Is ignorance bliss?

by Heather C.

The premise of the Eat Local Challenge is that knowledge is power when it comes to your food choices.  Most people are disconnected from the food that they eat.  We spend a lot of time talking here about where the food comes from.  I think that there is also a need to educate people on what food is.

I've heard reports that say that people don't make the connection between a package of pork in the supermarket and a pig.  Maybe I'm naive but I thought that was an anomoly and not the norm.  But lately when discussing local food issues I've found out for myself that many people deliberately choose not to think about the sources of their food.  Is ignorance bliss?

Obviously if you are reading this then you are interested in your food sources.  I think we also need to look at our influence in just getting the people around us to think about food at all.

This week I took a cutting of a mint plant that is running rampant in my garden to a co-worker.  Another person asked about the plant.  I explained that it was mint.  She asked, "Is it minty?"  I said yes and offered a leaf to her to taste.  She was horrified.  She was even more disgusted when I popped a leaf in my mouth to show that it was safe.  She acted like I had just swallowed the entrails of some animal on FEAR FACTOR instead of chewing on an herb from an organic garden.  I really think that she thought that mint was an artificial flavor seen mainly in Life Savors and that this plant was a poor man's substitute instead of the real thing. 

At a family potluck my cousins brought lasagna made with beef from a cow that they raised.  They were talking about it and calling it "Rosie lasagna" in honor of the cow.  My husband turned slightly green and opted for the vegetarian lasagna.  I asked him about it later and he said that he just couldn't face eating something that was raised by my cousins and had a name.  He said that if he had to slaughter his own meat he would definately be a vegetarian. 

I lived near a small family owned meat market growing up.  It was normal to run through the barns and pet the cow or sheep that was in the pens waiting to be butchered.  My grandparents also had a small butchering operation in their basement.  I remember watching them process deer they had hunted or a side of beef they purchased.  My husband shudders when I mention this.  He just doesn't want to know. 

I'm a vegetarian but a staple of the farmer's markets around here are pasture raised meats.  I've thought about suggesting to my omnivore husband that he might like to buy meat there but he might turn it down.  The idea of meat coming directly from a farm is as much of a turn-off to him as it is appealling to most people in this challenge. 

How do you promote local eating in a population that may not want to know?

Heather C. lives in rural central Ohio.  She writes Based On A True Story....

Comments

[Jamie]

That's really widespread. I know a lot of meat-eaters who say that they couldn't eat meat if they knew specifically where it came from. Some won't even eat chicken legs because it "looks like an animal." But a chicken strip, nugget, or patty is fine.

I was vegetarian for 16 years. Maybe that's why the sourcing is so important to me now--I have never been able to distance myself from the connection between animals and meat.

But I don't know how we fix those attitudes. I think our society has gone out of its way to create them! It's not the fault of the people who feel that way; it's just what they've been taught. Leading by example, slowly and steadily, is probably the way to go.

[VI]

You know I have come to a different conclusion as I have delved more into eating local. I used to be pretty anti-hunting, and surely had no interest in it.

Now, I think, hey what's more local. Moreover, having thought about it, I think its MORE humane to eat a wild animal than to pack an animal up for future consumption. Not that I am against farm raised meat, one just seems more humane.

On one hand, my wife and I have obtained a fair amount of books the last year on game cooking, especially Midwest game (moose recipe anyone), but on the other hand, I have not actually gone hunting or moved very far towards hunting. I'm a bit afraid that clothes, the gear, the gun (that part scares me still), the freakin' lessons to learn it all, as well as the time and effort to DO the hunting, makes it pretty unlikely. Still, I'm thinking about it.

Anyone want to take me out with them?

[Sarah (Mrs. Irani)]

Hunting certianly is more humane!

We were having friends over for dinner recently. I asked if they liked venison. "Ewww you are eating Bambi!" I don't get it- they eat beef nearly every night. How is a deer any cuter than a cow? Do we not eat things because they are cute? It is rediculous! We ended up eating chicken that night. (Though I think chickens are adorable.)

I was a vegetarian for a long time as well. I believed that unless you meet a cow, you shouldn't eat meat. I have always believed that it is important for people to know where their food comes from.

[Justin H.]

This is an interesting phenomenon that I have never personally encountered. Maybe I don't talk with people about meat too often, but the only averse reaction I've seen when I suggest buying local meat and poultry down at the market is that it's too expensive because they eat so much meat to begin with.

This topic reminds me of that SNL fake commercial where Phil Hartman voiced an animated mascot for a chicken restaurant as he narrated the visual story of how he went from living chicken to the product on you eat in the restaurant. I remember being surprised that the audience was so shocked at such "normal" steps in chicken processing as mechanical separation, but had no problem with eating a nugget.

I think that there are certain qualities to meat (such as a whole chicken leg or knowing the name of the cow) that to some are grim reminders of the fact that there are steps between a living animal and a meal that they know are bloody and painful and would rather not think about.

[Dolores Ferrero]

Hmm... interesting discussion. I think I'm somewhere in the middle. My typical menu consists of much seafood, some chicken and occasionally some beef. And it's important to me to know where my food comes from and that it was raised and slaughtered in humane conditions. This attention to where it's come from geographically is new to me, but I'm enjoying the learning process involved. I am not put off by purchasing whole chicken (sans head -- but that has less to do with knowing what it was and more with chicken head isn't appetizing to me -- dead or alive). Ditto whole fish. I don't know what I'd DO with a whole side of beef, but conceptually it doesn't bother me.

That said, I think I'd struggle as much as Heather's husband eating an animal where I knew it's name. It's entirely psychological I know -- livestock that's named by some 4H kid was likely raised in a far more humane environment than anything with a "Rancher's Reserve" label on it at Safeway. And I'm okay with knowing that the animal HAD a name. I'm just not in a place yet where I want to know what it was. But hey, this is all a growth process, right?

[julie]

I had experiences like this when I took urban kids to farms. Sometimes, when they were offered the opportunity of picking a fresh strawberry from the plant and eating it, they would refuse because it was "dirty"! Many of them had a similar reaction to tasting milk fresh out of a cow. I guess it makes sense from an urban perspective--you wouldn't want to eat strawberries that had been on the ground or milk that someone had touched. Now that urban and suburban populations far outstrip rural ones in this country, and with the ethic of hyper-cleanliness and the popularity of antibacterial products, I think this is becoming the norm rather than the exception.

How could evolution have allowed a people to become so repulsed by their own food sources?

(I think I know part of the answer--the mega food conglomerates want it that way so we don't know how our food is really produced. If we did, even the most iron-stomached of us might not want to eat it).

[SuzanneM]

I've now heard from several Eat Localers "I was a vegetarian for x years." I was a vegetarian for 10 years myself. I didn't know how else to respond to factory farming and I thought it was a healthier diet.

Now I think supporting small-scale ranchers who humanely raise their animals is a better approach. And I'm committed to making sure my daughter understands that the chickens she sees at farms are the same chickens she eats. In order to that, of course, I need to be able to show her where the animals live without shame -- i.e., no factory farms.

[Heather C.]

I remember when we started to discuss dairy cows during my first year in vet school, the professor asked why cows gave milk. There were actually people in my class who did not know that cows had to give birth in order to produce milk. They thought that the farmers were tricking the cows somehow into thinking at they had babies and therefore needed to make milk.