The Prodigal Returneth (and Other Lies)

Well, it has been some time since my last post! Time for a quick update: still eating meat and recently made the decision to try and lose weight by eating healthily. Counting the calories and not eating as much as I used to has meant that I've lost a few pounds over the last two weeks.

I've quite a few things to blog about that I'm working on, so expect an update soon (honest!)

Food in parallel

Since the last update, I have tried chicken (not too bad) and bacon (nice, but it was overcooked). On looking at ingredients of pre-packaged products, it seems like I have to learn the lingua franca of the meat-eating world. I have seen ham as labelled as 'formed' and 'reformed'. I noticed that some hot dogs contain pork and chicken, no doubt processed quite a bit along the way to the shelf. I can't say I ever thought of hot dogs as having chicken therein.

I care about what I eat; I'd rather not have (re-)formed meat if I can help it. This checking of ingredients process is a parallel of my checking to see if things have animal products in them. Some things never change...

Purchasing meat for the first time in years

I recently went to the local supermarket with the intention of perhaps consuming some bacon in the café. The café was packed however, so I decided not to wait. I had a look at the chilled/frozen meat section (two aisles; perhaps 5% of it has vegetarian fare). There is so much choice, even in the bacon section! I thought I would leave the buying of meat for a while, as you can only seem to buy bacon and sausages in multiple quantities; perhaps I should try a butcher's shop one day.

Anyway, I noticed that they sell fast-food style boxes at the meat counter. What caught my eye was a chicken burger or a dual-sausage bun. I asked for the sausage bun meal (bun, two pork sausages, sauce sachet and wedges). When I was at the checkout I had a familiar feeling: that of trepidation.

On arriving home and after putting the other food away, I opened the box. It stuck me how sausages (both meat and soya-based) have little aesthetic merit.. I added the sauce to the bun and tuck in. It tasted nice, really nice. I'm sure to a regular meat eater it probably would have tasted simply okay or perhaps even a little bland, but my mouth told my head that it was lovely, as if I was quaffing a glass of expensive wine. Any doubts or guilt about eating it vanished after two bites and I ate it all. Ironically, the wedges weren't very nice and I left most of them.

Minutes later when retrieving a drink from the fridge, my saliva glands drooled with satisfaction. I cannot remember drooling at vegetarian food. Should I wish, I have the full panoply of food in the supermarket to try. This journey is fun.

The decision to try meat again

I'm not adverse to trying new things: this would also encompass trying things that I haven't tried for some time, if I enjoyed it at one time. Fairly recently I'd been thinking about my diet and have watched a couple of episodes of Kill It, Cook It, Eat It, which I find interesting and informative. I reasoned that, as my drinking palette has matured (I used to dislike Guinness and whisky, for example, both of which I like now), my taste for food will have matured too. Perhaps I would enjoy some of the foods I used to dislike? Diet should never be immutable: there is much I have not tried. I should like my food passport renewed and look forward to stamps from foreign climes.

What about how animals are treated, I hear you say? I still care about how animals are slaughtered and kept (battery hens are a case in point), and I watched a documentary about how some companies inject water and other things into chicken to make more profit. I have no qualms about trying meat again: after all, I can always stop eating it again should I feel like it in the future.

I've been talking about trying meat again with a good friend and, with his encouragement, I decided to try a little bit of scotch egg at a buffet we were at a few days ago. My knowledge of meat is so limited I'm not even sure which meat is in scotch eggs. I think it is pork, but I could be wrong. I've eaten several vegetarian scotch eggs which I've enjoyed, so I thought this would be something I may enjoy. I took a bite of a quartered scotch egg and it didn't taste that nice, if I'm honest. I had another couple of bites and left it on my plate. It tasted quite bland; not dissimilar to how some vegetarian fare does. My conscious Peep Show-style narrative probably didn't help matters.

Here I go. I'm doing it! I'm eating meat! Hmm, it's not very
nice is it? Another bite. No, quite bland. What's Jeremy up
to?

