Intro

“I’d been a vegetarian for over a decade, when a desert survival trip changed how I thought about food. This episode explores the hidden costs behind everything we eat and asks, “If we must kill to live, how should we live in return?” Welcome to “I Heart This,” my friends. I’m Ben Lord. Let’s talk about what we love. 

Script

By the time we killed the sheep, I hadn’t eaten for three days. I was on a multi-week survival trip with the Boulder Outdoor Survival School … And that’s how long it took us to walk to the isolated campsite in the Utah desert. We laid the sheep on the ground before we killed it. We positioned it so that its neck was over a hole in the ground with a bucket in it. Some folks gently held its legs. I held its back and gently stroked the shaggy wool just over its ribs. The sheep was surprisingly calm. It lay still, like it was used to this kind of thing. The guy who had drawn the short straw, placed the tip of his knife right by the carotid artery and our guide told him to do the best he could not to hesitate, to press down and cut out in one sure stroke. Everyone was quiet. 

Its last breaths were a kind of twitching spasm. I could feel the gurgling death rattle through my hands. So much blood sloshed into the bucket. It felt like it was over in an instant, and it also felt like it took forever for that sheep to die. I could hear my own rapid heartbeat in my ears. And I remember wondering … if I had drawn the short straw, would I have been able to make one sure stroke? Would I have botched it by not being certain enough? And as I wiped tears from my cheeks, I remember feeling relieved that I wouldn’t have to find out. 

So quickly, that bright-eyed animal stopped feeling like a someone and started to feel like a something. Like food. We hung it from a tree, pulled off its skin like it was a tight-fitting jacket, and cut all the muscles and organs into pieces. 

That one sheep would feed us for days, but the organs wouldn’t keep, so we ate them right away–the heart, the lungs, the liver, the testes. I’d expected to be squeamish, but after three days of hunger, every bite tasted like life. I could literally feel energy flow to my arms and legs. 

* * *

When I helped slaughter and dress that sheep, I had been a vegetarian for over a decade. 

My reasons were complicated. Partly, I wanted to be a good person, someone who lived without causing unnecessary harm. I was deep into yoga, and the first precept of the yogic path was ahimsa, non-harming. 

But I’d also spent my teens and twenties engrossed in the study of how our stone age ancestors made a living from the wilderness. And that self-imposed caveman apprenticeship had its own lessons about food …  about how hard it is to get. About how every source of food demands its own kind of expertise to acquire and to prepare. 

From the beginning, I was entirely aware of the irony of being a survivalist and a vegetarian. My ancestors ate pretty much whatever they could, and the environments in the world where a forager can live on plants alone are almost non-existent. 

It also taught me that my vegetarianism wasn’t as simple as it appeared. Our ancestors ate just about anything they could. Almost nowhere in the world could a stone age forager live on plants alone. I may have had ethical and environmental reasons for being vegetarian. But I was also vegetarian because it was easy. Because I had lived my whole life asking, “What would I like to eat?” and never “Will I get to eat today?”

Those weeks in the Utah desert were the fulfillment of a lifelong dream of mine–the closest I have ever come to experiencing something like the lives of our hunting and gathering ancestors. I learned so much about the world, about myself. And I also learned about food. I learned how, no matter what I eat, there is death in every bite. 

* * *

Contemporary life hides all that death. So much so that, at 30 years old, I had never killed an animal to eat. In my world, slaughter had happened far away from the eating. The plastic and styrofoam packages in the grocery store disguised the fact that the ground beef used to be a living, breathing creature. One that, like us, didn’t want to die.

And it’s not just animals. Plants die too. Decades of foraging made me wonder if the deaths of the plants I ate were not so different. They may not bleed or cry out. But there is some spark that goes out of them just the same. And I have sometimes looked back over a patch of wild leek or ostrich fern that I’ve foraged from with the same kind of uncomfortable twinge that I get when I remember that sheep dying. 

Foraging taught me, by comparison, how artificial the staggering abundance of food in my world really is. If we have enough food, it is only because technology has made it so. Agriculture is a kind of ecological colonialism. And every single farm and garden, no matter how organic or ecological or conscientiously managed, is built on death. And not just on death but on the annihilation of whatever ecosystem existed before it. 

