‘I see you are eating the meat of a pig,’ an American sharing my table in the hotel eyed my delicious crispy bacon. ‘Disgusting animals, they eat worms and roots from the ground. They roll around in mud and their own excrement.’
‘You must be a vegetarian,’ I suggested as he was eating a bowl of gravel-like cereal.
‘Vegan,’ he said. ‘Cooked meats contain secondary amines, and they are carcinogenic.’
‘So that is not milk on your cereal but some vegetable juice that lacks calcium. You must be taking supplementary vitamins to stay healthy.’ I glanced under the table to see whether he was wearing leather shoes, but his feet were tucked under his chair. He was not used to being challenged by a committed omnivore. Perhaps I should pay attention to a healthier lifestyle.

Coffee comes in for most comments. In the popular press, it is shown to be harmful, cancer-causing, and to be avoided. The following week’s newspaper will hail coffee as the drink to improve your intellect and prevent dementia, not to mention physical prowess.
I grew up knowing that food was to eat immediately because there may not be any more for some time. So the idea that some food was bad, immoral, toxic or worked as a drug or medicine was strange. My drink, back in those days, was water, sometimes with government orange-flavoured cod liver oil added. I decided to look into this healthy living thing and see how it worked.
There is a town in California, Ojai, dedicated to healthy living. I could start my day there with a shower with specially prepared shower gel to match my skin. Those little red dots on my skin are not infective; they are acupuncture marks. Then a Detoxifying breakfast with a drink of water, but not ordinary H2O. This water has been filtered through volcanic rock for 20,000 years (use before March 23).
Then it is time for my Meditation. I sit quietly and listen to my breathing and borborygmi, the technical term for churnings of my stomach and of those nearby. (Ha, I just googled borborygmi to check the spelling, and google offered Boris Johnson as an alternative – Boris the bowel sound.)
Back to my day of healthy living. It’s time for my Massage, but it has to be quick because I’m booked for Reflexology, and then when my feet have been tickled, there is a Herb Walk among the thyme and myrtle.
Thirsty after the walk, I drink a Tru-blend Organic Smoothie made from exotic jungle fruits I have never heard of.
My next call is to a talk at the Institute of Theosophy and Metaphysics. Of course, Conan Doyle knew all about that, photographing fairies and all.
Retail therapy is essential for a balanced lifestyle, so I call in the Organic Art Emporium, where I can buy anything from Buddhas to Bumper Stickers.
Now I can relax while having Desert Clays applied to my skin and listening to a narrative about the Chumash Indians who used to live hereabouts. They are not here now, and I must not be curious about what happened to these noble savages because it would upset my mental balance. The last Chumash-speaking Indian died in 1965.

I decline a Colonic Lavage using water from a mystical lake in the mountains. It is implied that I will never have a regular bowel habit again. I’m told some of that stuff has been up there for fifty years.
With the day drawing to a close, I realise that I have missed my Infrared Séance, and there has been no opportunity to learn how to line up my Birthstone and other Crystals with the ancient force lines that travel through the Saint Gabriel mountains.
Will I survive the night without these health-sustaining activities? If I do, I shall go to the Psycho-Emotional Workshop tomorrow morning before the Tactile Tree Treatment and the Skyward Meditation Hike. Then it is high time I consulted my nutritionist again about that bacon.

