{"id":8129,"date":"2016-02-20T02:09:46","date_gmt":"2016-02-20T10:09:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=8129"},"modified":"2016-02-20T07:13:30","modified_gmt":"2016-02-20T15:13:30","slug":"dietary-restriction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=8129","title":{"rendered":"Dietary Restriction"},"content":{"rendered":"

People who've known me for a while know that I don't eat mammal tissue. I used to say red meat<\/q> instead of mammal tissue<\/q> but I got tired of repeatedly dealing with my mother's thinking that, because the pork industry was calling pork the other white meat<\/q>, it somehow was no longer red meat<\/span>.<\/p>

In fact, I especially don't want to eat pork<\/em>, because my more general rule is Never eat anything that could have loved you.<\/span> and I'm quite sure that a pig could have loved me. Indeed, I think that various non<\/em>-mammals, such as crows and parrots, are capable of things such as love.<\/p>

An Internet friend recently mistook my standard for a reciprocity<\/em> rule, as if I would reward various creatures on the chance that they might<\/em> love me. But it's really a capacity<\/em> rule; I don't want to eat an animal who has enough psychological sophistication for love<\/em>.<\/p>

I am<\/em> willing to eat other animals. I'm even willing to eat animals whose ancestors<\/em> could have loved me, but who, as a result of how they have been bred over many generations, now seem to lack such capacities. (However, I am put uncomfortably in mind of Lovecraft's story, The Rats in the Walls<\/q><\/a>, in which human beings had been bred by cannibals to a much diminished intellectual state.)<\/p>

As a result of my desire to avoid consuming creatures that are somewhat conscious, and of my special concern for pigs, I find myself thwarted when it comes to foods that contain gelatin<\/em>, including marshmallows. It is possible to derive gelatin from fish, or to substitute for gelatin various non-animal products (such as agar-agar) in the making of things such as marshmallows. But, for the most part, gelatin is derived from the skin of pigs and substitutes for gelatin are not used.<\/p>

Kosher<\/em> gelatin proves to be a trickier matter than one might imagine. Partly that's because gelatin can be made from bits of cow<\/em> (still not on my diet). But, also, there's a Rabbi Dovid Cohen who argues, perhaps with sincerity, that bones and skin are considered inedible<\/em> under Juda\u00efc Law, and that therefore a manufacturer has a sort of clean slate<\/em> when beginning with them. OU<\/abbr><\/a> kosher certification doesn't entail a promise that pig tissue did not go into any gelatin that might be present.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People who've known me for a while know that I don't eat mammal tissue. I used to say red meat instead of mammal tissue but I got tired of repeatedly dealing with my mother's thinking that, because the pork industry was calling pork the other white meat, it somehow was no longer red meat. In […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,318,5,4],"tags":[1384,1381,1385,1386,1362,1382,1383],"class_list":["post-8129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-ethics-philosophy","category-personal","category-public","tag-diet","tag-gelatin","tag-kosher","tag-orthodox-union","tag-pigs","tag-pork","tag-red-meat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}