Portman reiterates a lot of the points Foer made in his New York Times Magazine essay a couple weeks ago, namely, that "food is symbolic of what we believe in" and that when we teach children how to eat, we are teaching them values as well. She argues persuasively that factory farming leads to not just animal but also human suffering — the phrase "copious amounts of pig shit sprayed into the air" may be all that's necessary to put some people off of mass-produced pork. None of this is new, but all of it is thought-provoking, whether you eat meat or not. Where Portman starts to bother me, though, is here:

I say that Foer's ethical charge against animal eating is brave because not only is it unpopular, it has also been characterized as unmanly, inconsiderate, and juvenile. But he reminds us that being a man, and a human, takes more thought than just "This is tasty, and that's why I do it." He posits that consideration, as promoted by Michael Pollan in The Omnivore's Dilemma, which has more to do with being polite to your tablemates than sticking to your own ideals, would be absurd if applied to any other belief (e.g., I don't believe in rape, but if it's what it takes to please my dinner hosts, then so be it).

I too find the idea that vegetarianism is "unmanly" sexist and obnoxious. But Portman — and Foer — lose me a bit when they discount the importance of consideration. Part of this, I have no doubt, is personal. As I've said here before, I'm very nonconfrontational in person — I don't mind spewing my beliefs on a blog, but I absolutely hate telling people what to do in their own dining rooms. And I hate refusing meat at people's homes (though, except for fish, I still do it), because I feel that I'm implicitly criticizing the way of life of someone who's showing me hospitality. I completely understand people who don't cook meat themselves, but are willing to eat it when the host serves it, and I constantly struggle with the conflict between politeness and vegetarianism.

There's an element of sheer cowardice here — I don't want my friends to think of me as that annoying, proselytizing vegetarian. I've heard all the jibes Portman mentions ("What if you find out that carrots feel pain, too? Then what'll you eat?" and "Hitler was a vegetarian, too, you know"), they make me upset, and I try to avoid hearing them again. Portman would probably say I should just suck it up, that my concern for my host's feelings and for my own is nothing compared to the suffering of animals. Thing is, I don't like Portman's example. It would of course be "absurd" to say to oneself, "I don't believe in rape, but if it's what it takes to please my dinner hosts, then so be it." But eating meat is not the same as rape.

Maybe it's just a particularly bad day for comparing things to rape, but Portman's words make me angry. Women are not the same as pigs, and while I wouldn't befriend a known rapist, most of my friends eat meat, and I consider them good, moral people. Many ethicists believe that animals should have the same rights as human beings, and that hurting an animal is as morally repugnant as hurting a human. Their arguments have a strong basis — the capacity of animals to feel pain and psychological suffering — and they deserve hearing. At the same time, I cannot hear meat-eating and rape in the same breath without feeling that the enormity of the rapist's crime is being minimized. I know this was not Portman's intent; I know she isn't trying to trivialize sexual violence (although the fact that she signed a petition in support of Roman Polanski does call into question whether she takes rape seriously in all cases). Still, I think the morality of meat is more complicated than she lets on.

Yes, animals suffer. Yes, factory farming (which is, it's important to remember, not the only option for the cultivation of livestock) is bad for human beings too. And yes, some scientists believe that we need to eat far less meat or even no meat at all if we want to stop global warming. But there are greater and lesser evils in this world, and I believe that eating animals is a lesser crime than sexually assaulting a human being. Portman writes that Foer "unites the two sides of the animal eating debate in their reasoning" when he argues that humans are different from animals, and thus have different responsibilities. But if we truly want to unite the two sides — and, I would argue, if we want to reduce meat consumption the world over — we would do well to avoid demonizing the large majority of people who don't yet agree with us.

Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals [Huffington Post]
Expert: Meat Consumption Causing Warming [UPI.com]

Foer writes eloquently of his early attempts at vegetarianism, his re-commitment when his son was born, and the moral underpinnings of his choice ("Try to imagine any end other than taste for which it would be justifiable to do what we do to farmed animals"). But what stood out for me about his piece was the descriptions of food he'd given up. He writes,

Some of my happiest childhood memories are of sushi "lunch dates" with my mom, and eating my dad's turkey burgers with mustard and grilled onions at backyard celebrations, and of course my grandmother's chicken with carrots. Those occasions simply wouldn't have been the same without those foods - and that is important. To give up the taste of sushi, turkey or chicken is a loss that extends beyond giving up a pleasurable eating experience. Changing what we eat and letting tastes fade from memory create a kind of cultural loss, a forgetting. But perhaps this kind of forgetfulness is worth accepting - even worth cultivating (forgetting, too, can be cultivated). To remember my values, I need to lose certain tastes and find other handles for the memories that they once helped me carry.

It's true that not every tradition is worth preserving, and plenty of things that we now consider abhorrent were once happy memories for some. At the same time, Foer is more honest than many vegetarians about the personal cost of not eating meat. For me, becoming a vegetarian didn't involve jettisoning a lot of beloved foods. I was such a picky kid that my favorite foods were toast, apples, and ice cream, and although I enjoyed a brief food renaissance when I went to college, I didn't really become emotionally attached to meat. Giving it up at the age of 20 was easy.

But I got sick. Vegetarianism led to near-veganism led to an obsession with "healthy" food (combined with a summer on a very strict beans-and-broccoli budget) that left me underweight, cold, and anxious all the time. I was never diagnosed with an eating disorder, but my friends were concerned, and my doctor sternly told me to gain weight. Which I did, in part by eating seafood again.

I still do it, and I'm still not completely proud of it — while I don't share Foer's ethical fervor for the vegetarian cause, I do know that fishing can be as bad for the environment as factory farming. I think of my eating style as a way to eat less flesh and use fewer resources than I would as an omnivore — which it is — but it's also a way of honoring good memories and keeping bad ones at bay. Being a pure vegetarian or a vegan still reminds me of a time when I was sickly and scared and not taking good care of myself. Eating the occasional clam linguine or California roll reminds me of getting better, of feeling physically and mentally healthy again. I know that many, many people thrive on animal-free diets, and I believe that, with the right preparation and the right frame of mind, I could too. And I don't believe, as some do, that vegetarianism is just another eating disorder. But I am afraid of how easily my ethics can turn into self-denial, my self-denial into self-punishment. And I don't want my diet to remind me of my summer of beans.

Foer says that when his grandmother made her chicken and carrots, she "wasn't preparing food, but humans." And it's true that food is rarely just food — it's also the stories and the values that surround it. For me, for now, a can of anchovies tells a story about healing myself, and it's not a story I'm willing to give up just yet.

Against Meat [NYT Magazine]

There's also something to be said for the ingeniousness of its editorial-advertising department synergy: in one six-page (ooh, see what we did there?) feature, "Fall Fashion Picks from the Pros," the magazine actually enlists executives at five major department stores to assemble seasonal "looks" from clothes, accessories and cosmetics all entirely available at their respective employers. (Also intriguingly, the stylist on the feature appears to have been paid by the department stores themselves?) But where the magazine exercises editorial independence it falls flat: its warmed-over list of the 25 best-dressed ladies at New York Fashion Week included Teen Vogue editor Amy Astley, whom we've pictured here so you can ogle all that personal style she is exuding. Its columnists, too, are still clearly finding their voices: an item by "Socializer" columnist Kelly Killoren Bensimon contains the puzzling rumination: "You can't afford cigarettes or taxis anymore. Might as well walk outside. Might as well walk outside and inhale the toxic fumes. I look at it as the new nicotine." Huh. However, as with any middling celebrity tabloid, P6TM serves up a few little nuggets of gold blissfully un-couched by editorial commentary. Like for instance here's author Jonathan Safran Foer complaining about the movie Liev Schrieber made from his book:

"There's an old saying. Don't f—- a pig in the a— and then bitch and moan when your d—- smells like s—- the next day."

*And also, to be sure, if we hadn't been writing a miniscule item for the magazine earlier, because we have a lot of friends who work there, at least we did before we wrote this review.