The biggest skunks at the garden party these days are vegetarians. They’ve gained a reputation — often undeserved — as “special” people who exude an air of moral superiority because they’ve sworn off animal flesh.
It’s true that some vegetarians require extra attention. They won’t go to restaurants that don’t have special vegetarian selections, or they let their hosts know their special dietary needs. Some raise their kids the same way, turning mealtimes into negotiating sessions and creating what we used to call “picky eaters.”
But I believe smug, look-at-me vegetarians are the exception, and that the vast majority of non-meat-eaters are worthy of our admiration. In fact, I’ve wondered if the stone-throwing carnivores who stereotype all vegetarians as elitists do it to deflect some of their own guilty feelings surrounding their meat-eating ways.
That guilt is not misplaced. Americans eat an estimated 220-275 pounds of meat per person annually — twice the recommended amount — and it takes a big toll:
• On the environment. The livestock-meat industry is the No. 1 cause of global warming, say many scientists. Livestock (and the methane it produces) causes as much as 35 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases, more than all forms of transportation combined, according to a 2006 U.N. report.
You’ll do more for the environment by giving up meat than by giving up your car.
• On health and health-care costs. A 10-year National Cancer Institute study showed those who ate the most red meat boosted their overall risk of death 30 percent.
From a 2009 Los Angeles Times story on the study: “Men who were big meat-eaters had a 22 percent increased risk of death from cancer and a 27 percent higher risk of cardiovascular disease compared with men who ate the least. For women, high red-meat consumption raised the risk of death from cancer by 20 percent and the risk of heart disease by 50 percent.”
• On our souls. Factory farms inflict untold suffering on animals.
Their short lives are spent entirely in confined pens, where they’re fattened up fast, separated early from their mothers and denied all socialization. Peter Singer, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nicholas Kristof and Matthew Scully are a few of the influential writers calling for more humane treatment of farm animals.
Even Andy Rooney, the 92-year- old news legend and “60 Minutes” regular, admits that eating fellow creatures works on his conscience. “I often pass a farm with cows grazing in the field and think to myself how terrible it is that human beings grow other animals just to kill them and eat them,” he said in 2006. “Most of us think of vegetarians as nuts, and I’m not a vegetarian, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we came to a time in 50 or 100 years when civilized people everywhere refused to eat animals. I could be one of them. Of course, I’d be pretty old by then.”
Rooney’s thinking may not be mainstream, but it’s not in la-la land, as evidenced by the number of successful voter initiatives calling for better treatment of farm animals and by the growing influence of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).
PETA named Bill Clinton its 2010 “Person of the Year” for his decision to become a vegan — i.e., no meat, dairy or animal products. Clinton said he believes a plant-based diet can restore his health by reducing the cholesterol that caused his heart issues and resulting bypass surgery. He eats beans, legumes, vegetables and fruit, and shed 24 pounds.
The lesson is obvious: If Bubba — who loved cheeseburgers as much as life itself — can do it, so can others.
That’s not to say you have to become a card-carrying vegetarian or that you shouldn’t rally around the grill this Memorial Day.
But it probably wouldn’t kill you to bag the ham with your eggs once in awhile.
Freelance columnist Mary Winter (mwinte@aol.com) of Denver writes for the op-ed page twice a month.
