Food Matters

This is a wonderful article in the food issue of the New York Times Magazine called "Against Meat." Read it!

While my reasons for being a mostly vegan are very different from Jonathan Safran Foer's reasons for being a sometimes vegetarian, the way he talks about a person's journey to decide what to eat is very well told and thought provoking.

He write, "Feeding my children is not like feeding myself: it matters more. It matters because food matters (their physical health matters, the pleasure they take in eating matters), and because the stories that are served with food matter."

I won't give away the end of the article, but it builds to this touching last line, “If nothing matters, there’s nothing to save.”

It really made me think about being vegan and why I am vegan. And the link to Jewish culture and Jewish tenets made the article even more thought provoking for me.

"Jewish ritual and symbolism strongly encourage this notion of demarcating a sharp division with what came before — the most well-known example being the smashing of the glass at the end of the wedding ceremony. Things were as they were, but they will be different now. Things will be better. We will be better."

I don't remember the exact days I started stripping meat and cheese and eggs from my diet, but I have kept this diet as most Jews keep kosher. It is just something I do. Sure, my weak digestive system has a lot to do with my diet, but Foer points out that food gives an identity. Like how I have to have a Matzah Ball on Rosh Hashana and Passover even if I have it in myown special pot with vegetable broth, because that is what we eat on those holidays.

Foer writes, "In high school I became vegetarian more times than I can now remember, most often as an effort to claim a bit of identity in a world of people whose identities seemed to come effortlessly."

This article is about the importance of your dietary choices and the greater importance of the stories that come with your food. Well, I hope you have been enjoying the stories of my food and I will continue to try and share my food with you. Because food matters.

Read the article.