Objective: To continue to consider food in the context of community and privilege
Please read, print, and be prepared to discuss on Tuesday 3/11
"When I was sixteen, I told my best friend that I could never become a vegetarian because I loved steak too much. I understand the allure of red meat, the chewy toughness, like slightly worn out gum, dripping and juicy, pressed and grinding in your jaw. My father used to grill steaks out in the summer, and I remember vividly jamming toothpicks between my teeth after those July meals, grey-black steaks peppery and flavored with nothing more than the juice caught up in the muscle of the animal, corn on the cob dripping with butter and salt. The stringy tendrils of silk and shreds of flesh caught in my mouth. So, I get it. Meat tastes good. Do we really have to give it up?
What if, instead of thinking of this as sacrifice, we think of it simply as cutting back? And cutting back to only once a week, which is not exactly a rarity. This barely even makes steak night a treat. Once a week, red meat becomes a habit rather than an extravagance. What if we remember that, with every extra bacon-double cheeseburger, we are slowly killing ourselves?
This is what I began to remember in Ghana, feeling the familiar stirring in the pit of my stomach. The sensation of helplessness and rage and obligation that combines to form activism. I remembered that I lived in a world of gross inequality. I began to feel and sound, I know, like the girl with the lip piercings again. What I learned in Africa was that, shaved head or no, there are some things worth fighting for. I am not willing to live in a world where some people die from consuming too much meat and others die from not consuming enough. I can still love steak and only eat it once a week." -from "Garbanzo Beans for Breakfast" by Marissa Landrigan, in Fringe Magazine
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