Today is Easter, and in some homes, people are eating a traditional meal of lamb. This is, of course, to symbolize the sacrifice of Jesus as the Lamb of God, referencing the mystical cannibalization that is the heart of Eucharist ceremonies.
Perhaps a more basic mystery is that all biologic life feeds on some other form of life - botanic (plant) life gets its energy from the sun. (Which in itself is miraculous - imagine if all you had to do to feed yourself was to go outside and stand in the sun?). It's a means of reconciling the knowledge that we are eating a form of another living creature's pain and death.
Culturally - this brings up the idea that meat is the centerpiece of a meal. In America, it is often now the largest portion of food on the plate - vegetables, grains, fungi are "side dishes." Although, I am given to understand, prior to the rise of modern industrialized agriculture, the traditional centerpiece of most meals was the grain - bread or rice.
But as meat has become the "main course," for all American meals, not just holiday celebrations, I can't help but wonder if this was the impetus for the rise of mock meat. Soy and seitan, shaped into burgers, nuggets, "bacon," "steaks" - because culturally we can't wrap our heads around the notion that a meal cannot have some form of meat, pretend or otherwise. Some of this is probably a cultural relic in which meat was difficult to come by, and some of it is probably due to nutritionism and the "importance of protein."
Ask some people about vegetarians, and they will ask, "How do they get enough protein?" Yet, as the graphic from my first post on this blog reveals, it's pretty easy. This is not to say that sometimes a vegetarian might have a craving for something like the comfort food of their youth, perhaps a burger, and that a soyburger is a bad thing. But most vegetarians and begans will agree that it is possible to make a complete meal out more than just substitute meat products.
But today, for Christians at least, is a celebration of a sacrifice. This holiday is preceeded by Lent, the idea of "sacrificing" oneself by giving something up in order to create a better self. But I wonder, what if, in searching for a greater self, we recognized ourselves as part of a greater, biotic community? What if the "sacrifice" was to eat less meat, not just to ingest less death, or for health reasons, but to contribute to the prevention of global warming? What if the Earth iteslf, instead of being seen as something to exploit, was considered something worthy of a giving up something for?
