I know that many SM readers like to partake in one particular cross-border skirmish we seem to have a lot here. You know the one of which I speak, right? It’s the herbivores vs. the carnivores (although technically we are all omnivores). Well, to throw a little fuel on to that fire I submit to you this book review over at Slate.com.. The book is titled “Bloodless Revolution” and is meant to be a sort of “history of European vegetarianism.” I haven’t read the book but the review was quite insightful. First the background on the book:

Here’s the story as he tells it in The Bloodless Revolution: In the 17th century, a fundamental question about the relationship between ourselves and the other creatures of the earth broke out into passionate debate, a debate that swooped over and around and through the culture, rattling long-held European assumptions about the very nature of life. There was no single word adequate to capture the ideas that were bursting forth, until the term vegetarian emerged in the middle of the 19th century. And with that, the battle was over—not because meat-eating came to an end but because European culture made a home for this challenge to dietary norms, giving it a local habitation and a name. Whether or not this constituted a victory for animal-lovers is hard to say. As Stuart points out early on, when the concept of vegetarianism became domesticated, it turned into “a distinct movement that could easily be pigeon-holed, and ignored.” But people did start thinking differently about animals, human responsibilities, and the rights of living creatures, albeit rarely to the extreme sought by such groups as PETA. Stuart sums it up well: Nowadays, he says, “negotiating compassion with the desire to eat is customary…” [Link]

The critic contends, however, that vegetarianism from a European perspective isn’t so much something they accept as a way of life but is rather a philosophy to be practiced off an on:

If vegetarianism has settled comfortably into Western culture by now, it’s because the term vegetarian has become so vast and shapeless that it describes just about everybody who isn’t on the Atkins diet. To be sure, there are vegetarians who avoid all animal food. But most are willing to eat eggs, and many eat fish. Chicken is fine with some because hey, it isn’t beef. Hamburgers? Absolutely not—or maybe just once in a while. And turkey because it’s Thanksgiving, ham because it’s Easter, pepperoni because it’s pizza—what on earth is a vegetarian, anyway? No wonder Stuart never tries to define the term. A huge, wonderfully entertaining cast of dietary rebels parades through his chapters, but all we really know about the eating habits of these pagans, scientists, doctors, scholars, theologians, writers, philosophers, and crackpots is that most of them ate meat. [Link]

Now here is how it all ties in to the “birthplace” of vegetarianism. I learned something new:

Perhaps the history of European vegetarianism is a history of wishful thinking. Stuart, of course, doesn’t see it that way. But he does focus on India as the inspiration for a great deal of Western philosophizing (the book’s original subtitle, jettisoned for the American edition, was “Radical Vegetarians and the Discovery of India”), and wishful thinking has long been a popular souvenir to bring home from the subcontinent. Early travelers to India returned with amazing tales of a population that lived entirely on vegetables and enjoyed perfect health. Nicolo Conti, a Venetian merchant, saw Brahmins who lived to the age of 300; travel writer Jean Baptiste Tavernier saw a man “whipped to death for shooting a peacock”; John Ovington, a cleric, saw Hindus living in a state of grace like Adam and Eve, practicing “Justice and Tenderness to Brutes, and all living Creatures.” True or not, says Stuart, these reports were influential, for they offered a vivid and dramatic challenge to a way of life that Westerners took for granted. [Link]

And so the exotification of India and Indians seems to have begun tightly wound together with the idea that being a vegetarian somehow made you more pure and noble, which of course is untrue as the critic reminds us:

Contrary to what Stuart asserts, Buddha did not teach “that it was wrong for people to eat animals.” (His own last meal, famously, was a dish of pork.). Stuart quotes Europeans who described Syrian Christians in Kerala “abstaining from animal food,” just as the Hindus around them did; but he ignores a long tradition of beef-eating in that same Syrian Christian community. [Link]

The difference between the Indian and European view of being a vegetarian is that for one group it is a purifying hardship to be endured and for the other it is dinner.

Also, if you hope to meet fellow veggie lovers try this veggie conference in April. I might just go to meet women (even though I eat meat) if they give me a Blog Pass. Apparently, John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods, has the right idea:

RYSSDAL: Why groceries and food? Why not shoes or clothing or anything else?

MACKEY: Well, that’s a fair question. I got interested in food when I was in my early 20s. I moved into this vegetarian co-op to live … I wasn’t a vegetarian, but I figured the co-op would have a lot of interesting women living there.

(Laughter)

And …

RYSSDAL: And?

MACKEY: And they did … I met my girlfriend that I started the company with at the co-op… [Link]