vegetarian, I pause for a moment, gather my courage, and spring with the truth. I was a vegetarian for twenty-two years, but I’m "trying" to start eating some meat. Over all, I think it’s best if I do. Not only because I need an infusion of yang energy, but also for other reasons — reasons that have to do with the health of my soul. I still eat mostly vegetarian fare, and my pride won’t allow me to eat meat in front of my grandma, but I don’t — I can’t — identify myself as a vegetarian anymore. I still eat only those foods that don’t look like animals, but I can taste their animal nature, and that’s a big change. I eat free-range foods, in order to inflict as little violence as possible on the animals I eat (though at Christmas I snarfed a couple of pepperoni when my relatives weren’t looking). Yet I keep in mind that the animals I eat died so that I could live.

Over all, I try to remain aware of what I put inside myself. The other day, for example, I ate a tuna salad sandwich. To my amazement, I got absolutely high with vigor. So a few days later, I tried a Monterey Ranch Chicken sandwich from Wendy’s. I got a headache, then a stomach ache, and then felt crabby and aggressive all day. In both cases, I noticed what I ate. I also thanked what I ate, and learned from what I did. That’s more than I can say about many of my meatless pig-out feasts. It’s more than I can say for all those years of vegetarian pride.

I guess I need to eat meat these days, not only for its nutritional value, but also because it pushes gratitude on me in a way that eating veggies never does. It forces me into awed awareness of life and death and our common bond with the other animals on the planet. It denudes me of that hubris that says you are what you eat, and you’re too good to be an animal. Stripped clean of those pretensions, I am forced to be a more authentic human being — a being whose compassion is expressed by accepting all kinds of ways to eat — and live.

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