Food for Thought: I Eat Meat

Pictured here, the view from TLC Ranch. Not pictured on the other side of the camera, a very happy woman.

A thought-provoking post by the usually mild-mannered Michael Ruhlman is stirring up a lot of commentary over at Megnut, where he's guest-starring on her blog. The gist of the arguments center around the right to eat meat—including foie gras, lobster, bacon, duck, you name it. Vegans and omnivores alike are contributing to what hasn't quite become a donnybrook, but which clearly has some people riled up. I'm not riled up, not about Ruhlman, whose words, as usual, are worth lingering over.

"[I]n our self-consciousness [we] have become hubristic, and therefore harmful. Make no mistake: we are animals. I am no different from a salmon. Why else would I return to Cleveland!? Cleveland! I had to return. I returned by smell. I returned to spawn. I’m not kidding. There is no other logical justification for the apparently ludicrous decision to live in Cleveland when I don’t have to. I think if we acknowledged our place in the animal kingdom—happily at the top of the food chain—and stopped thinking we were so damned superior to animals, it would be a better earth all around. We are animals who eat other animals. There is nothing wrong with this."