Becoming a Meat-Eater in Paris

Laura Anderson

A Temporary Omnivore in Paris

The New York Times

July 22, 2008

This post is from Laura Anderson, a senior at Columbia who is working at the moment for The New York Times in Paris. She was once a vegetarian but has decided to start eating meat, and writes a blog called A Temporary Omnivore in Paris, which is an interesting look at a transition in eating habits — M.B.

According to a pamphlet my university gave me before I left for my junior year in Paris, many normally self-restrained students engage in uncharacteristic sensation-seeking behavior while studying abroad—drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, unprotected sex. At the time, I told myself it wouldn’t happen to me.

I was wrong. My out-of-character conduct? I started eating meat.

It wasn’t difficult: Paris isn’t the vegetarian haven New York is. Animal rights activists are still routinely mocked in the French press. Meatless entrées are pretty much unheard of on restaurant menus. The last time an American mocked me for being vegetarian was in elementary school; here, I’ve learned to brace for it every time I start talking about food with a French person.

It wasn’t necessity that drove me to meat: I got by pretty well for nine months on bread and cheese and pastry. As the year rolled along, though, France itself eroded my main reason for not eating meat. I was vegetarian primarily to protest the treatment of animals in the industrial food system, but France’s food system isn’t necessarily industrial. French people’s stubborn attachment to tradition, so maddening most of the time, is a good thing when it comes to meat—tradition means much meat still comes from farms, not feedlots; is sold in open-air markets, not Wal-Marts; and resembles animals, not nuggets.

I had been on vegetarian autopilot for quite some time - I was eight when I first forsook meat. Now, at 21, I no longer really understood my own reasons for being vegetarian, except in an abstract way. More importantly, I no longer really understood the omnivorous majority, and I thought it was time for a check-in.

Why, I wondered, are most people so attached to meat that they cannot conceive of giving it up?

Also, I love food. I would have regretted spending a year in France without ever fully experiencing the animal-based glory of French cuisine.

So I’m eating some meat now. Temporarily. Just until I go home at the end of the month.

In an effort to retain a little of my own dignity, not to mention that of the animals that are dying for my selfish cause, I haven’t gone completely wild. I try to eat high-quality, preferably organic meat. I don’t eat it every day, let alone at every meal. The way I eat now is probably pretty close to what a regular omnivore would call “flexitarian.” But, as Mark noted in “The Minimalist” a couple of weeks ago, it can be harder to eat some meat than no meat, even when you’re coming at it from the meatless end of the spectrum.

At first, it was difficult to eat flesh without masochistically dwelling on the lives of the animals on my plate. It took quite a few glasses of wine to get those first bites of swordfish (the first animal I ate) to go down easily.

But the transition from compunction to complacence came surprisingly quickly. Recently I ate my first hamburger, and though vague visions of wet-nosed cows flitted around my head, I couldn’t really muster the disgust I felt only a month ago.

This doesn’t mean I’ve found meat irresistible. It tastes good, all right, and the effortless protein is nice, but I still sometimes feel that I’m being left out of a joke that everyone else gets. “Isn’t this fantastic?” people will ask as they watch me take my first bite of bacon, or steak, or boudin noir. I’ll nod politely, but the flavor of meat doesn’t really justify the death of an animal for me.

I haven’t lost my other qualms about meat-eating, either. I had just discovered how delicious sushi can be when I read Taras Grescoe’s op-ed for the Times about the negative environmental effects of salmon farming. Sure, there are bad consequences of plant-based foods, too, but to me meat is just a lose-lose situation—either the moral implications or the environmental effects are unjustifiable.

I can’t deny, though, that I’m enjoying certain aspects of my little personal experiment. Meat-eating facilitates a sense of connection with other people that tempeh just doesn’t. Taking the life of an animal for food is a morbid, ironic affirmation that we are alive. It is also an affirmation our connection with those that came before us, and there is great comfort to be had in eating meals that have been made the same way for generations.

Still, I prefer the comfort of a clear conscience to the comfort of tradition. I don’t regret my phase as a temporary omnivore, but I think it’ll be a relief to go vegetarian again, this time fully aware of what I’m giving up. I’ve looked at meat from both sides now, and I think I’ve come out of it with a little more compassion—for people, not just animals.

bitten.blogs.nytimes.com

It’s okay to eat meat Laura, you’re a carnivore: www.powerofmeat.com