As my friend, Tovar Cerulli wrote in his book, The Mindful Carnivore when he came to this same realization, “In tofu, I saw the rifles and shotguns used to plug deer in soybean fields. In grains, I saw the birds, mice, and rabbits sliced and diced by combines. … In salad greens, I saw a whitetail cut open and dragged around the perimeter of a farm field, the scent of blood warning other deer not to eat the organic arugula and radicchio destined for upscale restaurants and grocery stores in San Francisco … Even in the vegetables from our garden—broccoli and green beans, lettuce and snap peas—I saw the wild grasses we uprooted, the earthworms we chopped with our shovels, the beetles I crushed between thumb and forefinger, the woodchucks I shot, …I saw that the entire living, breathing, eating world was more beautiful and more terrible than I had imagined. … I saw that sentient beings fed on sentient beings.”

If we are to live we must kill, or at least pay someone else to kill for us …  and this isn’t just true for food. We destroy a little bit of the world every time we turn on a light switch. Every time we get in the car. Every cheap shirt we buy. 

There is no escape from this. It is a consequence of the immutable laws of thermodynamics. We will always destroy more than we create. There is no way to get out of this life with your hands clean. And there never was. We will always owe penance. 

When I got back from my survival trek in the desert. I was devastated by the extravagance of my old life, its comforts and ease. And I wondered, “Were all these comforts–the dishwashers and movies and ice cream I enjoyed– were they worth what the world had to pay so that I could enjoy them? 

What would I do with this new-found awareness? 

On one hand, I could push it out of mind. Lots of people do this. I’ve heard people say, “Don’t tell me. Don’t tell me about factory farms. Don’t tell me about the sweatshops that made my discount clothes. I don’t want to feel guilty.” When I got back from Utah, hearing things like this made me so angry. What unforgivable entitlement! But since then I have learned a little more compassion. Facing the suffering of the world is hard, and knowing your role in it is a heavy load to bear. 

On the other hand is a kind of radical asceticism, like the Jains who sweep the path before them lest they break vows of nonviolence by crushing an insect underfoot. I met a man once who tried to live only on fruits and nuts, the parts of plants that evolved to be eaten. He was gaunt and sallow. Even on a warm spring afternoon in Virginia, he huddled in his jacket. 

Denial or self-denail? I’m not comfortable with either. I am stuck with a muddy and imperfect compromise that I make up as I go. When I came back from the desert, I was often painfully mindful of the mortal costs of everything I ate, but I also began to eat meat again. Not a lot. And I chose it carefully. But I did. If every bite I take causes harm, then I aspire to eat gently, but also with gusto, with joy, with delight. 

I went to the desert to face all that head on. To not look away from the beauty or the ugliness. To see the consequences of my actions as clearly as I could. To feel the responsibility of what I owe the world. Not every meal needs to be reverential. But at every meal, I want to remember that food is sacred. Consecrated by some creatures’ sacrifice. Gratitude is the end and the beginning. 

If I must kill to live … and I must … then I am obliged to do something beautiful with my life. I owe the lives that I have taken that much. It is both the least and the most that I can do. And when the world, itself, someday comes to eat me, may there be a prayer of thanksgiving on my lips. 

Outro

“If this story resonated with you, I think you’d love my friend Tovar Cerulli’s book, The Mindful Carnivore. It’s a beautiful meditation on food, death, and gratitude—many of the words I shared today are inspired by his work. Thanks for a such a thoughtful book, Tovar. 

And if you’d like more reflections like this, the best way to help this little podcast grow is simple: share it with someone you love. A single recommendation means more than you know.

Until next time, may we all eat with gratitude, and live lives worthy of the lives that feed us.”

I Heart This is written, edited, and produced by me, Ben Lord. If you have a story about beauty, surprise, or seeing something in a new light, I’d love to hear it. You can always reach me at ben@iheartthispodcast.com. Our logo was designed by Briony Morrow-Cribbs. Our website is iheartthispodcast.com. Thank you so much for listening. And, as always, Be kind. Be curious, and be thankful.