Monday, December 28, 2009

Age of Transition: Meat

This morning I was trimming the fat off some pork chops to get them ready for cooking in a crock pot.  It occurred to me that this activity would be considered madness at any time more than 50 years ago, and also more than 50 years in the future.

Our ancestors would not chop off the fat.  They wanted as much fat as possible.  More fat mean more calories, which meant less chance of going hungry.  They also thought it tasted better.  Old cookbooks would tell you to rub lard on your meat before cooking if it was 'not sufficiently marbled'.  They would be amazed by any society where people would exert effort to make meat leaner.

Future generations will be appalled by the thought of handling and cooking raw meat.  Given the prevailing moral trends, they will probably be vegetarians.  Even if they are not, they will probably think about chopping up raw pork the same way I think about taking a live hog out behind the barn, slitting its throat, and butchering it.

We live in a strange time, one that has never existed in the past and will probably never exist in the future.  It is a transition between states of human existence.  Enjoy it while you can.

1 comment:

Esther Rimer said...

Neat how attitudes change according to access to carbs & calories, eh? I used to cut every bit of visible fat off cooked steaks. The look & texture repelled me. However, I now leave it on and even enjoy eating the bits others trim off. I'm not sure what happened, but since quitting refined sugar and gluten, that fat has become very tasty to me, and I don't mind the texture at all now.