How the Invisible Druid Eats
Originally published at invisible druid. You can comment here or there.
I've been putting off an article about eating to honor the kindreds for a long time now, mostly because anytime you even look sideways at people's food there is a giant outcry from all sides. Everyone thinks they know how people should eat for optimum health, environmental consciousness, happiness, etc. And as soon as you suggest a flaw in their logic they turn into rabid fanatics. Heck, sometimes it's not even about good things. Some people will angrily tell you that they live on Twinkies and diet coke and they feel great. Maybe they even do. So before I begin, I'm going to tell you what this article is and is not, and then I'm going to lay out a few disclaimers about myself.
This is not about how to eat for the best health ever. That topic is too complex for this nor does it matter right now. This article will also not make suggestions that are 100% easy. You want easy? Keep doing what you're doing. Nothing could be easier. It's not about whether you should or should not eat meat or grains or soy or sugar.
It IS about the impact of those things and the way those choices affect you, the planet, your community, and the kindreds (if at all).
Disclaimer: I'm a druid and a polytheist. I eat a paleo diet and I prefer local foods. I also have a powerful ice cream addiction that I'm working on and I exercise a lot. Note my bias and carry on.
I'm going to cover a few things out the gate. "Meat is murder". Sure it is. More to the point, it's killing since murder only applies to your own species, but let's not argue semantics. Meat is killing, of course. But let's acknowledge that so are grains and many vegetables and most of the rest of our lives. If you plant a field of wheat or potatoes or corn you dig up (and kill) hundreds of small animals from mice to rabbits to birds to reptiles to worms to insects .... tons of deaths comes from that one act. I am not laying a judgement on that, but we need to address right out the gate that you should not assume that you are not causing animal death just because you're not eating meat. So if your goal is to cause as little death as possible, just saying "don't eat meat" is not an acceptable answer. You're just passing the buck onto farmers. Let's be honest with ourselves.
And I think it's safe to sway that our ancestors have no problem with any particular foods. For some of us they may have had specific religious or cultural diets (kosher, halal, ethnic foods, etc) but I think it's a stretch to assume that they would look down upon us for not eating that way (however, a decision to honor their memory by eating in that way may be a very legitimate choice). Clearly the shining ones ate however they pleased for the most part in the tales told of them (they seemed to feast all the time in most cultures) and in most cases when eating was a problem for them it was about food scarcity or about eating at a time and/or place when they should not (see: Persephone). Taking that into account, the big concern here are nature spirits and the earth Mother (or whatever spirits of nature you venerate).
To begin with, nature spirits are likely not opposed to killing. Wolves and bears are predators. Boars are omnivores and eat as many insects and small animals as they can get their snouts on. Even hens and other birds eat insects. And those animals that are not predators on some level are often prey. A prey animal might prefer to live, but the spirit of a prey animal likely understands the cycle pretty well. In many cases, then, we should accept that the aversion we might feel to the idea of killing to eat is not part of spirituality or nature, but a symptom of how far removed from nature we really are.
That said, I think it is very safe to say that no animal spirit - predator or prey - is interested in waste. Kill to eat, yes, but kill as little as you can. That is, I think, the ticket to handling the moral issues associated with death for survival.
Meat: Your best bet here is to eat meat that was hunted, wild caught, or raised in as natural a way as possible (for cows this means that they were grass fed. For pork it means they were pastured, etc). Why? The simple reason is that the less grains and additives in your animals diet, the less other creatures died to make it. Also, there is less wasted water, fuel, power, etc. It's a cleaner system, ideally. And, of course, YMMV depending on where you are, so get to know local producers and ask them questions. If you can't find or afford these things, then simply buy the things you can afford and make sure to remember to be grateful not just for the cow or pig that lost it's life for yours, but also for the unseen animals that went into the production. Also, note that animals raised in this way produce healthier meat! It's not as crazy coincidence! It turns out that nature knows how to make this stuff! Also don't forget that meat is a lot more calorically dense than anything else you can eat. You need less of it than you do of a huge salad.
Meat part 2: While we're at it: eat as much of that animal as you can. I know you only like chicken wings drums and want to eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner .... but a chicken only has 2 of those tiny things. If that's all you eat, you're talking about many chickens per day. Will someone else eat the rest of that chicken? Probably, but let's do the chicken a favor and honor the rest of it. And seriously, look at the rest of that thing. Sure, beef filet is delicious, but there's a lot of cow left. Fat for cooking, livers and kidneys for eating .... if you expand your horizons a bit less of that animal goes to waste. And those things are really packed with nutrients, too!
Eggs: Not much to say here since eggs are not really chickens, but things that could have become chickens under other circumstances, but personally, i try to find a local source of eggs so that I know the chickens were pastures and left to roam is happy conditions. I like eggs, but I don't want miserable chickens on the other end (plus the natural eggs are higher in omega 3's and other nutrients like selenium that you just can't get in standard eggs).
