Once Upon a Time We Ate Animals: The Future of Food by Roanne van Voorst

Author:Roanne van Voorst [Voorst, Roanne van]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9798200747542
Google: PlwmEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B096TL8QJV
Published: 2021-12-28T00:00:00+00:00

Shifting Notions

Around 2018, the male image once again began to shift, this time not thanks to riled-up women but to men who no longer wanted to identify with “tigers” or other animals. They didn’t want to eat animals, period.

At the forefront this time were cooks, who wanted to show that plant-based dishes could be just as nutritious and strengthening as meat; bodybuilders and other athletes, who had built their muscles using plant-based proteins; and vegan celebrities who spoke out openly and critically on the image of the male meat-eater.

In the UK, Derek Sarno and his business partner created a new image of what “real” men eat with their cooking company Wicked Healthy: the recipes they share with hundreds of thousands of followers online and in their cookbook are extremely barbecue-able, with the added bonus of improving your chances of getting a six-pack, as plant-based recipes are often much leaner than traditional, “mannish meat.” In Man. Eat. Plant., male vegans discuss why they stopped eating animals, and the book contains recipes for dishes that come out just as “bloody,” “smoky,” and “juicy” as those that were seen as typically “manly” during the Carnist Age—except this time Man Fodder 2.0 is made from beets, tofu, and other plant-based products.

What these men are doing is taking the concept of “masculinity” and turning it on its head, shaking it, and prying it open until it better fits who they want to be: strong, healthy, Men’s Health cover model–worthy, and not violent. They only choose aspects of the traditional idea of masculinity that they find attractive: barbecuing, nutritious hearty dishes, and six-packs. The rest have been scrapped.

Actor, designer, TV presenter, and vegan Daniel Kucan did something similar in his blog. He let his readers know he missed meat, “every dang day” as he put it himself, but he felt the resistance to that desire to be a show of strength, which made it masculine. “I don’t understand,” he wrote, “since when is it manly to do what’s easy instead of what’s right?”

His justified question made me think of the author Jonathan Safran Foer, who wrote in his book Eating Animals: “Two friends meet each other for lunch. One of them says he fancies a burger and orders one. The other also fancies a burger, but he then thinks there are more important things than what he suddenly feels like eating, so he orders something else. Which of the two of them is the sensitive one here?”

Both Safran Foer and Kucan do not completely reject the traditional idea of the “strong man,” but they have just adjusted it slightly. They suggest that for a “real” man, mental strength is just as important as physical strength, if not more so. Doing what you know is morally correct, even if—or perhaps because—you find it difficult and have to put in a little work; being disciplined: that is manly. Otherwise you give in to something you find tasty, comfortable, or easy, while deep inside you know it doesn’t sit well with your deeper values.

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