To be honest, it’s not at all clear who is really offended by it; the newspaper claims ‘animal rights groups’ have complained and Channel 4 received ‘dozens of letters’, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they just assumed those statements to be true without bothering to check. It’s only the Daily Mail, after all.
I’ve gone to the bathroom thousands of times, yet I’ve never been in a sewer - does this make me a fake ?
You’re a real chef if you cook well; you’re fake if you can’t cook and pretend otherwise. Whether or not you kill animals personally make you no more or less “real”.
Ya know what? I totally agree with Jamie Oliver. If you eat meat but you can’t bear the sight of the animal dying and couldn’t do it yourself if you had to, then you’re a hypocrite. That’s exactly why I don’t eat meat-- I couldn’t kill a lamb so I don’t think I ought to eat it, or any other thing that I couldn’t, theoretically or actually, bring myself to take from where it is and bring it to my kitchen.
I’m sure people will disagree quite strenuously to this viewpoint, but frankly, it works for me and that’s really all I care about.
I find that a bit hard to credit – I think most people who lean towards ethical vegetarianism would cheer anything that makes the consumption of animals less abstract to people.
It does if feces is your profession.
The entire incident was orchestrated to manipulate public opinion, raise his visibility, and boost his ratings and market share. All else is incidental.
I can’t stand to watch surgery footage; does this mean I should refuse lifesaving surgery ? Of course not. In all honesty I don’t like to think about where any food has come from; ripped out of the dirt or hacked off of an animal, it’s all kind of yucky to me.
There are other folks who have similar opinions to Jamie Oliver, FWIW. Example from near Seattle. And another. And then there’s the “pig fisting” scene from A Cook’s Tour.
IMO if you’re willing to eat something, you should be willing to prepare it. Which includes killing it, if necessary. YMMV, of course.
Minor point: That first one is from Eastern Washington, not near Seattle.
Since the discussion is headed that way anyway; I don’t see the logic behind needing to be willing to kill what you eat.
I don’t think you should necessarily be willing to prepare it, but you should certainly not harbor any major moral qualms about its preparation. From the description provided by He Who Eats Everything, it sounds as though this was something Jaime was (quite understandably) struggling with somewhat.
And if you are not only an eater, but a professional cook, you certainly should be willing (though not necessarily eager) to do everything involved in the preparation. If Jaime had turned to the Italian farmers and said, “You know what, I think I’ll just set the table. I’m a chef; I don’t really like to get my hands dirty with the killing and such,” he would have been a hypocrite and a bit of a prat, too.
I’m sure this can be true, but (his advertising exploits for Sainsbury’s aside) Jamie Oliver’s ethic has always prominently been that it’s about the food - the reality of the food - it sounds pretentious on the face of it, but he did actually make a difference to public perceptions of ingredients and cooking.
His position is generally that if you take more interest in your ingredients; their quality, their provenance; seek out expert suppliers; heed their advice about what is good and what to do with it, it will enrich your entire experience. In all honesty, I think when he uses the terms ‘real’ and ‘fake’, he’s talking primarily about his own conscience.
You’re comparing apples and oranges. Not being able to kill something that you are going to eat and not having the stomach to watch someone’s life being saved or improved are not the same thing, and I think you know that.
Food is very problematic for people who have the freedom to choose what they eat. If I were starving or someone I loved was, I’d probably suck it up and kill something. But I don’t need to, and the idea makes me very uncomfortable, so I just forego the whole thing. If Jamie Oliver feels like he needs to be able to be part of the whole food preparation process, I think he’s being brave and honest with himself. I respect him a whole lot more than someone who feels so horrible about having to watch the killing of an animal but is happy to buy pre-packaged meat and let someone else do the dirty work for him.
I’m a hypocrite!
I’d be a vegetarian if I had to kill my own food. Luckily, there’s a supermarket around the corner that does it for me, and presents it nicely and hygenically wrapped in plastic. Yay for the modern world!
Of course, if we’re limiting ourselves to eating those things that we are prepared to get dirty to make then I’m going to have to starve to death. I do not garden so I’ll never grow a vegetable; I do not care for orchards so I’ll never stock my own fruit; I do not intend to ever learn more than the very basics about viticulture and oenology so I’ll never make my own wine. I’m going to be in serious trouble should life as we know it cease tomorrow and all food vendors vanish but it’s not something that keeps me awake at night. Perhaps I should put a little more effort into learning how to grow my own veggies, but no power on earth is going to get me near a slaughterhouse - what the eye don’t see and all that jazz.
I’ve tasted sheep and lamb meat.
I really feel that chefs should confine their cooking activities to food.
I don’t think you necessarily have to kill it yourself. But many people have gotten to the opposite end of the spectrum where they are in denial about where their food comes from.
In Diet For A Small Planet* (IIRC), the author recounts a conversation where a vegetarian discusses consumption of steak, which he refers to as “muscle meats,” with someone else, who said “Steak isn’t muscle–it’s. . . .steak!”
A friend of mine doesn’t eat chicken because when she was a child she asked her dad over a chicken dinner where chicken comes from. He just started flapping his arms and making “buck buck” sounds, and when she made the connection she just couldn’t eat it anymore.
I don’t think you have to kill an animal but I do think that you need to face up to the fact that if you are eating one your are responsible for its death.
None of which has anything to do with being a chef.
*A book that came out maybe early 70’s espousing vegetarianism, noting among other things how wasteful and inefficient it is to raise beef compared to vegetable sources of protein.
This is true. And aside from the ethical considerations, this is a valid reason to advocate vegetarianism. The number I heard was that it takes ten pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat.
I think that’s about right, but while I like vegetables, until they taste as good as meat, it’s carnivore city at the Weirddave house.
I’m a vegetarian, and not offended in the least. I certainly think that if you’re going to eat meat, it’s a good thing to know where it came from.
Anyone who doesn’t eat meat shouldn’t feel to offended, either; it’s not like I’m gonna be staring at a hunk of lamb meat any time soon, contemplating what it went through to get to my dinner table.
I’m with Weirddave on this one.
-Butler:
Non-hypocrit who would like an opportunity to kill more venison!!! Love the hunting, don’t mind the killing/gutting, want to do the butchering, and certainly like the viddles contained within the fur!!! 
That actually happened in my house a couple of weeks back; we were eating faggots (English meatballs made with liver and pork) and my daughter asked what was in them
“Liver and pork,” I replied
“haha! liver, that’s the same name as the organ called liver!” (they’re just starting to cover that sort of thing in her biology class)
-I just looked at her and raised one eyebrow -
-her face slackened, shocked -
-then she said “mmm, nice” and carried on eating.