Joe Bennett: Do vegetables have feelings?

To eat anything, animal or vegetable, is merely to recycle nutrients, says Joe Bennett. Photo / Getty Images

A DOG'S LIFE

Last night I had a vegetarian friend for dinner - but to avoid ambiguity I had better start again.

Last night I had a vegetarian friend over for dinner - and there's the power of prepositions for you.

She's an interesting vegetarian. She's not vegetarian because she thinks it's good for the planet. She knows that the planet is fine, spinning away in space, indifferent to the life-forms that evolve and perish on its ever-changing surface.

She understands that being good to the planet is just a verbal code for trying to stop human beings rendering themselves extinct, which is a legitimate thing to be concerned about, but it has nothing to do with the lump of rock they live on.

The reason she's a vegetarian is simple kindness of heart. She cannot bear to think of depriving something else of life in order that she might live.

"But," I said, as I led her to the greenhouse to pick the salad we would have with dinner, "depriving something else of life in order to live yourself, is the way of the world."

(I could of course have picked the salad before she arrived but had I done so I would not have been able to show off the abundance of the greenhouse, of which I am proud.)

"I suppose there may be," I said, "at the very base of the food chain, an organism that doesn't eat others, but after that it's carnivores from go to whoa. All of us, plants included, feast on the dead flesh of others. And all of us will in turn be feasted on. It's simply how things are. But here are scissors. Take what you want."

She smiled and praised my green fingers and went to work slitting the thin-spun life of a cucumber, a capsicum, tomatoes, basil, rocket and spinach, and piling them high in the bowl.

"Finished with murder yet?" I said and she laughed and nodded.

Back in the kitchen she opened wine while I knocked up the starter, a swoon-maker of cherry tomatoes, basil and garlic drenched in olive oil then spooned over half an avocado and topped with balsamic vinegar.

"This," she said, as she took her first mouthful, "is delicious."

"Indeed it is," I said, "and all the better for being freshly killed. The blood's still warm."

"Vegetables aren't animals," she said. "They don't have eyes. Or feelings."

"How do you know?"

She laughed and helped herself to more.

"To eat anything at all, animal or vegetable," I said, as I set to work cutting up mushrooms for the main dish, "is merely to recycle nutrients. Surely you approve of recycling. Without fungi like this, for example, we would be overwhelmed by dead matter."

I fried the mushrooms in butter with onion and garlic, then added white wine and let it reduce for a bit.

"And as for animals," I said, "is it not better that an animal lives a brief, healthy life and is humanely slaughtered than it staggers into old age and dies of who knows what? There are no nice deaths in the wild, none at all. It's a jungle out there."

"More wine?" she said, as I stirred creme fraiche into the sauce.

"And of course the ultimate irony is that a farm animal owes its very existence to us carnivores. Were it not for us, most lambs would never be born, would never leap for joy in the daisied paddocks of spring. We carnivores may condemn the lamb to death, but you vegetarians condemn it never to live at all. Which do you think the lamb would prefer?"

"The gnocchi are boiling," she said.

They were indeed. I strained them, tipped them in with the mushrooms, strewed the lot with blue cheese and parmesan then put it into the oven for 10 minutes while I butchered the greenhouse bounty into a salad. I chopped a bit then paused with cleaver raised.

"Shh," I said, "did you hear that?"

"What?"

"The cucumber. It was screaming."

"Oh shut up," she said, laughing. So I did. And dinner was lovely. The company was exquisite. The conversation sparkled. The wine flowed. The salad was as fresh as tomorrow. The dressing I made for it danced on the palate.

The mushrooms and gnocchi were fine in their rich and cheesy sauce. But halfway through the meal I thought I heard a noise and put my ear to the dish and I swear I heard it crying out for bacon.