Vegetables: The holy grail of vegetable finds are local farmers who grow things naturally with minimal chemical additives and use natural practices like crop rotation and co-planting to keep pests away, and who use natural seeds that they have grown themselves. They may as well also fart rainbows, though, because they are few and far between. if you find one, keep them, but odds are that the best you'll do is just finding local farmers who grow as naturally as they can manage and still get by. Hold onto these people and buy their vegetables. Try to avoid monocrop farmers. A farmer that rotates their cows and chickens into fields before planting knows their stuff for sure. Why? Glad you asked.
Aside: Monocrops: Sometimes farming is just about making good soil. In nature plants grow and then animals come along and eat them. they also kick up the ground and crap all over the place. Insects grow and live in this crap and then birds come by and claw at it, eating the insets while spreading the crap around with their feet to fertilize the soil so that when the vegetation grows back it's even stronger and healthier. (if you just said eww .... you have clearly never looked into the ingredients in industrial fertilizer. Go do that. I'll wait.) (Back? Yeah, I know. You're welcome.) That is how nature built the system and it's how the great plains became so lush.
Now the great plains are largely dry. Know why? Because there's no more animals there eating the plants because we killed all the buffalo. So the plants grow and take all the phosphorus and carbon out of the ground, but very little gets put back in. Just like we eat animals they, in turn, eat us (in the form of waste and ultimately bones). We now add chemicals to the soil to prop that system up when all we really need to add is ruminants. So try to find a farmer doing this and not using more and more chemicals every year.
Grains: Yes, those are monocrops. No, there is no reason to eat them and I do not. Whether you do is up to you and it's none of my business, but bear in mind that they are a monocrop by nature and that there's really no good way to find ethically raised grains. Organic is the best you can do. Good luck there.
Fruits and other plants: By and large fruits and other plants are pretty inoffensive insofar as how they are grown. they don't take up a ton of room and I don't give eating them a second thought. try to get them locally ... mostly because they will taste better and be fresher. Apples right off the tree are all their own kind of magic.
Other Spiritual Concerns: Anything that lived dies so that you can eat it from plants to pigs. As pagans sometimes it is enough that we show respect and thanks for that fact. If we were to take it one step further, we might want to know that that life was taken with reverence and kindness. Is there any way to know for sure?
Well, there is no alliance of pagan butchers, but fortunately for us there are other options. Kosher meats, for example, have to be butchered according to shechita, which is basically a Hebrew term for killing with respect and compassion. Sounds good, right? Well, the idea is great, but the truth is that most modern slaughter methods are just as kind if not moreso and far faster. Most animals today are stunned or rendered unconscious before being bled out. This isn't because the beef industry is compassionate, it's just because it's faster and easier. Cows are big and nobody wants to fight one. No, this doesn't work 100% of the time, but it works the vast majority of the time. Halal slaughter is not a lot different then kosher slaughter, but it is worth noting that the spinal column is left intact, which allows the animal to experience its death more completely. Depending on your outlook, this may be good or bad. I can see arguments either way.
Ultimately I'm more interested in making sure that animals are treated right while they live rather than for the few minutes they die, which are going to be unpleasant regardless. A pack of wolves do not knock a deer out before they bring it down, they just do and then they eat knowing that the deer put up a good fight. If hunting helps you feel more connected to this ideal, then I'm all for it. It is certainly a practice that was honored by our pagan ancestors and there are plenty of gods of the hunt to venerate while you're at it. I know very little about hunting, but what I do know is that if you're going to do it: practice. A clean shot is better than a bad shot every time.
As for the rest: There's a lot more you can do with food to get yourself in tune with nature and honoring it. Having your own garden is high on the list. Nothing will get you in touch with your agrarian precursors than tilling the soil like they did .... even if the patch you till is very small. In fact, the difficulty you experience tending a 10x10 garden will help you revere them even more. It's a wonder we survived at all! And bear in mind that most pagans say that we honor the Earth Mother best when we tread lightly. That applies to food, too. Local foods grown in a natural way will always be the lightest way to eat. And not to take too big a page out of the book of our Christian fellows, but a prayer said before meals will never go awry. Here's one I like:
As we begin our meal we take time to show our thanks for the creatures of nature that died that we may live, to the ancestors who showed us how to cook and eat, and to the shining ones who directed the growth of the meal before us.
My (very Baptist) Father in law always adds, "Bless this food. Bless the maker and the giver. May we have the vitamins and nutrients from it as you would want us to have for our bodies." I have always thought it was particularly sweet. It's a good reminder that meal time is about eating, but also about nourishing and about being thankful for everyone that made it possible. If you come at it from that attitude, then maybe the rest of the details are just that.