Church, meat, planet, chick pea.

The Catholic Church has today urged the faithful in England to renew the tradition of abstinence from meat on Fridays. It transpires that Catholics were supposed to do a penance of their choice on this day, after the rules on eating meat were relaxed, but most of them have forgotten to do this. According to the latest commands issued from a council of Bishops in England, abstaining from meat is to be re-established because it is “easy to remember”. This will no doubt help the devout to remember to think about Jesus at least once a week, even if they forget or are too lazy to go to Church on Sunday.

Church

Actually, the fish on Friday tradition is probably even better than Church, because it kills two birds with one stone: 1. thinking about Jesus’ horrific death on a weekly basis and 2. protecting the environment. In fact, you could almost leave Jesus out of the equation entirely and refraining from meat for one day a week would still be a clever idea. This is because the rearing of meat is so much more energy and land-intensive than farming crops. According to the UN, rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than driving cars. Vegetarians can either bank the smugness accruing from this fact, or drive a Humvee guilt-free for the rest of their bean-powered lives.

For this and other reasons, I have been trying more or less successfully to be meat-free on Fridays for a few years. I also give up meat during Lent. In the interest of balance, I should however point out that my Church attendance has been appalling.

Meat

But there is still a problem. Simply replacing all the meat in your diet with fish would also have undesirable consequences for an important part of the ecosystem, namely fish. The parlous state of cod and haddock stocks in our waters is well documented. Climate change and overfishing have taken their toll, and according to a Radio 4 broadcast this morning, we could be seeing a significant change in the fish population, with British waters becoming home to an increasingly Mediterranean kind of inhabitant. As one particularly articulate representative of the fishing industry put it, “I know this is an overgeneralisation, but British consumers like their fish in white slabs and covered in batter or breadcrumbs”, but it looks like we may have to change our tastes to accommodate what in my experience are smaller, bonier fish.

Planet

Another solution would be to go without any animal matter at all for one or more days a week, but it strikes me that British culinary tastes would need to become much more flexible. We are enthusiastic consumers of exotic cuisine, it’s true, but while the curry is now firmly established alongside fish and chips as a national dish, how many Britons (not including vegetarians) regularly opt for a chick pea-based dish? I fear very few, and yet this has become one of this blogger’s all-time favourites.

Chickpea

I must admit I was slow to appreciate the appeal of the chick pea. I knew the Latin word for it before I had seen one on a plate. But I can honestly say that I can no longer imagine my life without it. There are many reasons to become a ‘part time carnivore’: to save the planet, to improve one’s health, to put one’s relationship with God on a firmer footing (whatever floats your boat), to be forced to explore other culinary cultures, to take a bit of the strain off the poor animals, or perhaps, if you have not yet done so, to discover the chick pea.

Links:

CatholicCulture.org - Meatless Fridays return to England this week http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=11707

UN News Centre - Rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than driving cars, UN report warns http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?newsID=20772&CR1=warning

Part-Time Carnivore http://www.parttimecarnivore.org/

This week's edition of Headscrolls was brought to you by the International Federation of Chick Pea Farmers.