Thursday 9 February 2012

Meet Tovar Cerulli


Always a pleasure to big-up a fellow blogger - writing for the love of reading and writing.  Bloggers come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Some of us are silly, some investigative, some great at evoking wild spaces with sparse prose. The blogosphere has some amazing voices and some of them make it into traditional print. Tovar is a fascinating voice, the first person to diagnose adult onset hunting [read this one it's very funny], and my favorite 'foodie philosopher'  who has grasped the nettle of food bullshit, writing about the unintended consequences to food choices.

Have a watch of this, then have a read of his blog.

At twenty, moved by the compassionate words of Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh and concerned about the ecological impacts of meat, I became a vegetarian. Soon I went vegan.

Almost a decade later, having moved back to a rural community from New York City, I realized that all food has its costs. From habitat destruction to grain combines that inadvertently mince rabbits to the shooting of deer in soybean and lettuce fields, crop production is far from harmless. Even in our own organic garden, my wife and I were battling ravenous insects and fence-defying woodchucks. I began to see that the question wasn’t what we ate but how that food came to our plates.

A few years later, my wife—who was studying holistic health and nutrition— suggested that we shift our diet. My health improved when we started eating dairy and eggs. It improved still more when we started eating chicken and fish.

Searching for ethical, ecologically responsible ways to come to terms with my food, I began to contemplate the unthinkable: hunting. Two years later, I took up a deer rifle.


More soon, your pal

SBW

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I get into it with "holier-than-thou" veg-heads all the time--most are very Urban-oriented folks that have NO conception how their modern, urban lifestyles kill far more critters--unknown to them--than hunters/farmers/ranchers ever do! A common arguement is how much more land/energy it takes to raise beef as opposed to grain--but how much wildlife is destroyed or displaced by agriculture? It may still not be as much as natural land, but friggin cow pastures provide far more wildlife habitat than miles and miles of nothing but corn or wheat. And do we REALLY want to produce MORE grain to allow MORE people to reproduce? Isn't TOO MANY PEOPLE the REAL root of all our troubles? And an aside--their are some funny(well, not to vegetarians...) T-shirts out there(got to git me one!), with a picture of an American Indian, and the caption: "Vegetarian: Old Native American Term For Bad Hunter".....L.B.

The Suburban Bushwacker said...

LB

Yes that's a common one I hear too, I wouldn't mind if any of them could actually sight some research, so lazy. Tsk!

SBW

Exploriment said...

Thanks for the heads up. As someone who was quite happily vegetarian for 20 years, and who is now once again an omnivore, I will give his site a read. I had no problem with my choice, but I figure it's good to re-assess why you do what you do and believe what you believe now and again. Dogma is just not a healthy thing. If concern for the planet is a concern, I'm not sure sticking diligently to only one path is the best way to get there.

Exploriment said...

Oh and that lame "Vegetarian: Old Native American Term For Bad Hunter" shit .......Even when I was foregoing the eating of meat, I would have been an infinitely better hunter than a lot of hunters I know.

The Suburban Bushwacker said...

Exploriment

From what you've said I think you'll like his blog and book.

SBW

The Suburban Bushwacker said...

Exploriment

I would have been able to find through narrower gaps in those days!
SBW

Tovar@AMindfulCarnivore said...

Many thanks, SBW!

Anonymous said...

From a lot of the modern hunters I've observed here, if it wasn't for grocery stores and restaurants, there would be a LOT more vegetarians than there are presently!!...L.B.