Thursday, June 4, 2015

Luxury Eating?

Recently, I was watching a food program on the Travel channel. The show featured Anthony Bourdain, who is well known for going to different countries to display the culture and the food. I found it interesting that he said that begin vegan was a first world luxury, excluding those who followed religious practices of being vegan.
As I thought more about it, the more it made sense. It can be very difficult in poverty stricken countries to follow vegan practices as it can be expensive to buy meat and other food products. It can sometimes be required that you have to raise your own animals to provide meat and milk, and grow your own vegetables. My parents grew up very poor in Mexico and ate what they were able to grow on their ranch. My mom always said they were lucky to at least have cows to drink milk. 
It's interesting how much the perspective changes from country to country. 
People fight for the rights of animals, but sometimes eating/drinking something from them can be a means to survival. I can't even imagine a perfect world where people existed without harming animals and surviving mainly off foods grown from the Earth. It sounds impractical. The only way I could see this happening would be if we shared the wealth and technological advances (farming) with the rest of the world, but we would also have to stop prejudice and war to be able to share. 
How do you imagine the perfect world between humans and animals? Some people say that eating meat is a luxury, do you believe that or that vegan/healthy is a luxury? 

6 comments:

  1. I really respect this post because I believe that it brings up many issues revolving food politics and veganism in general. Being vegan myself I have begun to think a lot about this question of whether or not access to meat is a luxury itself or a false concept or way of life that has been put on a pedestal by the meat industry and other corporations involved. I believe that access to health food in general, whether that be organic and locally raised meat products, or vegetables, grains, and legumes, these items should be a right not a luxury. Within the industrial agriculture system, corn is subsidized in order to have enough product to feed livestock within the industrial slaughterhouses. Why is corn being subsidized when cattle are not even supposed to be able to digest corn, as opposed to subsidizing local farms for people to grow their own nourishment on?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm not sure the issue is as simple as labeling one diet or the other as a luxury. Vegetables and fruit are cheaper than meat, but vegetarian restaurants are fairly rare. Healthy eating in the US is relatively expensive when compared to alternatives like fast food, and especially when you factor in the time it would take to make the healthy meal yourself. This leads to the current trend we see of poorer people having the most food related health problems like obesity. On the other hand, we can see clearly that this is a country-specific problem. India is one of the poorest countries, per capita, in the world yet has the highest rate of vegetarianism.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I agree that following a vegan or vegetarian diet is luxury but I think that only applies to first world countries. In countries like the United States meat and animal byproducts is a ubiquitous part of diet, but in other, less developed countries this is not the case. In many non-industrialized Asian cultures, their diet is very plant based and that is true regardless of social class. Also, vegetarian diets being a luxury is true only in modern times. A new study showed that ancient Egyptians were mostly vegetarians.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I agree that following a vegan or vegetarian diet is luxury but I think that only applies to first world countries. In countries like the United States meat and animal byproducts is a ubiquitous part of diet, but in other, less developed countries this is not the case. In many non-industrialized Asian cultures, their diet is very plant based and that is true regardless of social class. Also, vegetarian diets being a luxury is true only in modern times. A new study showed that ancient Egyptians were mostly vegetarians.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/evolution-of-diet/
      This article from Nat Geo observes some interesting trends in human diet. One particularly interesting fact is that in 73% of hunter gatherer societies, more than half of the calories are derived from meat. The article continues to ponder whether or not humans have evolved to consume meat, but no conclusive studies have been done on the subject. The article also notes that these hunter gatherer societies don't frequently develop high blood pressure or cardiovascular diseases, implying that a more healthy diet might be one similar to hunter gatherer diets.

      Delete
  5. I love the travel channel and they almost always do an interesting bit on food at some point. But being vegan is a First world luxury and we often over think that. In many third world countries they cant live off of being vegan. They do not have the same foods as we do. A poor family isn't going to be able to afford quinoa and tofu or other such food that provide them the proper amounts of protein. They will eventually wear away to nothing. You simply cannot be a vegan, there aren't enough options is third world countries to sustain their bodies. I mean, they can barely get their hands on rice for Christ's sake. So I do believe that it is a luxury for the first world countries.

    ReplyDelete