What I Eat

(Perfection Isn’t Possible, Improvement Isn’t Hard)

Because I write about the human relationship to nature and about what non-human animals think and feel, people sometimes ask me what I eat. Food can be complicated but improving our relationship with food isn’t so difficult.

I try to be thoughtful about it. I essentially never buy farmed animal products, especially farmed meat. I try to avoid processed foods, products (even vegetable products) of large farms, and I even try to avoid supermarkets. I eat fish that I catch.

In nature there is constant predation. For years I studied hawks and falcons and fish-eating seabirds. So I’ve seen more natural predation—and natural starvation—than the average person and I understand that birth and death bookend every life. In nature, if a predator kills an animal for food, that prey animal got to be who it was supposed to be until the moment it was caught. By stark contrast, animals on modern farms seldom experience one single moment of life as they might have enjoyed it. That’s why for me, how animals live is more important than whether they die—because we all die. On modern factory farms, animals are often forced to live worse than they are caused to die. So I don’t want anything to do with most animal farming.

In addition to the misery often created, animal farming ruins vast amounts of land, pollutes water with fertilizers and toxic chemicals, feeds us toxic traces and hormones, grows antibiotic-resistant bacteria, depletes the ocean’s small fish to make animal feed (thus robbing fishes, seabirds, and ocean mammals of food), and contributes enormously to the atmosphere’s burden of the planet-warming greenhouse gasses carbon dioxide and methane.

And almost all commercial farming—I’m talking now about vegetables, fruits, and nuts; plus plenty of home gardening and landscaping—also ruins vast amounts of land, pollutes water with fertilizers and toxic chemicals, feeds us toxic traces, and contributes enormously to planet-warming carbon dioxide. There is no free lunch, not even for vegan diets.

Food is important, but so is what we drive, how we live, and the size of our families. And more important than our personal choices are the policies and subsidies of governments, which determine the big impacts and the scope of our choices. Individually, voting and who we vote for is more important in the big picture than whether we might choose to have a dairy-containing slice of pizza or an ice cream cone on a hot day.

Partly because there is no entirely free lunch, I am not a complete purist. I travel a lot, occasionally to other cultures, and sometimes the best choices seem different than what I’d eat at home.

When I’m a guest in a home, I gratefully eat what the host has prepared. Increasingly, friends who invite me to dinner say things like, “I was thinking of making chicken but because you were coming I stuck with pasta.” That’s good.

At home, beans, squash, Portobello mushrooms and lots of veggies often make for fine and filling fare. We have a small garden and grow some of our greens, tomatoes, and squash. Never any pesticides or commercial fertilizer. We have several lavishly cared-for chickens who wander freely all day and return to the coop at night. We eat their eggs. We live near the coast and I catch certain abundant kinds of fish to eat. (Because fish experience stress and can feel pain, we usually chill them quickly by slipping them into an ice bath). I dig clams and sometimes buy farmed mussels. Occasionally I buy wild Alaska salmon. Alaska’s salmon fishing is the only economic force standing between the greatest surviving wild salmon population on Earth and logging and mining proposals that would permanently ruin those rivers for salmon, bears, eagles, and so many others; I want to support the fish by supporting the fishermen and their fight.

I love that a fish that I catch, clams I’ve dug, eggs from our chickens, or something from our little garden, all spark stories around our table. If you can share the story about where your meal came from, it’s probably pretty good food.

Of course like most people I do need to buy food. So I try to buy organic. I get many of my vegetables from a local greengrocer who gets most of their produce from local farms, much of it organic. We are not perfect, but we try to be mindful.

And although a lot of things would be better if everyone was vegan, being vegan is not perfection either. If I catch a fish, I don’t harm the ocean’s capacity to produce another fish. But if I eat broccoli or grapes or almonds, they’re all grown on land that used to be the natural home for many plants and animals; land that is now effectively destroyed for butterflies, birds, and wild mammals. Palm oil, though “vegan,” is a nightmare for tropical forests, wiping away vast communities of non-human beings including most of the orangutans on Earth.

The tradeoffs are not always simple or obvious, or even intuitive. But for me, local and organic matters. Cruelty matters. Knowing where your food comes from matters. Being perfect isn’t possible, but we can ask which food does less harm. That’s why improving our relationship with food isn’t so hard.

(Edited December 18, 2023)