The Morality of Food

Published by Time_Spiral under Future of Food on January 4, 2007

The Morality of Food
We all eat. We are all part of the system.

This is a topic I’ve given quite a lot of thought and will reach out to several communities with.

Vegan?
Vegetarian?
Health Conscious?
Omnivore?
Fast Food / Restaurant Junkie?
Generally unconcerned about what you eat as long as it tastes good?

No matter what discipline you adhere to you feed off of life to derive your own physical energies. There are all sorts of different moral boundaries and guidelines involved with the different individuals following these disciplines.

You’ve got the: Animal Rights, Global Impact, Health Conscious, Apathetic, and various combinations of the previous.

Purpose
I’m simply trying to pose questions and see what some other thoughts are. When you scale things up and down they become quite different in regards to the moral guidelines. One question is this: What is the difference in eating an animal and eating a plant?

Obviously there are many differences, but morally, both entities are alive. The carnivorous kill the animal first and eat the flesh before it rots (usually) and the Herbivores often times don’t even kill the plants and eat them alive.

One argument is: “Well, an animals is not like a plant. It has a face, it thinks, it has rights”

One response is: “Due to recent findings we can conclude that plants react in similar ways to that of a human or animal would when presented with life threatening situations (intentions).”

Where is the line?

Is the line purely subjective? or is there some sort of universal principle that can be followed to better stay in harmony?

If nature is our example then you have examples that demonstrate all sorts of different aspects of this problem. Meat eaters, plant eaters, both, sun + metal / rock eaters (photosynthesis, root systems). So which example do we follow?

Vegetarian / Vegan
The vegetarian propaganda will show you videos of animals living in tiny cages for there entire infant lives before they are bludgeoned to death, or ripped apart by a sophisticated machine while the men in white walk knee deep in blood so the heartless / ignorant fools can pay 29.99 for their fresh veal platter at the local ‘place to be’. But what they don’t show you are the farmers who truly care and love their animals and treat them well, very well. I’m sure there are cows out there living a better life than some pets, probably some humans.

Meat
Don’t get me wrong, the Meat propagandists have all sorts of generationally rooted techniques to keep you thinking you need meat. When you really do not.

Fast Food / Chains
Then of course you have the Fast Food propagandists who design commercials geared towards our children and how health conscious it can be to get a salad at McDonalds while your child is as happy as they can be. Early human conditioning. Happens everywhere. Then hook in the less fortunate by selling “filling food” for what is perceived at face value to be ‘cheap’

Possible Moral Benchmarks
When you grow a tree, it then bears fruit. One can wait until the fruit is ready and it will fall to the ground, or become ready to harvest. You can then eat the fruit and the tree survives. The intent of the fruit is to nourish and procreate. So the individual who cultivates and eats the fruit would then use the seed to plant more trees and could theoretically use the waste generated by the fruit to fertilize it. Either way, the Tree survives.

But what about the onion? of the head of lettuce? of the industrialized farming techniques that destroy entire crops every season? At that point the corn stalk that yielded 5 ears, does not survive. In fact, his entire local community got wiped out. Seems like we could have a moral quandary here.

When a cow is raised, it is fed regularly (all sorts of different stuff), lives to a fairly predetermined age and is then slaughtered, killed. That cow is dead, but the species of cow survives. That cow was born of another, for the purpose of living it’s life, nourishing the land, and procreating. The person consuming the meat could have waited until the cow procreated, then use the energy to tend to the rest of the cows.

But when considering the animal scenario you must also look at the massive highly organized forced slavery to serve others lifestyle they are living to then literally be fed into a ‘machine’ that systematically kills them and distributes them.

In my opinion the situation has become infinitely complex. Let’s look at a bigger picture aspect of this.

What do we learn from these disciplines? What types of things do they teach us? What types of actions and emotions are facilitated by these practices?

Caring for the land, helping plants spread their seed, cultivating and growing seems like a very positive activity. You are helping mother earth through her natural cycles through relatively peaceful operations.

hunting and animal farming teaches us tactical killing strategies and conquest. But not always, to care for an animal, help it grow up healthy and mature is also a very positive activity. In this instance you could also be helping mother earth through her natural cycles.

Both practices ultimately lead to the entities death.

The Global Impact
This aspect of the situation cannot be ignored in my opinion. So lets say you drop meat, you drop fast food and do nothing but eat at the super markets. Let’s even say you go for Organic and try to be extra healthy. In most instances you are killing the planet at an even more rapid rate than you might think. Buying food out of season or food that has to be shipped 3500 miles uses an insane amount of fossil fuels and electricity that is derived from fossil fuels. Not to mention your organic veggies have been shipped and refrigerated for so long that they may not have the nutrients you think they do.

Support Your local Community the best you can
My personal approach to this is to try and buy food that is locally grown with organic practices in mind. Going to farmer’s markets, asking questions, trying to eat food that is in season and supporting your local farming communities. I also believe it to be of the utmost importance to emphasize the need for a reversion to Organic Farming practices. This is a goal of mine, and i will work hard to implement it the best i can in my life.

I realize this is a mindful, hopefully some of you got through it. But there is so much condescension in between the Eating and Rights communities that i feel that some of these “abstract” (as some would call it) observations and truths should be taken into consideration.

Self-respect. It is necessarily wrong to do one thing or another? Well, i think your intention and the intention of others plays a great deal in that. Let’s just try to be more conscious, understanding and work towards disciplines that really do have human, Earth, and life preservation in mind.

Sounds idealistic, I know.

I’m very interested in all of your thoughts.

Time_Spiraling