For years, I've encountered vegans and vegetarians of every stripe. Ones who've read the movement's essential texts and those who know them by reference only. Some have walled themselves off in vegan communities, most prominently in Washington, D.C., and Portland.
It is a very hard choice to go vegetarian or vegan. Some have told me it feels almost like falling off a cliff when you cut yourself off from meat and dairy. Some vegans and vegetarians react to that separation from what they call SAD—the standard American diet—by walling themselves off socially from omnivores. I know a vegetarian who will not kiss a meat-eater, for example. I know vegans who will only dine with carnivores under duress.
Stephen McFadden
Sides of beef await cutting at the Washington Beef slaughterhouse in Toppenish, Yakima County.
Stephen McFadden
Sides of beef await cutting at the Washington Beef slaughterhouse in Toppenish, Yakima County.
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To a person, they are passionate about their reasons for ditching meat and dairy. But I've seldom heard vegans get passionate about the taste and texture of the food they eat.
The food before me was certainly prepared with care and compassion. But it doesn't have the power or intensity you'd want with a pleasurable meal. Chowder made of tofu and soy milk is just wrong.
BUT IN THE YEARS to come, there will be more and more faux chowder in stockpots. The market for all the so-called meat and dairy analogs was estimated at $1.5 billion in 2002, according to the Mintell Consumer Intelligence company. For perspective, that's the approximate value of all apples harvested in the U.S. each year.
Veganism and vegetarianism have caught on among teens and twentysomethings. Statisticians are having a tough time tracking it, but there are studies, estimates, or claims that suggest that 37 percent of teens don't eat red meat (twice the number of 40 years ago), that about 1 million teens were vegetarian or vegan in 2002 (double the number of 2001), and that 10 percent of 15- to 18-year-old girls say they are vegetarian.
The meat industry knows something is up. In 2002, the National Cattleman's Beef Association launched zip4tweens (www.cool-2b-real.com), a Web site aimed at 8- to 12-year-old girls that has gentle suggestions all over to consume beef products.
The dietary dialectic is everywhere, including the home of Washington Beef President Gayland Piederny. When his daughter moved to Seattle a few years ago to attend Seattle University, she went vegetarian. It led to spirited discussions between father and daughter—"speeches," as Piederny remembers them. At home one Christmas, however, Mrs. Piederny encountered her daughter raiding the refrigerator late one night. There were leftovers of prime rib in the fridge, which the daughter was eating. She is no longer vegetarian, her father says.
You can see signs of it in every supermarket, too. Ten years ago, there was no soy milk or rice milk at mainstream stores. There is now. And if there were not a market for the dairy analogs, they wouldn't be there. Vegans and vegetarians must also be credited with the vast improvement in the quality of supermarket produce over the past decade.
You can see the signs elsewhere, including the slaughterhouse that I toured. All the steps taken to ensure that the cows go to their deaths calmly and without struggle came about because PETA hammered away at McDonald's for years about humane handling at its beef suppliers' facilities. McDonald's then required its suppliers to meet a series of humane handling standards much stricter than those enforced by the USDA.
That's the best thing to happen to meat-eating in a generation. Maybe it will prompt the meat industry to get back to old-fashioned animal husbandry.
When we get there, I will thank the vegans and vegetarians. Then I will eat a steak.
pdawdy@seattleweekly.com
