I was cooking myself some curried cod and couscous for lunch today. Stirring the pan, watching the white flakes of cod come apart, I became aware that I'd soon be eating fish muscles, muscles that once propelled this metre-long creature around the North Atlantic. Until it came into contact with a fishing net. Now, Gadus morhua can live up to 25 years, swimming around, eating smaller fish (including juvenile cod), and reproducing during the spawning season. Not much to do other than swim, eat and reproduce. As I stirred those flakes of muscle tissue into the curried couscous, I pondered upon the consciousness of fish.
Mammals - including the ones we eat - clearly have consciousness similar to ours. They have evolved in different ways to us humans, yet I am certain that there is a link in the way they perceive the environment around them; they feel joy, surprise, sadness and fear just as we do. Birds too - there's more intelligence going on per cubic millimetre of bird brain than in the same volume of brains (but the same can be said about our brains and elephant brains). Listening to birdsong instinctively tells you that birds are supremely aware. Yet intelligence, creativity, the capacity for abstract thought and the ability to communicate that thought - this is what ultimately sets us above other species. But consciousness is very much present there too; mammals and birds are clearly sentient creatures.
Fish, though? I have tended to see them as automatons of the deep - kept moving by instinct, with no capacity for reflection, emotion or self-awareness.
Not having any idea of what goes on inside a fish's mind, I have less trouble eating one that I do a cow, a pig or a chicken. I cannot relate to the sheer monotony of 25 years spent in the depths of the North Atlantic. Today, I ate cod for lunch, tinned tuna for breakfast and a slice of smoked salmon with supper, added anchovy fillets to flavour a lentil stew, and ate some cheese (Roquefort, Cheddar), but no meat. I am certainly eating far less meat or poultry than I did when I was younger; but giving up meat isn't going to happen outside of Lent. The occasional treat.
Anyway, we eat more than we need. On those days when I'm too busy to feed myself properly and yet still put in a lot of walking, I'm surprised how long I can go before blood sugar levels fall to that level where I start feeling wobbly. One should really eat enough to keep going and know when to stop. You can't pour more petrol into a car than it uses. And another great dietary mistake we're all prone to is eating too much before going to sleep. "Breakfast like a king, lunch like a lord, supper like a pauper."
As we evolve away from our hunter-gatherer past (that hunter-gatherer lifestyle was 90% of our past as a species!), we need to apply consciousness to our diet. It's easy to let your instincts dictate what you eat, how much of it you eat and when you eat it. The sugar-industrial complex suggests through advertising that we should give in to temptation: "Go on - it's me time!" "Naughty - but nice!" "Indulge yourself!" Bombarded by such messaging, we buy too much and eat too much. Food has become much cheaper as a proportion of our incomes spent on it.
We have evolved high levels of consciousness. We should buy consciously, consume consciously and eat consciously. Eat, mindful of the consequences of what you eat - for your body and for the planet.
[Update, October 2021: Light travels differently through the medium of sea water than it does through air. On land, animals can see a potential predator miles away, and this gives their brains time to devise a strategy to escape death. In the sea, there isn't this luxury. Therefore fish brains are less able to think about the future.]
This time eight years ago:
Tatra museum - my favourite Czech cars!
This time nine years ago:
Donald Tusk and Co. get re-elected
This time 10 years ago:
Poland's wonderful bread
This time 11 years ago:
An October Friday in Warsaw
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