Vegging Out

The reason I became a teacher is because I love to read. The reason I went through two years of grad school hell was to better help teacher struggling kids to love it, too. Reading transforms thoughts, reading inspires, reading changes you in ways you can't imagine.

Enter Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals:

In Eating Animals, Foer writes a well researched account of the many factors that have led him to choose vegetarianism for himself and his family, in the hopes that his infant son may one day grow up and understand the philosophies that drive his family's food choices. Foer goes into the practices that drive factory farms, which produce so much of America's meats, and then delves into the mental and physical health repercussions for both people who process animals into our meat, and the effects that factory farming have on our planet as a whole.

Now, I will tell you, I am a bacon girl. A seafood girl. A sandwich piled high with meat gal. But after reading this book, I have gotten a lot more thoughtful about how my food is produced. Kev (the previously staunchest meat-eater I know, who used to make fun of me in our early dating days if I didn't order chicken or meat) inspired me to read this book, and together we have made some big changes to our eating. We've cut out meat entirely from our grocery runs, and we have begun buying free-range eggs (Foer mentions that free-range is essentially a hoax, but in the absence of farmer's markets in the winter, it is what we are doing). From now on, when I do eat meat or seafood, it is going to be for special occasions only, and I am going to make more of a concerted effort to find out where my food is coming from, and at what cost. I think most Americans are woefully out of touch with the food to table process, and I'm thankful that I read this book to help me think about it.

Do you consider yourself a food-aware person? Why or why not?

Have outside forces ever forced you to confront ugly truths about your eating?