A fiery take on the sudden loss of a controversial, meat-loving food critic.

Editor’s Note: On May 18, the Weekly posted a video from a Pebble Beach Food & Wine event called Meatopia with a note that its organizer and devoted carnivore/food critic Joel Ozersky had died of mysterious causes not long after the event.

Reader Theresa Buccola wrote in. “Instead of bringing the death to a logical conclusion, that perhaps, just perhaps, his overconsumption of animal products is what caused an early demise,” she writes, “you stupidly celebrate with more meat events. So stupid, quite frankly, that it hurts.”

An autopsy did not offer any answers about Ozersky’s death. But Buccola’s point was something some other readers had probably considered. We asked her to lose the nastier language and submit a toned-down commentary.

That revision is what follows. She still writes insensitively about the human life lost – but that’s also part of her point. Ozersky himself was, as The New York Times put it, “one of the most forceful food writers in the country… [with a] joyful willingness to be bluntly opinionated.” He was known for making fun of vegans and vegetarians, and for his wild love of meat.

We feel Buccola’s equally forceful perspective has a place in the ongoing discussion over responsible eating. Visit www.mcweekly.com/edible to offer feedback.

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It would be dangerous, deadly even, to believe the life of this rabid meat-eater should be celebrated with “a love poem” on your Twitter account when discussing Meatopia.

Indeed, it scoffs in the face of all logic. Did anyone at the paper even bother to ask if it is possible that his consumption of animals is what caused him to die at the age of 47?

Am I the only one to see that many people, particularly those slicing up that dead pig on the video, are obese? How many are going to live past 60? Do you not care about the health and longevity of your readers?

It does take courage to ask the hard questions, rather than ignore evidence that is written all over those enormous bellies and on one that now lies in a casket. Let me shock everybody back to reality for a moment: This is no longer the Paleolithic era. We no longer make heroes out of men when they fell wild beasts and risk death for the sustenance of their tribes. Just because you lie in wait in an elevated hunting shack dressed in camo and sticking a high-powered rifle through a slot, it does not get you in touch with your inner-mythic hero.

Neither does shutting off your computer, hopping in your SUV and driving to an event that will serve the corpses of animals killed with advanced technological precision.

Face it, we are in the era of the factory farm. Nauseating places where billions of animals are tortured and slaughtered every year.

But did I forget about how kind certain farmers are to their pigs or that we have grass-fed, humanely raised, free-range, consciously caught, no rBGH, blah, blah… ? I did not.

This is called doublespeak – and these terms fall under that umbrella, because they have been invented to quell our conscience from doing those things we know, on a deep compassionate level, we should no longer be doing.

If you can have such a disregard for their lives, their beauty, if you can laugh at the excruciating pain they endure for nothing, there will be consequences.

With each bite of fear that Ozersky rammed into his gut, with every word he spread through his writings, Ozersky wound up digging his own grave with a butcher’s knife and a fork. You will leave in your wake broken-hearted friends and family members, as Josh Ozersky has done.

In contrast, I suggest you take a trip to the salad bar at Earthbound Farm and feast on the bounty Mother Nature offers to us in her plants.

Then turn around and fill your arms with oranges, apples and bananas. Go ahead. Eat as much as you want. You’ll never get fat on that food.

Instead, you’ll be able to ride your bike hundreds of miles a week, climb Robinson Canyon twice in one day and look in the mirror and see lean and beautiful. Your blood and digestive tract will flow freely.

And you will greatly increase your chances of seeing 100 years old come to pass in radiant health.

THERESA BUCCOLA is a local artist with a studio in Carmel-by-the-Sea.