"There may be some foundation to Indians' accusations of hypocrisy by the West. The United States uses -- or throws away -- 3,770 calories a person each day, according to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization collected in 2001-3, compared with 2,440 calories per person in India. Americans are also the largest per capita consumers in any major economy of the most energy-intensive common food source, beef, the Agriculture Department says."
--"Indians Find U.S. at Fault in Food Cost", New York Times, May 14, 2008*
(image: Pradeep S. Mehta, whom the article refers to as having said, "archly, that the money spent in the United States on liposuction to get rid of fat from excess consumption could be funneled to feed famine victims.")
Over a heavenly brunch of fried eggs, Tamarack Hollow bacon, biscuits, roasted asparagus, butter-sauteed fiddlehead ferns and red-eye gravy (fck yeah!) chez Winnie, the subject of the Abstain Project came up. Winnie figured (rightly) that pork is going to be the next to get the axe in my diet, and was encouraging me to get my bacon on while I can. A few of the brunch attendees asked why I was cutting certain foods out completely, why it wasn't enough to just buy from suppliers like Tamarack Hollow who farm sustainably -- eat it to save it and all that.
I have to admit that I felt a little uncomfortable discussing the project among acquaintances. I realize it sounds self-righteous asshole-y, and I hope that's not what I've become. At the time, I gave a half-assed answer that I was more interested in the push and pull of desire and denial, the co-existence of hedonism and conscience -- and that if I just ate good meat from good producers, I wouldn't have anything to write about.
But there's more to it than that. I feel myself pulling away from, not just the culture of excess, but also of access. It's so easy to buy food, to eat too much food, to waste food, to obsess over food. Here in New York, you can get anything you want at almost any time of day, from barely legal mangosteen to runny reblochon to guarana soda to dorowat over injera to Barossa Valley shiraz. Everything's special; nothing's special.
And I think my appetite and curiosity for food has disappeared because food was becoming straight consumption, detached from its communal, human, personal aspects. Venturing to some Queens outpost to judge a meal by taste alone, eating a cheese with a fancy name but no back story, choosing a new honey vendor over my standard, known, beloved honey purveyor for the sake of reporting -- yawn.
What I do treasure now are meals at home with friends or family, like that brunch at Winnie's, less for the content of the plate than for the company and the kind of chatter you make when you break bread. Meals in are so rare for me these days. I'll take relaxed company over a quesadilla with canned black beans and pre-shredded cheese mix over a loud night at the -estest (latest! greatest! best!) spot in town.
Ceci n'est pas un statement.
Still, I keep putting off the pork ban. I keep telling myself that once I finish that fennel pollen sausage in the freezer, and that kale soup with merguez**, and the jamon iberico de bellota I've been saving, I'll give up the pig. And, really, bacon I could live without. But there are so many porcine products I'd keep ahead of bacon -- Thai-style fried pork jerky, pork gyoza or mandoo, Italian sausage...
*Also, check out the comparison consuming chart. 1,674 pounds of corn per person in 2006!! Children of the corn indeed!
**Remembered while heating up my soup that merguez is lamb. Which is sort of out by default, and I figure should go out with the other mammalian meat.
