Margaret Gamboa Yoga

Eating Animals

Posted on 12. Nov, 2009 by Margaret in Books, Nutrition

Jonathan Safran Foer best known for the novel Everything Is Illuminated writes in his new book, Eating Animals, that he struggled with ambivalence over eating meat for most of his life, but never committed until he adopted his dog, George.

Foer argues that there’s no difference between the value of the lives of pets and the lives of the animals that we eat every day.

“If our next-door neighbor kept a dog in the conditions that well more than 90 percent of pigs are kept in, we would call the police.  We wouldn’t just be offended.  We wouldn’t just think it was wrong.  We would be compelled to take action,” Foer says.

Eating Animals, is more than just a case for vegetarianism and an anti-meat lecture.  It’s a book that challenges America’s meat-dominated diet.

Foer says his problem with meat isn’t that some people make the decision to eat it; instead, it’s that people don’t think about the decision.  And that, he argues, is just how the American factory farm system want it: “What does it say that there’s an entire industry… that asks us to give them money, asks us to ingest in our bodies and to feed to our children a product whose production they won’t let us see?”

Foer says overconsumption of meat – and the factory system that produces it – cause multiple health problems and contribute hugely to global warming and other environmental disasters.  These factors make the purchase of a cheap breast of chicken much more expensive than it might initially seem.

“More than anything, I want people to come away with the idea that meat matters,” Foer says.  He believes the decisions we make when ordering at restaurants and when we shop at supermarkets, are some of the most important decisions we make each day.

Tags: Books, Health, Nutrition