Meat, Potatoes, Milk & Greens

Meat, Potatoes, Milk & Greens

The Indian debate on beef and cow slaughter which has been playing proxy for the tussle between Congress (and friends) and the BJP/Sangh Parivar, has recently been joined, quite inadvertently, by the WHO.

The World Health Organisation report finds all read meat, beef, pork, sheep, goat, and processed meat such as sausages, bacon, ham, luncheon meat etc. as likely to increase the chances of contracting a variety of cancers.

This kind of juxtaposition could not have been orchestrated for love or money but takes the politics of the cow to the realms of whether the meat-eaters are doing themselves any favours. Other reports talk of the presence of feces in US ground beef. Let us understand we are not talking of dubious Indian hygiene standards here, and yet.

And this set of health warnings came shortly after another report said that addiction to cheese was as strong as addiction to tobacco. Of course, many meat and cheese eaters are upset all over the world, but are determined not to give up their favourite foods. Besides, quasi-medical reports of this kind tend to be overtaken by other quasi-medical reports that contradict them further on down the stream.

Sunday Times of London Style Magazine food critic AA Gill, a Scotsman with a Sikh sounding name, wrote a piece on meat some time ago. But seriously, when you’re Gill without the Mc, and hobnob in places that resemble the erstwhile El Bulli, hamburgers can’t just be regular hamburgers and hope to make the cut. 

On the other hand, McBurgers in beef, pork and chicken, can’t be sniffed at either. They’ve been sold so plentifully, that laid end-to-end, the advertising goes, they would voyage from the earth to the moon several times over.

Gill wrote, somewhat enigmatically, that “meat is all eugenics and fascism”. Did A.A.G mean the genetic engineering and up-breeding involved in producing superior meat to eat? And the fascism, presumably it’s the uncompromising attitude necessary to produce the quality stuff?

This is sweeping characterisation, but now you have associations of cancer with both meat and its processed avatars to help it along. In Western meat, the live cow and pig  are processed on the hoof to make delicious meat too. Still, Gill’s Dr. Mengele inducing phrase might be something one might expect from Boris Johnson, a sort of British/Turkish Mr. Trump.

Mr. Johnson, blond shock and paunch, is a former Spectator editor and current Lord Mayor of London. He recently went to Japan and body tackled an 11 year old Japanese lad to the mat in a bout of mock rugby. Back in London, he likes to comport himself on a bicycle and is said to have prime ministerial ambitions.  But it wasn’t Johnson but Gill who wrote the piece on meat. 

Gill is a reticent sort who favours dark-glasses and eschews alcohol, despite being a food critic. But then he writes with equal aplomb on TV shows, fashion, architecture, and politics if the fancy takes him. 

This “meat” tag applies, like code to beef and pork in the West, because they are considered the only serious meats of choice.  Fowl, Turkey, Duck, however formidable, are also-rans, decided poor cousins. They could be meat substitute fit for vegetarians.

We can however include processed meats in the discussion here because the WHO has just indicted them. And the line on what is processed and what is not in the West is already a blur. Thank God, fish, prawn and lobster are off the hook for the interim except for when they pick up too much mercury from polluted waters.  

Huge, tasteless-in-themselves, turkeys, have been known to feed mini-van fulls. Also, one wouldn’t know how to classify non-farmed meat such as snake, kangaroo, horse, seal, elk, moose, dog, tortoise,   hedgehog, partridge, quail, venison etc. particularly in the cancer stakes. Besides, barbecuing meats concentrates the carcinogens.

Where that leaves the eponymous potato that tends to accompany the meat, is anybody’s guess. In India, an alu is an alu,  and can travel unaccompanied, but sometimes is also a rather apt euphemism for male tumescence. Alu subzi suffices everywhere on the sub-continent, if there is roti and a katori of dal, maybe some onion and green chilli on the side.

But in the West, the humble potato is an accompaniment, even when processed into crisps and chips. The potato is like an excellent back-up singer without whom no stars  would shine up front.  However, ask them, and the back-up singers will be self -effacing. French-made gravy on the other hand, has attitude. It always thinks the meat is nothing without it.

Another report, on Western milk, indicates that it contains all manner of additives fed to the cows that gave it up. And ergo, that drinking quantities of milk production enhancing boosters, inescapable if one imbibes, may not be all that good for humans. This largesse of cow hormone boosters, cow vitamins and cow tranquilisers may be divine for the bovine, but not so for others. 

The matter of addition and enhancement and processing, it is seen, goes much beyond the vegetarian/non-vegetarian divide.

Milk from the free-on-the-range variety, spending their days in bucolic grazing, like the produce from organic farming, without using pesticides and chemical fertilizers,  presumably doesn’t poison as it  feeds.

But the protected Indian cow, fed partially on garbage and plastic bags, apparently have Chinese Walls between themselves and their very fine milk. But what about our water held responsible for the lead in Maggi noodles made in India?

And strange suspended matter in the Coca Cola bottled here. The water in mineral water bottles is also suspect, and found to be contaminated sometimes.

 As an explanation, East may be East with its poor standards. But the West was meant to be guaranteed clean. Now you’ve got a conundrum of both dirt and chemicals to think about, and there’s only so much a poor body can take.

In the face of such controversy therefore, it is good to remember that milk and meat are two very different things.  Reference the cow as life-support system, to drink from, make ghee/butter/cheese from, is one thing. But eating it, to taste, turn into glue, bags, coats and shoe leather, is mostly business, but neither eugenics nor fascism, unless the cows are force fed chemicals without their consent first.

And so, at last, to the question, beyond Holy Cows and the world out there. More so, since we Indians love our headless chicken, and don’t have much truck with beef or pork anyhow. Does India have meat on its mind at all, or is it merely and mostly potato  with a little green?

For: The Pioneer

(1,105 words)

October 27^th, 2015

Gautam Mukherjee