Fast Food Nation was the book that effectively stopped me from eating at McDonald's and its brethren (except for that one relapse after a wet day/night). Not on the Label stopped me from buying prepackaged salad (plus a host of other things, but you get the gist). Pollan hammered the mantra "eat food, not too much, mostly plants" into my brain. And I heeded. His is more a scientific analysis of the diet we eat now vs. back in the day when evolution created the bodies we still inhabit, plus he brings the crucial energy/fossil fuel factor into the equation, and he has no vegetarian/vegan agenda. All of these books have given me priceless knowledge that I have read, learned, and put to good use.
Safran Foer does have a vegetarian/vegan agenda, though he doesn't pull it over your head. For example, he makes an excellent case for why we should eat dogs. Though he makes an even more excellent (and urgent) case for why we shouldn't eat sushi. And basically, before I'd even reached page 30, he'd intellectually slapped me in the face at least a half a dozen times.
What particularly endeared me to Safran Foer (despite the fact that he wrote Everything is Illuminated which got made into a fabulous movie that I adore) is that the whole primus motor for his writing the book was fatherhood. He and his wife had a baby, he suddenly got propelled into the situation of having to feed another human being than himself, and he set off to find out everything he could, about the food that his kid would eat.
For those who've been reading my blog for the duration, you'll recall that not long after I gave birth to Halfdan, I entered a dark and tedious period of extreme environmental anxiety. I've later heard it's called solastalgia, but I digress. I'm sure hormones had their role, but c'mon, having a baby in the same year that the world collectively wakes up to the reality that they are cutting off the branch that they're sitting on is....unnerving. I was sad. I was angry. I felt helpless. What to do? And that's when I did a lot of reading, a lot of crying, and made some decisions that directly affect the people close to me whom I love. That's when I stopped flying, because I reasoned (and still do), that it was the single most effective thing I could do to reduce my carbon footprint. And I'm sticking to my guns, despite the fact that Safran Foer now cites the meat industry as accountable for up. to. half of the greenhouse gasses that are causing climate change.
Back on track. Safran Foer is human, and writes as such. He's had to uncover some depressingly unpleasant things to be able to write this book. It takes guts to read. It does. More importantly, it takes guts to go out and make use of the information you glean from this book. We're not vegetarians, by any means, though our meat intake is down to cold cuts for lunch and "real meat" once or twice a month for dinner. But this is getting phased out. Because learning information about the direct impact our diet is having on the planet my kids theoretically still have 80+ years on, is serious business. You don't go to school to learn things that you will effectively ignore if the situation arises where you need to use that information. Do you? Because that would be ludicrous. Wouldn't it?
An argument often heard in conversations about vegetarianism is the old "people have been eating meat since the dawn of time". Right. As Safran Foer points out, people have also been keeping other humans as slaves since forever as well, but that doesn't make it right anymore, does it? My paternal grandmother was sold into slavery over 100 yrs ago in Italy by her own parents, no wonder she fled the country, never to look back. As a society, we grow, we get smarter, we utilize our knowledge. Otherwise it's all pointless. So what if our meat eating is what gave us these huge brains to start with. Should we keep feeding them meat, in hommage to the fact that they now know better? Like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Like supporting illegal American wars in 2003, just because 60 odd years ago they prevented a chunk of the world being taking over by Nazi Germany. It's nonsensical.
Our full fledged vegetarianism won't happen overnight. But with this book in hand, I've taken another step of enlightened, rational thinking. One that will affect my life, but won't ruin it like the industry it makes its case against eventually will.
Read this book. It's too urgently important to not.
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