Or, maybe, I shall have a full English and go to the beach with a Dan Brown novel.
Excellent Mike. How is it that we have survived so long?
As the man said:- If I’d known I was going to live so long, I’d have looked after myself.
Dear Mike,
Frankly, I’m disappointed by this one. You have conflated a very important and serious topic with several esoteric/dubious concepts. I am a vegetarian because I think it’s simply wrong to kill animals for our taste. There are of course other proven reasons (health, environmental) why people are vegetarian/vegan and I admire vegans who live their lives by a principle.
The American had no business to lecture you. However, I am not happy with the way you have mocked the entire vegan/vegetarian concept. You have, in a way, emulated him by writing this. There will be many silent readers with this view. I just took the liberty of publishing them.
Your friend
Gopi
Enjoyed the post, Mike. I was brought up that all things should be consumed in moderation. Moderation is the key point. (My parents were kids during the war years – you ate what you got and rabbit was a very popular menu choice being cheap).
I have every respect for vegetarians and vegans but we were designed to be omnivores.
Having said that, I eat more vegetarian meals out of choice (so many of them are just yummy, the best reason to eat anything!) but I do like meat, fish etc and will continue to consume them in moderation.
Gopi, I am sure what Mike is “sending up” here is the quackery that can so often be associated with alternative lifestyles rather than vegetarianism etc itself.
Ironically, vegetarianism/veganism is main stream now (and rightly so) but it should be a question of personal choice. Am not convinced Mike was mocking that in itself. What he was sending up was the quackery (and that can come into all kinds of things. Religion hasn’t been exempt from that either and I say that as a Christian).
I understand the concept of not liking an animal to die for the meat trade but so many of the animals we see would not have been born at all had it not been for that trade.
There are some things I refuse to eat on principle – veal and pate de fois grae (which I think should be banned. Nobody deserves their liver stuffed to bursting).
But personal choice, well thought out, whether it is a meat eating diet or a meat free one – I support that all the way.
I have always been concerned with the morality of killing animals for food. As a child we used to play around the back of the local slaughterhouse where the skulls and bones stimulated our ghoulish imaginations. Occasionally the butcher and his men would round up a few children and march us into the slaughterhouse where an animal would be fastened to a rope drawn through a staple on the wall. We children were told to pull on the rope drawing the animal to the staple, then it would be killed with a humane killer. This was conducted quickly and more humane than death through exsanguination in ritual slaughter where the animal chokes in its own blood. I could never eat meat produced in this way.
In my recent book I examine the ethics of Albert Schweitzer’s ‘Reverence for life’,where he advocates an absolute duty to protect all life, from the elephant to the blade of grass. Critics scorn this position arguing that it makes no distinction between morally significant and morally insignificant life but Schweitzer recognised a distinction between what is right and what is doable. In practice Schweitzer recognised that we have to make painful decisions and destroy lives. In Lambarene, when threatened with an outbreak of rabies, he ordered that all the dogs, including his own, should be killed. When the population of cats expanded beyond a manageable limit, he slaughtered several with his bare hands. He was not a vegan and was not opposed to all animal research, but he did insist that any injury to life must be “necessary” and “unavoidable”.
I have to disregard arguments against veganism based on reports of a community of fools, but need to question what limits meat eaters would place on the species that might be considered as potential food. What about companion animals? A former US President records how he ate dogs when he was young.
So much does depend on how you are brought up, David. Also to a certain extent when. It would be anathema to most now to eat dogs now we know how much more they are capable of in terms of being assistants to humans, as well as companions (oh and cancer detectors too). And I suspect it would be abject poverty that led to dog eating back then (and a way of dealing with strays).
Also there is a centuries old tradition of farming animals for food so it certainly isn’t new. Humanity always has ate a mix of meat (particularly the rich who could afford it more often) and non-meat items. A balanced diet (though ironically the potage diet of the average medieval peasant would be recognised as healthier now).
I want the meat I eat to be reared and killed humanely. I agree with you about not letting an animal choke in its own blood. There is no need for that. (You can stun the animal first, kill it, and then drain the blood out. I can understand why for religious reasons why some would want the blood out but there are ways and ways of doing that).
I’ve always seen the sense of mixed farms – dairy and arable. If your crops fail, you still have meat to eat. If the livestock doesn’t do so well (meaning the farmer can send few or any to market because they need to keep them), you’ve got the crops.
I personally won’t eat meat that isn’t “needed”. We don’t need veal – we’ve got beef, that is enough. Pate de fois grae is just cruel. Says more about those eating it and I understand the King has banned it.
Whether we will all end up vegetarian in the end, I don’t know. I suspect not. I suspect most will eat more vegetarian foods and limit their meat intake. Just rear the latter humanely and kill it humanely and never take more than you need.
It is interesting that some animals, notably cats of all sizes, have to have meat. They have no choice. We do and I simply choose to eat less and be picky about the kind of meat I eat. My parents’ and grandparents’ generations wouldn’t have been able to be picky so I am grateful I have the freedom of choice.
Quite an exciting vein of discussion has opened up and not one I intended. Sorry to upset Gopi, but I have re-read the initial dialogue, and I can’t see it bringing vegetarianism into disrepute. It aims a dart at virtue signallers and that one happened to be a vegetarian.
I hoped to get people to question the wisdom and usefulness of setting store by many of the health practices that abound these days and the snake oil salespeople that promote these scams.
Our meat eating has changed. I recall shops and market stalls selling horse meat. I was taught how to distinguish between a cat and a rabbit carcass hanging in the butcher’s window. Now we have ‘meat’ made from fungi and I have written before about getting animal protein from insects. Many food laboratories are trying to grow ‘beefsteak’ in the laboratory. I’m sure they will succeed, and then we can have beef without killing cattle.
I did not go into the dietary restrictions applied by religions – that really would stir things up.