Liz Chivers lives alongside chickens, turkeys, bunnies, a dog and two cats, bees, and a range of vegetables on a homestead in Rhode Island. Each small plot is protected by handmade fencing and decorated with painted stones to mark what grows. A few political yard signs are stacked in the corner, the top reads “Hate Has No Home Here.” Liz shares the garden chores with her four brothers and parents. The garden incited her complicated relationship with food, which developed from a “nebulous” question to an ethical choice. The path from her ‘standard childhood diet’ to ethical veganism reflects the complex, often contradictory ways we think about what we eat and why.
“The one thing that stands very clear [is] I know I’m a vegetarian. I know I’m vegan. I know I'm somebody that really cares about animal life, the environment, and human humility in the way we interact with the world around us.”
Early Discussions Around Food
At an early age, conversations around the family dinner table shaped Liz’s perception of food as solely a source of energy. Liz’s mother believes that food is fuel, and Liz remembers her mother's philosophy: “treat [food] like fuel, treat it like something that has utility.” This advice was difficult for Liz to follow, especially when the dinner menu included meat-based dishes. Liz was uncomfortable with the texture of meat and would pick around her plate. Her parents encouraged her to eat the portion of meat she was served: “I was asking all the time if I could not eat meat, and they [said] ‘you're gonna stunt yourself.’” Liz did not follow the directions, she remembered continuing to eat the pasta on her plate but sneaking the chicken under the table to her dog.
After another discussion about the importance of eating for energy, Liz asked her mother, “What is a calorie?” Her mother replied, “It's what gives you energy. You need a lot.” When Liz went to school the next day she told her friend about calories, she said, “You need a lot because they’re important so that your brain works, and you have energy.” Liz continued to avoid meat, but she held onto her mother’s wisdom through elementary and middle school.
Food Philosophy
Eating became more complicated as Liz interacted with animals, friends, and family who equipped her with new vocabulary and a broad set of questions. Liz began to call herself a vegetarian after her older cousin assumed the label, though Liz said she “really identified as someone who's a friend of animals” long before.
Liz started to question the connection between animals and her diet when her family bought their pet cat and two chickens. “I felt like there was no difference between [them],” she said, but the chickens would later be served at dinner time. Her frustration with how her family offered protection to certain animals, but killed others was heightened when her father brought home a group of bunnies. The family deemed some bunnies as pets and separated them in a different pen from the bunnies who would be raised to be eaten. “My mom tells me now,” Liz said, “She was insisting to my dad, ‘Don’t do it. You know she’s gonna go [vegetarian].’” Liz remembers watching both sets of bunnies grow. She felt like both groups of bunnies were part of her family, though one group was killed and consumed. Liz said, “I went up to my cat that day and [said], I’m not gonna let them do it to you.”
When Liz’s cousin made the announcement that she was a vegetarian at a family gathering, Liz, who was about to leave for summer camp, decided to go vegetarian while she was away from home. When she returned from camp, Liz continued to refuse meat. She said her father would try to offer her chicken, he said, “This is pescatarian. This is a type of vegetarian.” Liz replied, “I won’t eat it because it’s our pet.” While Liz did not eat the chicken, she did eat the fish her father caught and prepared. She switched to calling herself a vegetarian again when she realized that she, “wasn’t actually eating any of the fish, [she] just didn’t like it and didn’t want to be eating it.” Liz said that the change in diet from pescetarian to vegetarian did not reflect a substantial change in her eating habits.
When Liz arrived at college, she prescribed to ovo-vegetarianism, which allows eggs. She labeled this exception a result of exposure: she was comfortable with small-scale egg production because she took part in raising chickens at home but was less exposed to sustainable dairy farming. Her vegan friend, David, brought Liz to a lecture about egg production. “They put the [male] chicks in a food grinder, kill them, and use it for hot fertilizer,” Liz said. When she went home for fall break after the talk, Liz tried to cook an egg from her chickens. She said, “When I ate it, I thought, this is disgusting. I was freaked out. I thought, this feels like a living thing.” Liz said there is a difference between how a vegetable and an animal feels when you eat it. “The egg [felt] like meat did when I was a kid,” she said, “I’ve never eaten an egg since then.” At Yale, her identity as a vegan offers protection. When reflecting on her life experiences, Liz said, “The one thing that stands very clear [is] I know I am a vegetarian, I know I am vegan, I know I'm somebody that really cares about animal life and about the environment and about human humility in the way we interact with the world around us.” While the way she dresses, for example, has always been in flux, she said, “This belief and practice was constant. I could always explain why I was doing it.”
