Please allow me to be cynical, it's Xmas.
Before the adjectivation goes overboard starting this weekend when the festive season commences & all you can hear would be a proliferation of 'delicious', 'scrumptious', 'tasty', 'indulgent', 'luscious','superb', 'lavish',.... even 'sexy' sometimes. Rightly so because it's the time of the year when we should celebrate & everybody has the right to enjoy himself as he/she pleases. Before initiating the feast & reverting to my usual positive & jovial mood, let me use irony, sarcasm to unleash my repressed aggression in the role of a doomsayer. To be honest, I am fed up with meat at the end of the year. One of my New Year's resolution would be to eat less of it. Don't get me wrong, a double whopper meal was my favourite lunch when I first came to London & still, rarely, I am weak & foolish enough to punish myself with a family bucket to devour on my own. As Bob Dylan said I am younger now & , personally, diced steak & pinky burger don't go effortlessy down my elegant throat anymore; when they do they get stuck in my intestines for ages. My stomach has become too sensitive or it's the subliminal effect of my intensive reading addiction. I found an interesting article in the books review of The Sunday Times culture section regarding the history of the treatment of animals in Britain ( 'Animal Encounters:Human and Animal Interaction in Britain from the Norman Conquest to World War One' by Arthur MacGregor). Apart from confirming the exploitation of beasts & a diet relying heavily on meat in the past, it was very intriguing a mention to a theory of plenitude; we humans seem to be so positive & optimistic to believe that our world has got plenty of stuff, that our resources & supplies would never end. It seems to be in keeping with the narcissism of nowadays, when we can, individualistically, consume as much as possible without care for future generation & the planet. There is the environmental issue of meat production which can negatively impact on eco-systems & poses questions of sustainability. There is the health risk of meat consumption with several scientific publications linking a carnivore's diet with an increase in death, cancer & heart attacks. There is the recent controversy about food hygiene between Westminster Council & burger restaurants concerning meat served bloody or in 50 shades of pinkish. Above all, there is a trend, a buzz, a beefy hashtag wich has uncounsciously dominated us all since the recession started: a desire to be hippy. It was cool, it was affordable. In the beginning it was about clothes, then we moved from our bodies to other bodies & therefore meat. When we became all covered with moustaches, beards & any sort of hair, we needed a catwalk to show it off & what's better than a street market? By coincidence,wandering kerbs, we found ourselves very attracted to our childhood naughty & greasy food: salty, sugary & juicy slabs of meat modified in every form & aggregated to filling ingredients & spices. Before there was the guilt of eating junk food, the bad image of burgers & chips so... a cosmetic meaty make-up was required: local suppliers, handmade products, posh chips, cool & young traders always handling a smartphone for regular tweets. Ohhhh.... clever marketing can win hearts & wallets. It's like being posh upside-down, when we queue under the rain for a trendy burger joint in cool Clapham or Shoreditch which don't accept bookings, in order to eat some messy food ,without the availability of the greatest invention in human history -a fork. Asking how American-style processed cheese is really made & asking why some American/Mexican bottocks are so ginormous is like asking Bob Dylan how many miles a man needs to run to digest a burger. Thanks for listening. It's time to go back to my ironic cheese straws.
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