Still, I had knowingly, purposively eaten meat for the first time in nearly twenty years. I wasn't sick and I don't feel guilty. In fact, I'm looking forward to trying more in time to come. I even have an idea of what to try next. I'll be sure to write about it when I do.

Living as a vegetarian

Back in the early 90s there was a fraction of the vegetarian-friendly food on offer in supermarkets than there is now. I can't recall there being a meat-free section until possibly late 90s (if not later), so I used to buy stuff that I knew would be acceptable (or so I hoped; one can never be too sure) and cooked pasta and rice and the like. Some cheeses are not suitable for vegetarians for they contain rennet, which comes from animal stomachs.

Back then, labelling food as suitable for vegetarians wasn't in existence. Slowly, as more people chose to become vegetarian and supermarkets wanted their custom, products were labelled as appropriate, as they do for nut allergies nowadays; but that information comes as a warning, lest someone dies and the family decide to sue. Tesco even used to label things which to the untrained eye one might assume to be vegetarian friendly. I remember some of their ice creams were labelled as suitable for vegetarians, and others as “Not suitable for vegetarians”. Only a few years ago did they label their cheese and onion flavour crisps as not suitable for vegetarians, later to change the recipe so they were suitable. One could argue that the UK lead the field in this labelling food business; try finding food labelled as vegetarian friendly in Spain, for example.

One bane of the vegetarian is always eating out or going to friends' soirées. In my experience, you seldom have a choice when eating in a restaurant or a pub. Well, you do: eat the supposed vegetarian dish or don't. Such dishes may not be suitable for strict vegetarians too: is the cheese rennet free? Is the dish cooked separately from the meat? If cooked in oil, has meat been cooked in the same oil; are the utensils used also to handle meat? The vegetarian option is usually bland and expensive for what it is. Fast food outlets too on the whole don't offer much in the way for non-meat eaters. I went to a dinner party a few months ago and my friend (the host) forgot to inform his wife that I was a vegetarian, even after I had asked him if he had reminded her. Never mind; such things happen. I had to 'make do' with some hurriedly-cooked veg (as most of the vegetables were in a stew) and a few others things salvaged from a cupboard or two. It was quite nice for what it was, but one can't help feeling a nuisance; that the evening would have gone more smoothly if we all ate meat.

Before I finish this section, let me just mention a stereotype about vegetarians. The number of people who assume that vegetarians eat fish (and perhaps chicken too) is very high. I often used to get asked if i ate fish (once I was offered a meal and when I explained I didn't eat meat, the suggestion was to “pick the meat out,” as if that would render the dish suitable). I was a very strict vegetarian: checking to see if things contained E120 (cochineal; basically crushed insects); was the cheese suitable; enquiring if it was cooked with meat. As a result, I avoided eating certain foods which on the surface could be vegetarian friendly, but isn't labelled as such (as Cadbury's chocolate wasn't until fairly recently).

The beginning and the end of vegetarianism?

For the first time in nearly twenty years, I recently knowingly ate some meat. Before I explain what lead up to this, let me explain how I decided to become a vegetarian:

When I was a teenager I ate typical teenager foodstuff: sausages, burgers, breaded turkey, etc. I remember that I never really enjoyed more 'adult' food such as joints/cuts of lamb, pork or beef. Other meat produce I can remember enjoying were sliced ham, bacon (does any meat-eater not like bacon?), fish cakes, fish fingers and pork pies (but I never did like the jelly therein). I don't believe I've ever eaten game, prawns, most fish (I had cod and whatever chip shops sold as fish back then), steak or any esoteric/unusual meat.

My meat intake, though probably fairly typical for an omnivore teenager, was somewhat limited in its palette. I can remember the last meat I ate was some breaded turkey around a friend's house. I ate it all, but I didn't enjoy it. My relationship with meat had ended: when I went home I announced that I wasn't going to eat any more meat.

Looking back, the reason for not eating meat was mostly because I didn't enjoy the taste of it. Only years later when I was more educated about how certain meats are processed and animals treated, did my conscious decision evolve to focus more on this side of things. I cannot remember if back in the early days I was as stringent as I later became apropos checking if my proposed meal had any connection with meat at all.

More in my next entry.