Go fill my belly: A t-bone steak, cheese eggs and Welch’s grape
I lack even the most remote and abstract empathy for animals. I think lambs, ducklings, chicks, piglets, and calves are cute but I feel no remorse about eating them. I hate anthropomorphism in literature. Never once have I had the Jainish impulse to throw a spider out the window rather than smashing it. There, done.
That said, it’s weird that I have such interest in raw food. It’s certainly not a moral affinity, but rather an interest rooted in alternate energy sources, exotic ingredients, and the saturated flavor needed to doctor raw broccoli.
For the purpose of the following argument, I understand that I must make some dangerous rhetorical caveats. So for the record, I am not considering the people who “feel sorry for the animals.”*
No, I “find problematic”/”take issue with” those who cart around their voluntary dietary restrictions (not talking about legitimate allergies obviously) and make the (literal) gift of food a sheer impossibility.
Food has always been central to cultural practice and ritualized celebration, and elaborately prepared meals are really one of the only affordable ways (particularly at my age) to show love and appreciation. To remove oneself from this “gift economy” seems to be a refusal both sadistic and masochistic, not to mention totally obnoxious.
The irony is that those who interrupt the flow of wine and breaking of bread at dinner parties, who weasel their way into the kitchen and prevent the cook’s intuitive method of preparation, who theatrically pick out certain ingredients, those are often the very people consider themselves “foodies,” “gourmets,” and “aesthetes.” But they have all really missed the entire point of a group meal entirely: to serve as a mere conceit to, as Biggie says, conversate.
Eat however you want when alone, but don’t bring the baggage to the party.
*But really, what are you, six?
—Alice
