I’ve become interested in vegetarianism and veganism recently. I’d like to say I’ve suddenly developed compassion for other species—any other species…actually, let’s include ours in there too…except I haven’t. In fact I was most deeply affected in this respect by the book Food Matters by Mark Bittman, which I read on our recent trip to Hawaii.

There wasn’t anything particularly new in the book, I’d read the various things in bits and pieces elsewhere, but for some reason, the way he juxtaposed the effects of factory farming on the environment (for instance: the fabulous fact that raising livestock creates more greenhouse gases than does all of transportation…cars, planes, the whole nine yards) and the effects of our diet on our health (which I’ve known) and came up with Change Or Die really made a big impact on me. Here’s Bittman on the subject at a TED conference.

Bittman’s strategy of eating “vegan until six” makes a lot of sense to me (though of course I haven’t done it yet): eat a strong plant-based diet until dinnertime, at which point nothing is off the menu, although after a while you’re going to lean much more heavily toward the vegetables and greenery and use the meats as a condiment, not as a main course. And as a convenient side effect you’re going to find your health improve and your weight drop. Just a side note.

Between “vegan until six” and Michael Pollan’s seven words mantra, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” it seems really easy to choose what direction to head in.

I really like Bittman; I think How To Cook Everything is a fabulous general cookbook, and I am looking forward to picking up How To Cook Everything Vegetarian. (Well, after our remodel is done. Not buying more stuff now!) I am also bored crapless with the meals we’ve been having. I can see the kids aren’t going to be thrilled by moving to a more vegetarian diet, but my theory on dinner runs something like this: “You can eat it, or you can not eat it. There is nothing else being served.” So maybe they’ll adjust.

And by the way, if you don’t buy what Bittman or Pollan has to say, maybe you’ll buy Barack Obama:

(Let’s all take a moment to imagine how George W. Bush would have responded to that question. Or pronounced the word “vegan,” for that matter.)

Anyhow, so I’ve been reading up more on vegetarianism and veganism (hilariously, I’ve discovered that the built-in Macintosh dictionary doesn’t recognize the word “veganism”—uh, guys, you might want to get on that before someone shows up in your office with a flamethrower), and I’ve noticed something omnivores do whenever the subject comes up. It’s like a tic. A really, really weird tic that makes me go “Hmmm.” Obama does it in that YouTube video. In the letters to a recent Salon story about Jeffery Masson’s appeal to veganism, letter-writers did it over and over again. The general gist of it goes like this:

I like to eat steak.

or:

What you need is a good cheeseburger.

And all I can think every single damn time I see it is: Is somebody a little defensive about something?

It’s always about cow meat. It’s always specifically about consuming cow meat and how it’s superior to all other forms of food. I know that Americans worship this idea of the West and cattle ranchers and what have you, but…the knee-jerk defensiveness makes me think: You guys know there’s something wrong with your diet, right?

It is impossible to be informed about our current food production system and our understanding of nutrition and keep to the standard American diet with any confidence or gusto. Consuming cow does not make you superior; in fact, depending on the kind of cow, it could make you quite sick.

We know there’s something wrong. We know we can’t continue the way we’ve been going. And the entire world can’t move to our diet (which they are trying damn hard to do), because if they do the entire freaking ecological system is going to collapse. (Seriously. Look into it.) Start with yourself and discover different ways of eating that don’t depend on cutting up other living beings (that have a central nervous system—don’t go for that canard again).

And stop with mentioning the cheeseburgers already, unless you want to signal that you secretly know how bad your diet is.

Update: And indeed, the letters to this Huffington Post column about the enivronmental dangers of livestock production continue this you-will-pry-my-steak-from-my-cold-dead-fingers meme apace.