Published Letters and Op-Eds from
COK’s Writers Group

Holiday thoughts: Food of the gods

Editor, The Times:

Maybe we should take the Thanksgiving tradition of reflection a step further this year. Maybe after enumerating the rights, privileges and luxuries we enjoy, Americans could consider how much more we have than we actually need. Or contemplate the global consequences of our unbridled enjoyment of excess.

Since food forms the centerpiece of Thanksgiving, perhaps our self-examination should begin in that department. Tired as the image has become from frequent maternal invocation, we might dwell a moment on those "children starving in Africa" before tucking into a feast that will only add inches to Americans' already bloated waistline.

We might estimate the carbon dioxide released into the overtaxed atmosphere by the transport of diverse foodstuffs to our table.

Or if famine and climate-change apocalypse seem too remote, we could focus instead on that unwilling emblem of Thanksgiving - the turkey. Looking at our extended family ranged joyfully around the stuffed carcass, we might entertain a fleeting thought of the bird's welfare. We might ask ourselves if our relish for a juicy drumstick warrants the suffering undergone by the factory-farmed animal to which that limb lately belonged.

Such meditations need induce neither melancholy nor self-loathing. They could instead prompt action: dietary moderation, social or environmental activism, the first tentative steps toward vegetarianism, even.

And maybe by next year, blessings such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness will be a bit more equitably distributed.

- Katharine Merow, Seattle