Eat my Heart: Why Eating From Head to Toe is Critical for Environmentalism

I am not a vegetarian. However, I do believe that we have long departed from respecting the animals we eat.

This may be controversial, but I believe that ethical meat-eating is possible. We just aren't accomplishing it very well. There are some parts that are frequently talked about. For example, factory farming is obviously not a part of ethical meat-eating. Ideally, regenerative farming methods would be the way to go. If I were to go one further step, I might even suggest that people hunt their own animals to truly confront what it means to take a life to sustain yourself.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. What I really want to talk about is the what parts of the animal we eat. I don't see this talked about a lot in the conversations surrounding ethical meat eating which is a shame as we cannot possibly ethically eat meat without eating every part of the animal and leaving as little to waste as possible.

Historically, in many cultures, including European, eating all parts of the animal was important. There is little reason to waste good meat just because it seems less appetising to our modern palates. In my own culture, I personally love eating pig's head, ears, and trotters (although I'm a lot less of a fan of their livers). For the 'odd' parts of chicken, I love their feet and gizzards. There are plenty of other parts that get wasted based on modern buying habits that used to be delicacies—sheep's brain, bull testicles. Other parts are considered 'gross' but can be found in restaurants, such as tripe and pig's blood.

Our buying habits have the ability to shape markets. Due to our love for convenience and ready to cook fish, fish fillets have become the go-to cut of fish. But DBS reports that fish fillets represent a small portion of the fish, with up to 60% of the fish wasted as there isn't an easy market for fishmongers to sell the rest of the fish. This includes bones, but also good meat that is still stuck in between bones, meat that shouldn't be relegated to just 'fish broth material' (although that is a very good use of leftover parts).

One of my friends once told me that many people she knew didn't like eating bone-in meat because it reminded them that the meat was once part of an animal. I believe to ethically eat meat, we should go in the other direction—recognise that we are eating an animal, and thank them for their body in sustaining us. When we recognise that they were once alive, it puts the onus on us to not let their death be in vain. We should not be eating only the prime cuts but should be finding a way to eat every single part of the animal.

In my culture, we've long used food as medicine. The odd ends that we don't think to use are actually packed full of nutrients. The bones we used to make stock have sweet delicious marrow that can be sucked out. We were always told that eating the marrow would help our bones produce more marrow. Eat the chicken feet to make your feet nice and strong, to avoid sprains and strains. Eat the pig liver for iron for when you're dizzy or stressed. Eat the pig's feet for the collagen, for the smooth and bouncy skin. And maybe it's true, or maybe it's not. But it's definitely another reason to try it out!

So let's start eating the weird and funky parts. My favourite way to eat whole fish? Steaming it. The cheeks have the softest and sweetest meat. Or steam a whole chicken, hearts and gizzards and all. Go to the butcher and ask for the ox's tongue, and thinly slice it and fry it before serving with some black pepper and a squeeze of lemon. Save your shrimp heads and suck them dry or boil them to make shrimp stock.

What I'm going to challenge you to do is to find some odd part of an animal. Figure out how to cook it. Maybe you'll have to learn how to fillet a fish well or blanch then ice it to make it your favourite texture. Or maybe you'll learn how to manoeuvre around the many bones in a chicken's claw. But either way, there is no loss in learning to eat more odd parts.

So eat my heart out, then maybe eat my liver.