Eating Animals

So my first "fun" book of the break I read was Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. I have read two of his other books and the library sent me this one first off my request list so that is what I started with. I don't really think much about where food comes from but recently I have been paying more attention to it because I have to buy it for myself. Foer reference The Omnivore's Dilemma, which I read last year or the year before and made me conscious (at the time) of eating food. There's many accounts and arguments for becoming a more informed eater in this book. Naturally, I have been thinking of becoming a vegetarian/vegan/meat eater only at Chipotle. Anyway, so here are some excerpts from the book that I found interesting. And also, you should just read the book anyway.

Foer talked with his grandmother about her experience fleeing the persecution of Jewish people by the Germans:
"He saved your life."
"I didn't eat it."
"You didn't eat it?"
"It was pork. I wouldn't eat pork."
"Why?"
"What do you mean why?"
"What, because it wasn't kosher?"
"Of course."
"But not even to save your life?"
"If nothing matters, there's nothing to save."

"It's always possible to wake someone from sleep, but no amount of noise will wake someone who is pretending to be asleep."

"The very genetics of chickens, along with their feed and environment, were now intensively manipulated to produce either excessive amounts of eggs (layers) or flesh, especially breasts (broilers). From 1935 to 1995, the average weight of "broilers" increased by 65 percent, while their time-to-market dropped 60 percent and their feed requirements dropped 57 percent. To gain a sense of the radicalness of this change, imagine human children growing to be three hundred pounds in ten years, while eating only granola bars and Flintstones vitamins."