I’m proud to say that I have survived the last loony century and integrated nicely into the present one, reaching the 60 year plus yard line, a baby boomer who came of age in the swinging 60’s and early hippie-fied 70’s meaning I’ve seen a lot of idiotic food fads come and go.

Remember “Macrobiotic”? The diet that was popular way back then among the insanely trendy do-gooders that promised to balance your yin and yang if only you avoided eating anything with  the slightest flavor and would scoff down anything that ended with the word “sprout” or endless versions of tasteless and formless tofu.

Needless to say that the unfortunate off springs of these maniacal  “health freaks” as soon as they escaped the chains of Macroville would send the stocks of MacDonald’s and other junk food emporiums skyrocketing, their bodies desperate for sustenance and the forbidden meat. Anyway the practitioners of this pseudo-diet that guaranteed to make you the perfect human being were all middle class wannabe arm chair radicals and the owners and staff of those so called macrobiotic restaurants were all Berkley outpatients!

Everyone has a vegetarian friend or two and I really am not bothered if they wish to avoid red meat, but vegetarians aren’t vegetarians because of some unnatural empathy with animals, no not at all!, most just want to feel a cut (pardon the pun!) above us Neanderthal meat eaters.

 Enter into a good steak restaurant, and feel the undeniable vibes of merriment and happy debauchery all washed down by goblets of luscious cabsavs and merlots but if you have the misfortune to mistakenly walk into a vegetarian establishment it has the ambience of a morgue, the diners glumly staring into their plates of bean sprouts, tofu stir-fries, and micro weeds. “I hate this,” they probably admit to themselves, “but it makes me superior to everybody else.”

And oh how those despicable non-meat eaters when invited to a “normal” restaurant can transform a happy and neurotic chef into raging tyrant of contempt for anyone closely related to a vegetarian, “What the f–k! He screams at everyone, I’ve aged that sodding piece of beef in my underwear draw for two weeks and now he tells me he is a f–king vegetarian!!!!,” And if that is not obscene enough Vegans are even more irritating, the ones that won’t even eat honey. “Bee slavery” they call it. What is more natural than bees producing honey and humans harvesting it? It’s in the bee’s bloody interest to have their honey harvested and it doesn’t hurt the bees, doesn’t kill them, so what is the problem?

And the most besotted food sect of all is of course the raw food fanatics. A more wretched lot would be harder to find. I have nothing against salads. A juicy rare steak preceded by a good Caesar salad is a thing of joy. All of those wonderful vitamin full greens require a little heat to make them tastier and edible. Broccoli, green beans or young asparagus which when cooked, turns a beautiful vivacious green and the chemicals that are good for you in tomatoes are only released through cooking. Who in hell doesn’t cook? There isn’t any culture that has a cuisine that is based on raw food only. Of course the English take this to the extreme and so over cook their vegetables that you would be better off drinking the cooking water than eating the soggy mess that they call vegetables.

 Like all insane food fads, the Vegans make foolhardy and improbable claims for their miserable habit. It cures cancer, it cures pimples, you won’t age, and it’s good for your sex life….ha! Ever tried to make love with a vegan? Their libido is like their diet, limp, insipid, devoid of spice and totally tasteless!

If you want to eat raw food, go ahead, but don’t make bullshit claims or theories.

 Vegetarians would rationalize their diet by comparing us with the animal kingdom. “Our closest relative the chimps doesn’t eat meat,” Like hell they don’t! Not only do chimps eat meat they eat each other including their off springs. Okay, I admit that’s a lousy example. But those lovely intelligent dolphins eat each other too.

Let’s face it we are supposedly cleverer than most animals. Their intellectual capacity is confined to hunting, fighting and getting laid – Hmmm well maybe we aren’t that different after all but that little bit does makes the difference.
An additional holier-than-thou characteristic of the raw food fanatic is the idea that some how eating only raw food cleanses the body; this is the most favorite of the food nut fantasies. That through fasting or some highly repulsive diet, you will rid your body of toxins and years of crap gets flushed out of their systems.

I guess that they never took elementary biology at school. In truth the stomach digests food by breaking it down with hydrochloric acid and unless you’ve been eating metal or glass, nothing stays in your body for years. The intestines use bacteria to further break down food, take out what the body needs, and what’s left is pushed out as waste. Getting colonics, another food nut belief, is actually harmful, because this flushes out the necessary flora the intestines need to do their job. If you want things to flush normally, drink lots of water.

We just seem doomed to embrace any cult that takes away the simple pleasures from human existence. Eating things we take pleasure in, indulging in sex and actually enjoying it, drinking, smoking, whatever, there’s always some quack, or theorist ready to take the enjoyment out of it (and making a fortune by writing a book and selling it to those poor unfortunates who instead of enjoying life pay to make themselves miserable) .

Anything that causes pleasure for its own sake seems to make them nervous. Perhaps that’s why so many cling on to these ridiculous diets, based not on good culinary principles, but vague off the wall theories and quite frankly, even if you could prove that eating uncooked or only vegetarian food makes you immortal, who the fuck wants to live for ever?  I’m not giving up the pleasures of a succulent steak, a juicy hamburger, a perfectly roast chicken, or a nice grilled piece of fish for an eternity of nothingness.

I love food and that includes those foods that were once living creatures. As the Cantonese quite rightly say “if the back is to god, then you can eat it!” Of course I will eat plants and simple life-forms. But I prefer the more evolved ones. I mean, why should I eat the proteins of lower life-forms, when I can eat already complete, highly developed proteins?
We eat meat because every living species on this planet eats what it can get, as long as it is healthy and tasty. Vegetarians should get comfortable with the fact that every living creature needs other dead creatures. Even their salad greens grew on dead and rotten little weeds.
Vegetarians are basically hypocritical Neo-vege-facists. It is arrogance, naivety, and the temptation of group therapy with other vegetarians over how much you love nature and animals and flowers and plants and those cute little puppies. So stop it. Eat meat. If you want to, take some potatoes as a side dish. And if I still haven’t convinced you, if you still – yet knowing the truth – want to be a vegetarian, than please, please, keep it on the low! Always remember: As John Cleese once said, “If God did not intend for us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat?” And so delicious as well!