If you want to live the rest of your life unburdened by guilt about what you eat,
do not read this book. I probably wouldn't have read it myself if I hadn't found it in (dead) Jay Prefontaine's stack. I don't know what Jay's diet was during the last few months of his life, except that he was juicing a lot, because - you know - turning fruits and vegetables into liquids transforms them from ho-hum nutritious foods into magical elixirs of immortality. But I do know that at least up until last December he was hardly vegetarian. He spent at least three mornings a week at The South Side cafe, reading, grading papers, and eating eggs with hot sauce. And he ate more corned beef hash than Ireland. No criticism there. Corned beef hash is damn tasty. But more on Jay and what he did and didn't put in himself in another post...
The great thing about
Eating Animals is what Foer doesn't do. I expected a holier-than-thou screed about animals having souls, achieving oneness with Mother Earth, or "raising consciousness." Or at the very least a laundry list of health issues that result from eating animal products. Few people are more irritating than those who get on their high horseradish about what other people eat, and Foer does a good job of avoiding that pit.
What he does do is provide a sober look at factory farming. There's an old saying: If slaughterhouses had glass walls, no one would eat the stuff. This book is the glass wall. There's a lot of disturbing stuff here, but perhaps the most surprising detail - to me anyway - is that factory farming is the leading contributor to greenhouse gases and global warming, beating nearly every other contributor combined.
Thanks, I needed something new to feel bad about.
I tried the vegetarian thing once. In fact, I went straight vegan for about five months. I dropped ten pounds seemingly overnight, and I felt great. But dammit, I missed eggs, and I eventually caved. From there it was a short hop, skip, and jump to bacon. I've never been one to keep pounds of meat in the freezer, and it takes me weeks to go through a stick of butter, but I don't think I'll ever give up animal products entirely again. I just refuse to give in to food anxiety. One day brussels sprouts are the ultimate nutrient powerhouse, and the next they cause ass cancer. Pomegranate juice cures every ailment known to man, and cranberries are a "superfood." Whatever. The only way fruits and vegetables are "superfoods" is if you never eat them.
For a while I bought the hype about those eggs advertised as being from "cage-free" chickens fed a vegetarian diet, which begs the question: what are the other chickens eating, chicken? (Answer: yes.) But then I ran into an ex-student who works in farm inspection, and guess what, the only significant difference between those eggs and regular eggs is the price. I don't know why I hadn't figured it out myself, actually. If every Wal-Mart in America carries it, there's no way it was raised by Old McDonald.
Anyway, now I'm hungry. Go watch
these guys.
Oh, and the next time I spend $4 for a dozen eggs, those chickens better be fed steak.
