The Vegetarian's Dilemma

Meredith Ashton

Reading Response

The Omnivore’s Dilemma

7 November 2016

The Vegetarian’s Dilemma

            “This is what can happened when…you look. And what you see when you look is the cruelty—and the blindness to cruelty—required to produce eggs that can be sold for seventy-nine cents a dozen,” writes Michael Pollan (318). The third section of The Omnivore’s Dilemma delves into the controversial subject of the ethics behind eating animals. After extensive research and contemplation, Pollen decides that the decision to eat meat should be left up to the individual. However, in order to make an informed decision one must be fully conscious of the process behind the raising and eventual slaughter of one’s meal; a process that has been thoroughly obscured by the long chain of events from cow to hamburger in the industrial food system.

My mother reached a similar conclusion to Pollan during her college days. Unfortunately for her, however, Polyface Farms was not a road trip away. Thus her (and my) adventure of vegetarianism was born. I’ve abstained from meat for my entire life—it’s all I’ve ever known. Aside from the chicken McNugget I tried on a road trip with a friend’s family, the occasional hotdog I consumed as a child because my dad insisted that “it’s not real meat anyways,” and a dry bite of turkey one Thanksgiving, meat has never been a mainstay of my diet. Curiously, the smell of cooking meat is still delicious to me, but it makes me crave my own, veggie-friendly foods.

It’s interesting to me that I claim these vegetarian foods as “my own.” More accurately, of course, they belong to myself, the 7.3 million other vegetarians in the US, and really the rest of the human population on earth. Regardless, I still take pride in my diet. Growing up I was always the girl with the “weird” lunch. Instead of the ham & cheese sandwich on white I had avocado and black beans on whole-grain wheat. It was difficult to find a fast food joint where I could eat something other than French fries (which wasn’t too much of an issue in my eight-year-old mind), and staying for dinner at friend’s houses always required special accommodations so that “Meredith could have something to eat.” I can empathize with Pollan when he writes, “what troubles me most about my vegetarianism is the subtle way it alienates me from other people and, as odd as this might sound, from a whole dimension of human experience,” (314).

Over the years, however, I have come to view my diet as a point of connection, rather than one of disconnect. When I left my home for college, I was faced with a choice I had never before encountered: to eat meat or not to eat meat. My entire life I had justified my diet with the simple fact that “it’s the food my mom cooks.” Now cafeteria workers were happily grilling up burgers and pork and meat balls and meats I couldn’t even identify, displayed in gleaming metal containers for carnivorous college students.

At first I simply had no interest in trying the meat (and honestly I questioned the integrity of the cafeteria’s meat standards). Then, I started my own journey towards vegetarianism that followed Pollan’s in a pattern of research, discovery, and personal contemplation. In my first year seminar, I learned about food ways and sustainable eating and read The Omnivore’s Dilemma cover to cover. I realized that my vegetarian diet connected me not only to my mom’s cooking but also to the earth around me. I liked knowing from where my food was coming, without the possibility of the industrial meat industry’s interference. My journey of “looking” at my dietary decisions,  ironically, ended where it began, with my continued choice to pursue a plant-based diet. Now, however, it was my choice. My food. My own manner of conscious consumption.