Carbatarian

I was once in conversation with a woman who was lamenting that her daughter had become a vegetarian. Now, it wasn’t the fact that her child had given up meat that was the problem. She promptly followed this declaration with an eye roll and a sigh, proclaiming that her kid was putting on weight because she was actually a “carbatarian”.

There was a lot for me to unpack there, so I think I simply tried to redirect. Because, really, weight comes and goes and this so called child was actually a grown ass adult fully capable of managing her own choices. Plus, I might be a touch sensitive when it comes to demonizing and entire class of macro-nutrients simply because of current diet fashion. But I digress.

I tell this story because I routinely slip into phases of vegetarianism. I won’t ever claim that I am 100% vegetarian for good simply because I know myself and after a while I am really going to want a kebab. When that happens, I like to know that I won’t have guilt or shame over that one kebab, you know? But I have never been a big meat eater, and these vegetarian phases somewhat land on their own. I may be driving down 75 in Georgia and pass those huge chicken houses and think, man, that’s a little mean, isn’t it? Or I will get passed by one of those chicken semis with the cages loaded all to high heaven and back with those poor suckers just freaking the hell out in the wind on their way to becoming chicken sandwiches. I always feel bad about that. Seems kinda rude, honestly, all that suffering.

But mostly what happens is that it just starts to smell and taste bad, and so, I don’t want it. Then, for that period of time, I am a vegetarian. This time is one of those times and has been so for about the last eight weeks.

Unfortunately, I have had to travel during this time. I have also had to attend a lot of events and dinners. (My second job: corporate wife. Good times.) What I have noticed over this particular vegetarian cycle is that to be a vegetarian out in the wild is to sometimes admit that all you have is the carbatarian option. So to have very limited choices—because of a cultural blindness/ laziness—and then be shamed for working through that narrow bandwith is something that needs to be brought to the table, in my opinion.

So lets talk for a minute about those carbatarian options that are quite often the only options. In the last two months I have been to two functions. One had a vegetarian option and one did not. That vegetarian option? Three stalks of steamed broccoli gently paced next to two cups of pasta with creamy pesto. Vegetarian? Technically, yes; there was no meat on that plate. But was it a vegetable dinner? No. Not even remotely. It was a carb dinner. The non-vegetarian dinner I was served consisted of chicken (so we won’t be eating that), two florets of steamed cauliflower, and...two cups of pasta with creamy alfredo sauce. Were there vegetarian options on that plate? Technically, yes; I did not eat that chicken and could have been fed. But was is a vegetable dinner? Not even remotely. It was a carb dinner.

At the restaurants I landed at, I found that my options were baked potatoes, french fries, mac and cheese, grilled cheese or pasta. See the theme? Vegetables aren’t sexy, and a lot of people associate them with over-boiled canned creations a la Depression-era Grandma. They also turn fast, so if people aren’t ordering them, restaurants have a greater waste which cuts into the margins. So I get it on a very surface level. Carbs are easy, comforting, and will stand longer. They’re just following the money, right?

Yet, somehow, many purely vegetarian/ vegan restaurants manage to do exceedingly well serving just these unsexy, cost-prohibitive items. I have been to purely vegan restaurants where you want to pick up the plate and lick it—with nary a carb in sight. There is one right here in Naples if you know where to look. I’ve been to omnivore restaurants where the chefs make purely vegan dishes that sit on the menu all year round—with nary a carb in sight. They are delicious, by the way. There are two right here in Naples if you bother to look. So I know it can be done. I know it can be done profitably. And it can be done well.

So why do so many places out there believe that a vegetarian will just be satisfied with a baked potato and a broccoli side? Why are they willing to leave real money on the table, believing that vegetarians are a niche audience that don’t need to be served? Why do we both demonize carbohydrates and rely on them so heavily instead of just stocking (and using!) the damn vegetables?

I think (if you bear with me here) that it is a situation kin to our love of grass lawns. Grass is incredibly wasteful of resources but screams that we are rich enough to have resources to waste. Meat is extremely wasteful and expensive to produce. For much of human civilisation, rich people got to eat meat and poor people got vegetables and carbohydrates. Irish farmers got potatoes; English lords got fresh game. There were poaching laws in place that absolutely prevented the poor folk from hunting meat for their tables. So to have meat at your meals indicated wealth and status.

We are hundreds of years out from that type of social structure, but the dregs of it remain. Dining out as we know it arose in 18th century France and was a way for disenfranchised nobles to have a taste of the familiar. “Restaurants” feature menus with meat dishes that speak to this noble culinary habit. “Grabbing a bite” has been around much, much longer and echoes the food of the peasantry—carbs and vegetables with maybe a little low-quality, off-cut meat. Poor people all over the world have made due with vegetables and grains as their staples. So much so that the colonial stigma of vegetarianism and carbatarianism remains in our collective consciousness.

Rich people get meat, so of course, to serve meat indicates an inherent wealth. To serve peasant food lowers the class of the meal and therefore the class of the establishment. Tough luck, vegetarians. You crass plebes, you.

There is plenty of research showing that if we all lowered our consumption of commercially produced meats that we would be healthier and create a real dent in the environmental issues that we are facing. I am not at all suggesting that we all go vegetarian; the need for protein (and to some extent animal based protein) is real. But what I am suggesting is that we have a lot of cultural bullshit to process when it comes to our diets and the role that vegetables play. If we can’t trust the front line developers of our collective culinary palette to embrace vegetarian dishes and sustainable vegetarian cooking, then who can we trust? Mom?

The same mom that loses control of the teenaged palette? The same mom that has to figure out how to feed several different people after a full day of work? The same mom who is already doing more than her fair share? Mom isn’t a trend mover, y’all. She’s the person who nags you to do healthy things and is most often ignored for being a nag. We need the people who have the popular microphone to simply start making creative changes. And if we can’t do it for the right reasons, then lets at least fake it with the wrong ones until we get it right.

Vegetables aren’t just good for you. They are delicious. They’re cool. They’re dead sexy.

Maybe if we start thinking about them as something rich, we could start making progress. And I could stop being a carbatarian and start actually being a vegetarian.