On vegetarianism in the Arab world
Issandr El Amrani | Egypt food I was alerted to Joseph Mayton's latest piece on vegetarianism in the Arab world — Vegetarianism is not contrary to Arab culture — by Brian Whitaker, who comments further about on the issue in his blog.
Both Joey and Brian are vegetarians, and in fact I think Joey is even vegan and certainly very evangelical about his food ethics. I've discussed this issue with both of them in the last — only a couple of months ago with Brian in Beirut, as I devoured keba nayeh (spiced raw meat, one of my favorite Lebanese dishes) and he vegetable kebabs. I am obviously not a vegetarian, but am certainly sympathetic to some of the arguments against eating industrially-produced meat, and have been of the opinion that, in many parts of the world, those who can afford to often eat an excessive amount of meat. I am guilty of that myself at times, but generally — as the main cook in our household — keep a fairly reasonably balanced diet and often cook pure vegetarian meals. That being said, I love meat and see no reason to abandon it, although that is because I can afford to shop carefully for it and pay a premium for the best quality stuff (especially since I don't consume that much of it.) I'll happily forego factory chicken every day if I can have a delicious baladi bird (the equivalent of free-range) once a week.
For a while, Joey has been campaigning on Twitter and in his writings for vegetarianism as a solution to economic problems in Egypt, and presumably elsewhere. The context of this is a steep rise in the price of meat since the beginning of the year, as well as scandals over rotten imported meat and a more general drop in purchasing power for a good part of Egypt's population in the last few years due to high inflation and still-unexplained rises in the price of certain foods.
His argument for vegetarianism — which is ethical at its core — is deployed around economic arguments in Egypt:
In other words, even if you are not convinced of the moral case for vegetarianism, if you care about the future of our planet it makes sense to stop eating animals – both in environmental and economic terms.
In Egypt, for example, we see that hundreds of thousands of cattle are imported into the country for slaughter; lentils, wheat and other staples of the Egyptian diet are also imported. That all costs money.
If Egypt were to promote and incorporate vegetarianism into its economic policy, the millions of Egyptians who struggle and complain about the rising costs of meat could be fed. It takes around 16kg of animal feed to produce one kilo of meat for consumption. That's a lot of money and food that could serve the hungry population.
According to Hossam Gamal, a researcher at the Egyptian agriculture ministry, "the exact amount of money that could be saved by reducing meat production is unknown, but I have estimated it to be in the billions [of dollars]".
Elsewhere across the region, Gamal continues, "we could increase the health and living situation for millions of people if we didn't have to spend so much on maintaining the desire to eat meat".
I can support ecological reasons to reduce meat consumption, and campaigns to get people to eat less of it. But there are two problems associated with this. First, the question of tact in a country where many people cannot eat meat more than a couple of times a month. Secondly, you have to think hard about the available alternatives: there has also been a rapid increase in the prices of legumes — nutritious vegetables like carrots or spinach — as food prices generally increased in recent years. The fact is that, among the poorest, it is not only less meat that is being consumed, but also less green vegetables. What has increased, and quite dramatically so as we saw during the 2008 world food crisis that resulted in bread riots, is the consumption of bread and other carbs. The poorest, increasingly, are eating bread, onions, beans and cheese. The occasional bit of meat might be (along with certain feculents) an important source of iron and protein.
As for cultural resistance to vegetarianism, I think yes and no. Open any Middle Eastern cookbook and you'll find plenty of vegetarian dishes, perhaps more than, say, in a French cookbook. But there are those occasions that are specifically associated with meat, such as Eid al-Adha, as well as an association between meat and affluence that exists the world over. It would be much more fruitful, therefore, to argue for a low-meat diet than a purely vegetarian one (or — the horror! — a vegan one). This is a place where the state can enact policies to reduce the economic and ecological impact of large-scale meat production and encourage better nutrition, as well as inform consumers about the kind of meat they buy. Just don't be in a rush: there are surely more important priorities out there than the veggie jihad.
Reader Comments (10)
Who cares what Joe Mayton says on Twitter?
But while we're on it: Enjoy Beef and Broccoli.
no mention of al maari's vegetarianism?
What I do like about the idea of campaigning for a low-meat diet in Egypt: is that this campaign could target wealthy Egyptians (who would also, presumably, be responsible for running the campaign and producing the banners, TV ads etc. associated with it). This would be a welcome contrast, I think, to the horribly condescending and apparently useless campaign to encourage family planning. I've heard it said that that particular effort was designed to make upper-class Egyptians *think* that the government was making an effort at reaching the majority of the population....or some other version of expensive-advertising-mind-game.
Well family planning has had an effect since the birth rate has gone down significantly, but perhaps you're right that elements of the campaign were aimed at persuading the wealthy...
Right, but I still don't think that was because of the government's campaign (or at least because of their advertising campaign).
Just to nitpick a bit, carrots and spinach are not legumes. Legumes are plants that have their seeds in pods. This includes beans, lintels, and peas (and peanuts).
Anyone whose diet includes cereal grains, cheese, and lintels is getting complete protein. Cheese by itself contains complete, reasonably well balanced protein. The same is true for cereal grains and legumes when they are combined with each other. As long as a person is getting either cheese or the cereal/legume combination in sufficient quantity, they will suffer no shortage of protein.
The problem with vegeterian diet is that you may suffer from iron/vit b12 deficiency... and yes i know you might get them from plants but the absorption of "animal iron" for example is much more than "plant iron" therefore its advisable to take supplementary pills for them instead....
another thing, campaigning for vegetarianism in the west has failed miserably so don't lecture us about arab culture rejecting it... there are small numbers of highly voiced vegetarians but if you look at the total numbers you see that meat consumption in the west is much more than the east... and when some societies grows economically and there meat consumption grows (like in india, china etc...) they get nervous
Anyone who is brave enough to try to be vegetarian in the Arab world has my respect, even if I can never understand vegetarians.
The normality of meat in the Egyptian diet is supposed to be an outcome of subsidized meat and chicken in the 50s and 60s, as I remember reading somewhere, and it's a shame that meat eating has become associated with upward mobility and aspirational lifestyles when chicken and escalope panee are so crap compared with a nice bamia or molokheyya stew. Egyptians were also once more likely to use herbs of all kinds, per the article I remember reading.
Advocating vegetarianism/veganism as a cultural phenomenon only makes sense to me in places like North America where the consumption of fast food means a lot of people get way more meat in their diet than they need. But as was mentioned here it's not just the meat-heavy meals that are an issue but the fact that fruits and vegetables are expensive and often not even available in low income areas since unfortunately they aren't heavily subsidized like the dairy industry is.
As you pointed out, Arabs eat less meat than most people anyways, and on the other end of the spectrum it totally infuriates when PETA will go into say, Scandinavia or the Canadian arctic where people had lived on hunting and fishing because it is literally impossible to grow anything in the ground there and tell them what they should be eating.
Look -- the fact is that most Egptians, and Arabs for that matter, can't afford to eat meat very often, if ever. And what with all the fasts from "food with karma" (ma'kulat ruhiyya), most observant Arab Xians are vegetarians for much of the year. Thanks to them -- and their felafel, hummous, mujaddara, etc -- vegans the world over can eat well -- and get their protein.
Meat eaters -- including some posting here -- need to confront their own ideologies about meat. And Islam is filled with them. Meat is not necessary to human nutrition, to the good life. BTW, I don't eat meat, but if I was going to, it'd be pork.