Hath the Foodie a Conscience?

Two very eloquent articles in The Atlantic focus a critical eye on the conscience--or, as the authors would argue, the lack thereof--of the "foodie" movement. James McWilliams' short article was inspired by B. R. Myers' phillipic, written with a vocabulary as sharp as its moral categories.

The real pleasure in Myers' writing is his willingness to mount an attack on the food movement using the language of virtue, peppered with references to Aquinas and religious tradition. Often the food debate is presented as a battle between industrial-utilitarian calculators at Bunge or Monsanto and folks like Wendell Berry or Michael Pollan, who deploy more traditional moral categories. Myers' castigation, written with perspicuity worthy of a 17th century divine, is a refreshing approach.

How sustainable now, brown cow?
Author: Daniel Schwen

While both McWilliams and Myers are frequently on-target when it comes to their critique of the excesses of the  food movement, both fail to really engage with how a sustainable food system ought to function. One assumption they both make, for example, is that meat production is necessarily more sustainable than organic vegetable or fruit production.

The reality is more complicated. Cows, it is true, are not efficient converters of feed into meat, and therefore are comparatively wasteful competitors when it comes to grain, which would otherwise go to feeding people. However, cows, like other ruminants, are capable of a miraculous chemical process whereby they can convert grass, something pretty thoroughly inedible, into beef, which is delightfully so.

Now, organic vegetable production can to a certain extent take advantage of parallel processes. For example, an organic farmer can mow his grass, compost it, and then turn it into biological matter that can grow tasty vegetables. However, this takes a lot longer, and takes a lot more labor, not to mention gasoline for the mowing devices. Moreover, good composting usually requires a source of rich nitrogen -- animal manures being an obvious choice!

Even pigs are not an open-and-shut case. They aren't ruminants, and they aren't particularly efficient converters of grain, and so, like grain-fed cows, they compete with poor human beings for food resources. Unsustainable, right? Yes, if you're feeding them on just grain. But pigs can eat and utilize a wide range of food resources, including a wide variety of waste food, from culled crops to kitchen scraps -- including tea bags!

Even the most efficient vegetable operation has crop failures and culls. Depending on the individual farmer's marketing strategy, he may even have to cull crops that are otherwise quite edible but not "pretty." Grocery stores, for one example, are notoriously picky about having pretty vegetables. True, culls are compostable, but the composting process can take weeks or even months (and will usually need a rich nitrogen source), whereas a pig will happily turn waste vegetables into rich organic matter in roughly twenty-four hours -- not to mention it will turn them into pork in a good six months.

So foodies with a penchant for meat shouldn't necessarily feel guilty. A well-conceived animal farming operation converts things that people can't or won't eat (like grass and waste food) into fertile soil and tasty food. An efficient grass-fed beef operation will use solar power more effectively (and therefore be a good deal more sustainable) than a poorly run vegetable farm.

There is no doubt that the foodie movement, when taken to excesses, is subject to the vicious gluttony and status-worship that Myers so delightfully skewers. But moving beyond appearances and peccadilloes, and taking a serious look at the mechanics of a good food system, the foodie movement basically has it right: solar-powered, soil-friendly vegetables and meats, which are often more abundant and delicious, have decisive advantages over the conventional alternatives.

Positive Ecology

In the previous post I brought up our tendency to frame human virtue in negative terms (things to be refrained from or eliminated) rather than positive; certainly, this applies as well toward our view of ecology: we tend primarily to see it in terms of what we should give up or refrain from, in terms of what is "not sustainable." Less often do we think about how an ecological approach can lead to abundance, even (gasp!) profit, or how it just makes so darn much sense to do things in nature's way. For that reason, I think, the above talk is so particularly refreshing.

Enjoyment, not Tolerance

William Blake

The word "tolerance" is often used as if it were the key virtue pertaining to human diversity -- diversity of race, religion, cultural background, and so forth. Yet if we reflect on how the word is used otherwise, it seems like a somewhat odd choice, since typically we only take about tolerating something bad, not something good. Nobody takes about tolerating nice weather, or tolerating a delicious meal. Rather, we tolerate headaches, rainy days, rude in-laws. Therefore, the implicit assumption behind the word "tolerance" is that human diversity is something we would rather be without, though, for whatever reason, we have decided to put up with it.

Perhaps in some cases this really does describe our way of thinking. When it comes to religion, for instance, we might prefer that everyone were of our (true) belief, but as it stands we are willing to tolerate diversity of cult and creed for the sake of freedom of belief. In some cases of cultural diversity, we might tolerate certain customs we find aberrant or distasteful (though not blatantly immoral) for the sake of getting along. You might detest the taste of goat, but you're willing to tolerate that in some cultures it is a staple food (particularly when those cultures live on the first floor and you on the second).

However, it seems like we are giving short shrift to human diversity if we fail to realize that the proper response to it is often enjoyment, not "tolerance." The fact that people come in different shapes and colors is a beautiful, God-given fact, not a disagreeable inconvenience. "Tolerating" white and black human beings is like tolerating white and black flowers. The diverse forms of dance, cuisine or even cinema that prevail all around the world should be a source of pleasure, as they so often are. Is having Greek, Indian, Italian, Mexican, French, Lebanese and Southern Soul Food restaurants within easy reach a cause for tolerance, or enjoyment?

Tolerance, though, is not the only virtue we cast in negative terms. "Chastity" too often means "not having sex," rather than having sex the way it's meant to be had--in the context of a loving and serious commitment of body, mind and soul--and not otherwise. "Sobriety" often means "not getting drunk or high," rather than as having the cheerful clarity of mind which is the consequence of such abstinence. In the realm of human diversity, too, the problem is framed only as the battle against racism and prejudice. That is assuredly a battle that must be fought, but it can be won only in positive terms -- by actually going out and being friends, neighbors or even family (in the case of marriage) with people of other races, cultures and religions.

Abdu'l-Baha, when he visited the United States, advocated interracial marriage (illegal at the time in many states) as a concrete expression of human unity. He explains that human diversity is the ornament, and not the weakness, of humankind:

As difference in degree of capacity exists among human souls, as difference in capability is found, therefore, individualities will differ one from another. But in reality this is a reason for unity and not for discord and enmity. If the flowers of a garden were all of one color, the effect would be monotonous to the eye; but if the colors are variegated, it is most pleasing and wonderful. The difference in adornment of color and capacity of reflection among the flowers gives the garden its beauty and charm. Therefore, although we are of different individualities, . . . let us strive like flowers of the same divine garden to live together in harmony. Even though each soul has its own individual perfume and color, all are reflecting the same light, all contributing fragrance to the same breeze which blows through the garden, all continuing to grow in complete harmony and accord.

-- quoted in "Unity in Diversity."