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A review by amarettto
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
4.0
I wish we could make this book required reading. I’m a vegetarian who picked this book up out of curiosity to learn why a meat-eating culture exists and what the industry functions like, hoping to just be mildly put off but still understand why people choose to eat it.
There are a lot of paragraphs I could not read, and times I had to physically avert my eyes because my stomach flipped at some of the descriptions on how these creatures are treated. The fact that people can slaughter in such inhumane ways and not flinch at mutilating other living creatures make me think that the only explanation is that they are psychotic. There’s no way you can claim having a conscience and still do that.
More than anything, I find it surprising that people can get over how disgusting the conditions are, and still put pieces of flesh in their mouths calling it food. I would never bring something that had been so bathed in pathogens and disease close to me, no matter how much processing it goes through. In fact, that makes it worse.
I respect the author deeply, one for taking this subject and shedding so much light on it and still managing to not come off as preachy at all, and two for conducting such intensive research. I was surprised at the volume of facts and citations, and the number of pages dedicated to references alone. I will only gripe about the fact that the ‘statements’ by people he interviewed did not explicitly state who was saying them and often we had to figure out who it was, and on some occasions the book felt a little dry and repetitive. Understandable for a book of this nature, and the positives outweigh all of these things.
The most difficult thing about books like this no matter how eye opening they are, is that you cannot make someone who doesn’t want to see the truth pick it up. And that’s deeply unfortunate, because it’s the best way to show them how sick meat eating culture truly is. The decision to change their lifestyle after that would of course be up to them, but they can no longer deny or shrug off the problem at least, and that’s definitely a win.
There are a lot of paragraphs I could not read, and times I had to physically avert my eyes because my stomach flipped at some of the descriptions on how these creatures are treated. The fact that people can slaughter in such inhumane ways and not flinch at mutilating other living creatures make me think that the only explanation is that they are psychotic. There’s no way you can claim having a conscience and still do that.
More than anything, I find it surprising that people can get over how disgusting the conditions are, and still put pieces of flesh in their mouths calling it food. I would never bring something that had been so bathed in pathogens and disease close to me, no matter how much processing it goes through. In fact, that makes it worse.
I respect the author deeply, one for taking this subject and shedding so much light on it and still managing to not come off as preachy at all, and two for conducting such intensive research. I was surprised at the volume of facts and citations, and the number of pages dedicated to references alone. I will only gripe about the fact that the ‘statements’ by people he interviewed did not explicitly state who was saying them and often we had to figure out who it was, and on some occasions the book felt a little dry and repetitive. Understandable for a book of this nature, and the positives outweigh all of these things.
The most difficult thing about books like this no matter how eye opening they are, is that you cannot make someone who doesn’t want to see the truth pick it up. And that’s deeply unfortunate, because it’s the best way to show them how sick meat eating culture truly is. The decision to change their lifestyle after that would of course be up to them, but they can no longer deny or shrug off the problem at least, and that’s definitely a win.