I’ve only been not eating meat for about a year, so there are things about the experience that still surprise me. After all, it’s a voluntary cultural shift away from a majority to a minority subculture. I’ve deliberately placed myself into an outsider group, and of course when you do something like that you end up seeing things in ways that can surprise even yourself.
I had this experience of surprise upon reading a recent article by Virginia Heffernan about YouTube in the New York Times Magazine. The article started from the observation that YouTube has distinguished itself from other video aggregation sites by banning pornography. This was a daring move because porn is traditionally a huge money maker in all media – from books to films to video tapes to the internet, porn has always made money.
Porn tends to crowd other topics out, but that doesn’t happen on YouTube. Heffernan points out that the absence of a focus on flesh allows YouTube to be much more interesting than other sites, since different topics can rise to the top, like the recent hugely popular video featuring a little kid excited about getting a new toy, or a series of possibly fake videos showing how to use cellphones to pop popcorn. Or whatever other topic the user community decides to rally around and contribute videos to on any given day.
While I was reading this, I had the nagging feeling that there was something familiar about it. And then it hit me: I’d had quite a similar experience when I started to eat vegan. Before, although meals had various ingredients, they were primarily about the meat: the steak or burger, the fish or the chicken. Everything else was built around that one thing. Sure, there was often a vegetable, maybe a potato, but this was really a side issue. Other ingredients were even called “sides”.
Now it doesn’t work like that for me. A meal tends to have all kinds of different ingredients, and each one can take a turn as the star of the show: fruits, soybeans, avocados, nuts, potatoes, salads, chickpeas, rice, barley and other grains, and so forth, as well as all of the many things that can be baked, steamed, chopped, mixed and otherwise devised from such ingredients.
Now the mix of ingredients and flavors in my meals has become more of a conversation among equals. With one category of things off my plate, I find my experience of food to be much richer and more interesting – I am generally noticing and discovering a greater variety of flavors and textures at mealtime than I ever have before.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not talking here about politics, or religion, or ethics/morality, or any of those things, just as I’m not saying there is anything wrong with people watching porn if they want to. I’m just looking at this from the aesthetic angle.
There are a lot of people who, when surfing the Web, cheerfully embrace that song from Avenue Q: “The Internet is for Porn”. And there are a lot of people for whom a meal is mainly about the consumption of flesh. I realize that at least when it comes to meals, I am in the distinct minority here.
But I’ve looked at food from both sides now, and I can report that once flesh is on your table, it tends to crowd out everything else; when you take that one thing off your table, a meal can become about many more things. Eating vegan is the YouTube of diets.
“I’ve looked at food from both sides now” – reminds me of a song…
Actually, though, one thing I’ve noticed when going back to the states from the UK is how marginalised vegetables actually are. It’s rare to have a meal – you know, a meat-centred one – that even includes a vegetable at all. It’s meat and potatoes or nothing. I seem to remember salads being big in California once upon a time, but I don’t even see them much in restaurant meals when I go back. The classic English Sunday dinner, on the other hand, typically includes at least 2 vegetables and often two different potato dishes along with the meat. And a Yorkshire pudding, of course. Even fish and chips wouldn’t be complete without the mushy peas.
Yes, good point! There is a lot of variation in how different cultures approach ingredients. I suspect that the American focus on meat in particular might be an outgrowth of our nation’s frontier history.
By the way, the reference to Joni Mitchell’s Clouds was deliberate, a shout-out to a vegan friend to whom I once recited those lyrics at the Werfen ice caves near the old Hohensalzburg fortress.
go boy. No one should take offense from the truth.
though you’ve left out the line about “I used to go right for the meat, and now I don’t think about it.” or something like that.
“But I’ve looked at food from both sides now, and I can report that once flesh is on your table, it tends to crowd out everything else; when you take that one thing off your table, a meal can become about many more things.”
For me anyway, flesh is the “side” but not the focus. I eat chicken or fish every few days–but not in a great quantity….It is the “side” to a large multi vegetable/legume/nut salad or dish.
Well that makes sense Sally. You’ve always had a broad minded kind of YouTube eclecticism, long long before there ever was a YouTube. 🙂
thanks admin–maybe its growing up near venice beach…