Modern attitudes

Crumbs, there's the script for a film there!!!

I made a friend at a Mother and Baby group who was entirely vegetarian for medical reasons. Her digestive system could not tolerate meat or poultry although she could manage white fish. When she was in long labour with her second child a bossy midwife insisted that she must eat and presented her with a plate of shepherds pie. My friend warned the midwife that it would make her very sick but under pressure said she would eat the potato topping. She managed a couple of forkfuls but the potato was soaked in beef gravy and the inevitable happened - she began to vomit with huge convulsions - and out popped the baby unnoticed.

I think it is a good idea to ask if the beggar would like something to eat before you buy it, as someone may have given him something 10 minutes before you kindly did, in which case he might not be hungry and might prefer something that he can keep wrapped up out of the sun (if there is one) for several hours to have later.

Faye,I appreciate how you feel now, when you have enough food and how you would feel after starving for a week, but I think that after 3 weeks or more you might feel differently.

I say that because all of us would probably throw up if someone offered us a piece of human meat, but there are many fully proven examples of people under extreme hunger conditions, with no immediate help for their situation eating, not just human flesh, but killing and eating it.

Had every right to refuse it. Not sure if he seemed grateful, as it didn't say, but agree totally with MargaretX re you can't say what you would do unless you have been there. Remember the plane crash in the Andes? (was it?) where they ate the flesh of the dead. (apologies if you're having breakfast!!). But then I'm not sure if any that tucked into their fellow passengers were veggies! If you asked me now, I would quite categorically tell you I wouldn't eat a human being. But if it meant dying. Well watch out.

A hundred years ago animals bred for food were not managed in the same way as today. Animal husbandry was very different.

I am vegetarian for two reasons and religion doesn't enter into it. The first reason is I don't like the idea I would be eating an animal, the second is how that animal lived and died. Being really honest, I am not sure if I would have become vegetarian if I thought animals bred for food were treated well and I didn't have concerns about animals welfare.

If I was the homeless man and very hungry, I would have accepted the gift and thanked the person for their kindness. I would have scraped the tuna off the bread and eaten the bread. We're lucky that we live in a country where there's places where he could get food, so he was not starving. I would guess if he was starving, he would have eaten the entire gift.

So yes, attitudes towards food have changed, but so have attitudes towards animal husbandry. Unlike a hundred years ago, most people these days have no idea about the processes used to fill our supermarkets with meat, poultry and fish. They don't want to know either.

I am a vege. I really could not cope with a fish flavoured butty the smell of fish really puts me off.

I could probably eat ham or such like. or I could pull out the filling and eat the bread which would at least give me some useful energy giving carbs.

You're right, riverwalk, and the story did say that he appreciated the bun and hot drink.

But the man could well have shown gratitude Bags which you say would have been your first concern.

Gratitude for the bun & drink and declining the tuna roll. Nothing ungrateful there - he was being offered something that he didn't need or want.

Should a blind man allow himself to be taken across the road by someone who mistakenly thought he needed the other side, in order to show gratitude?

FAYE you take words like starve into your mouth and say such a thing. If you were starving you would eat anything. Starving people eat grass and snails and insects and drink poisoned water and give it to their babies. Never talk about starving unless you have really been there!

Anyway, I've decided (and said!) that it's what I would do in that situation, not what others should do.

It wouldn't mean complicity. The purchase had already been made.

Well, he could have taken it and then thrown it away when the giver had gone, but that would mean being complicit in the eating animals/fish trade. No. You shouldn't expect that of him.

It is now fifty years this year since I became a vegetarian, I could not knowingly eat meat. It just would not go down, I would be physically sick. If I ever ended up lost in the desert with nothing to eat but meat I would have to starve.

When I said that I think most rules about food came from religions until recently, I was not just talking about vegetarianism. It has been during my life time that the RC Church abolished the rule about not eating meat on Fridays (I guess they didn't count fish as meat but it is, being animal flesh). I think many Jews still won't eat pig products, Muslims want halal meat, etc. All these are food rules springing from religious traditions. It makes sense because food is so central to people's lives and, like rules about sex, it was a way of exerting control over people's lives for whatever reason.

Re the situation in the OP, I think the reason I feel uncomfortable about it is because if I were ever in such a situation (there but for fortune) my main concern would be to show gratitude to the kind person who was giving me the food. My feeling of wanting to show gratitude would over-ride any objections to the particular food that was being offered. I'm not saying others should feel like this, only that I do.

Back to the OP - I always give beggars a couple of euros then they can spend it as they want. My Mum once had a beggar at her door and she gave him 10p and said "Don't spend it all on beer!"

The Hindu diet is mainly vegetarian, but it's probably because they don't eat cows. They can eat chickens but there's not enough to go round.
We don't eat meat away from home, and when we've visited India there has always been a delicious selection of veggie dishes on offer.
They eat fish, but like chicken there's not much about, so they've really worked on developing a veggie diet.

Jains are vegetarians - they even don't eat certain 'living' plants.

They are the only ones that I know of.

"Vegetarianism is strongly linked with a number of religions that originated in ancient India (Jainism, Hinduism and Buddhism). In Jainism, vegetarianism is mandatory for everyone; in Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism, it is advocated by some influential scriptures and religious authorities."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_and_religion

Which religion practices vegetarianism ?

The man in the OP is course a product of the time in which he lives - he knows that if he turns the tuna down he won't literally starve to death, assuming he's living in this country. So I suppose you're right about it being a 'modern attitude'. But that doesn't make him any less sincere.

As an aside, a Muslim scholar once told me that they can eat pork if the alternative is starvation. Of course as with any religion their written words are subject to interpretation.

Thank you for the responses. They are more or less what I expected–I've no problem with that, btw–but I can't help feeling that a hundred years ago such a story would probably not have cropped up. I mean the part about refusing a particular kind of food on principle, not the part about people being kind.

And that's why I titled the thread "Modern Attitudes". I think our approach (in developed countries at least) to food has changed a great deal because of its relative abundance nowadays and the amount of choice we always have.

I used the term pseudo-religious with some misgivings. I understand people's objection to the term but I decided that it was suitable because, as far as I'm aware, until fairly recently, rules about what could or could not eat by certain groups of people were only laid down by religions. I think most food rules are still religious in origin though that is also changing in the modern world.

Maybe the man wasn't ravenous and thought the muffin and hot drink was sufficient, and the tuna roll could be given to someone who wasn't a vegetarian. It could be that he was ravenous but still held on to his beliefs.

I think we all know that many everyday average folk become homeless, no doubt long-term vegetarians, Muslims, etc among them.

Because the man is homeless why should he be expected to surrender his belief that eating animal flesh is wrong? God knows how little self respect ad pride he has left why rob him of more

jingl that's so true. There are are sorts of people living on the streets, from a huge variety of different backgrounds. Many of those I've met have been very generous with what little they have. One man busks and buys himself what he needs from his day's takings (usually not very much and often just about enough for a hot drink) and then puts the remainder of his money (usually pennies, but on a good day maybe a pound or two) in a charity collection box. When I pointed out that if he saved that money it would be better for him he told me there are others in need who may be worse off so he wants to help them. His actions may not be sensible, but I do admire his kindliness and thought for others.