A Carnivore's Rant

[joreth]

Y'know what I hate? I hate when people who eat meat products get all grossed out at processed meat products, like it's any worse or more disgusting than the death and slaughter of a living being to make a meal. These are people for whom lamb chops are a nice slab of chops in a white styrafoam container, so they have the luxury of being grossed out by processed chicken meat in chicken nuggets or hot dogs. Most of these people have never been up to their elbows in blood and fur and shit and urine to skin an animal and remove the inedible parts. Most of these people have never looked their dinner in the eye and watched the life drain out of it while it lay on the ground twitching.

Nature is not pretty. It can be, but that's not its default. Death is not pretty. We are part of a system that requires one to die for another to live. Maybe that'll change in the future (and I hope it does), but until that day comes, our nice and juicy steaks do not come to us from a steak-tree, where we pick off the prettiest looking chunks and display them with sauces and creative arrangements. No, those steaks come from the muscle tissue of a living creature, that someone had to kill, dismember, and PROCESS in some way.

Now, we can discuss ethical treatment of food animals, and quality of food products if that's your argument. But that's not the argument I'm ranting against right now. I'm ranting against people who see pictures of food during the processing production and say "Eww! It's all ground up and mixed together! Gross! I'm never eating another [name your processed food here] again!" They are simply grossed out about the idea of bits of food getting mixed together and not looking like the finished product before it's a finished product.

And if that's your beef with processed meat, then you need a remedial course on what chewing and digestion do. I also recommend going to a farm or out in the woods, being responsible for the taking of the life that you are about to consume and seeing its terror as it realizes that it's being hunted, ripping the skin off with your hands and knife, removing the bowels before the animal defecates itself in its death throws, reaching your hands in to remove the still-warm and steaming heart, and pulling the muscle off the bones, all knowing that you will be putting it into your mouth shortly.

And THEN you can tell me that running that meat through a grinder is gross.

Comments

[joreth]

Also, "we can discuss ethical treatment of food animals, and quality of food products if that's your argument. But that's not the argument I'm ranting against right now. I'm ranting against people who see pictures of food during the processing production and say 'Eww! It's all ground up and mixed together! Gross!'"

[emote-control.livejournal.com]

You don't suppose that they think it's gross because they know something about the specifics of production? It's certainly on TV enough.

[joreth]

"But that's not the argument I'm ranting against right now. I'm ranting against people who see pictures of food during the processing production and say 'Eww! It's all ground up and mixed together! Gross!'"

[emote-control.livejournal.com]

Yes, I read that. Several times now. And I'm suggesting that it could be possible that the reason they have a problem with it being "all ground up and mixed together" is because they are aware of issues that make ground-up food less appetizing than not-ground-up food because of something other than simply being ground up. And perhaps this comes out as "I don't like ground up meat because it's gross" rather than anything more specific.

[joreth]

You clearly have a reading comprehension problem. I specifically said I was NOT addressing people who have other issues, that I was talking about people WHO JUST THINK IT'S GROSS.

For your failure to read, you are now blocked from commenting in my journal.