In one of her consummate works, "Consider the Oyster," published in 1941, food writer M.F.K. Fisher writes extensively about the bivalve, the joy of consuming it and the actual life of the oyster itself: "Its chilly, delicate gray body slips into a stewpan or under a broiler or alive down a red throat, and it is done. Its life has been thoughtless, but no less full of danger, and now that it is over we are perhaps the better for it."
A few years back, though, I was mindlessly chatting with someone who was a very passionate vegan. At that time, I still ate everything (sans pineapple, rabbit and soft-shell crabs), so I was just generally making small talk about plant-based eating.