A Complicated Relationship to Veganism
Veganism once served as a veil for restrictive eating habits. Liz said her high school, one of the most prestigious in Rhode Island, has “a pretty intense culture around eating.” The eating culture was influenced by an academic culture which valued perfectionism and high achievement. Liz said people would often comment on who kept what diet and, with exceptional frequency, on what people were eating in the cafeteria. Liz felt that her peers were intensely focused on her eating habits. Her anxiety around food decisions heightened when she started taking birth control. Around this time, she also quit her school’s cross-country team and stopped running regularly.
Liz said weight gain was a side effect of her medication and decreased activity, and it changed her previously neutral relationship with her body to one of fear. She remembers following an ever-evolving set of food rules because of her discomfort with her body. These habits were reinforced by the people around her: “Two of my best friends were dealing with [disordered eating] and I was seeing someone who wasn't very nice, and his ex-girlfriend had an eating disorder. He spoke about female bodies in [negative ways],” Liz said. She said that her understanding of food shifted from fuel and pleasure to an enemy. “It started to feel nebulous and scary…a source of anxiety, food and bodies,” she said. She began to eat different meals than her family, cooking her own safe foods. She would skip dessert or unplanned snacks. “I was able to get away with it because people around me didn't necessarily understand vegetarianism,” Liz said. While Liz’s diet began on a basis of animal rights and environmental activism, it took on a new function when she began to focus on controlling her body weight. Veganism became an excuse to avoid foods that Liz feared might contribute to weight gain.
When reflecting on this phase of life, Liz realized how far she has come, regarding her comfort in her physical body and release of food rules. She said this progress was a direct result of changing her environment. Liz, now, does not live at home with her parents who encourage her to eat animal products for their utility. She has escaped the social environment at her high school which glorified under-eating and transformed restrictive eating behaviors by individuals into competitions between peers. Liz ended her prior relationship with a man who reinforced the insecurities she held about her physical body, and routinely commented on her eating behavior. At Yale, her dietary choices are still influenced by those around her like David, who often invites her to food-related lectures. Though, Liz said she feels more autonomy over her eating than she did at home. Her way of eating is more unique to herself, in terms of her moral choices and taste preferences, than ever before.
Favorite Foods
“Grilled [non-dairy] cheeses and fruit, tofu, bread, pasta. Also, the same foods I've been eating my whole life. I love to eat,” Liz worked in a Chinese restaurant for four years and developed a particular affinity to Chinese food, “Whenever I go home, I want avocado sushi, and General Tso’s from Dragon Palace, and they have really good General Tso’s tofu. I won't ask more questions.”
Going ons…
Fridge always stocked with?
Tofu
Soy sauce
Laoganmas (known as Ma’s to me!)
Coconut water
Love to splurge on the vegan yogurt from siggis
Carrots and hummus
Sourdough (I keep it in the fridge…)
Favorite pantry items?
Nutritional yeast
Sushi rice
Coffee grounds & tea bags
Flaxseed meal – my baking staple
Peanut butter, dates, and sea salt
Garlic powder
On the bookshelf?
Cookbook shelf: definitely Moosewood Cookbook, Mark Bittman’s “How to Make Everything Vegetarian”
Favorite food book: Appetites, Caroline Knapp
Favorite book: Alone With You in the Ether, Olivie Blake and After Life: An Ethnographic Novel, Thomas Hecht and Alphabetical Diaries, Sheila Heiti
Where to find Liz
@elizabeth.chivers on Instagram
