True, I've been piling on the food reading these days. This is a fair assessment. But, honestly, the more I read about food, the more I want to read about food. This led me to Peter Singer, philosopher, ethicist, and author of the seminal animal rights text, Animal Liberation, who a few years back published The Ethics of What We Eat, his own journey through America's industrial food system and his search for how to establish an ethics for eating.
There are lots of similarities between Singer's book and Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. Singer relies heavily on Pollan's work and cites him extensively; more obviously, Singer borrows Pollan's idea of tracking the food history of several different meals. While Pollan's meals are constructed by him, using three different "food systems," Singer looks at the food choices of three different families, each of which relies on a different set of principles in purchasing and eating food. He selects families that are pretty clear-cut representatives of different American sub-cultures - the meat-eating family that buys most of their food at Wal-Mart, the semi-vegetarian family who buys much of their food at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, and the vegan family who buys most of their food through alternative avenues. He examines their food choices by looking at where the food comes from - the reality behind the labels - and tries to create an ethical hierarchy of the three family's choices.
Singer's book is oddly organized, by which I mean it's not, really. Rather than hanging the whole book on three evenly divided sections, Singer chooses instead to address issues as they crop up organically. So when it's time for a chapter on poultry production, there's a chapter on poultry production, and so on. The last few chapters are the most interesting, as Singer moves beyond the facts and label-scouting that have become pretty familiar in food-writing, and shifts into a more philosophical tone. It's fascinating to watch a "real" ethicist evaluate food choices and to see the process behind which Singer organizes his ethical hierarchy. Of course, as is obligatory, Singer ends his book with a chapter on what we should eat. (At this point, yawn.)
The Ethics of What We Eat is another good entry into the canon of intellectual food writing, and I recommend it for anyone interested in an ethicist's perspective on the whole food movement. (You get the added benefit that it's by Peter Singer, for crissakes - the man's a legend.) So if you're making a list of foodie books, add this one to it.
There are lots of similarities between Singer's book and Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. Singer relies heavily on Pollan's work and cites him extensively; more obviously, Singer borrows Pollan's idea of tracking the food history of several different meals. While Pollan's meals are constructed by him, using three different "food systems," Singer looks at the food choices of three different families, each of which relies on a different set of principles in purchasing and eating food. He selects families that are pretty clear-cut representatives of different American sub-cultures - the meat-eating family that buys most of their food at Wal-Mart, the semi-vegetarian family who buys much of their food at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, and the vegan family who buys most of their food through alternative avenues. He examines their food choices by looking at where the food comes from - the reality behind the labels - and tries to create an ethical hierarchy of the three family's choices.
Singer's book is oddly organized, by which I mean it's not, really. Rather than hanging the whole book on three evenly divided sections, Singer chooses instead to address issues as they crop up organically. So when it's time for a chapter on poultry production, there's a chapter on poultry production, and so on. The last few chapters are the most interesting, as Singer moves beyond the facts and label-scouting that have become pretty familiar in food-writing, and shifts into a more philosophical tone. It's fascinating to watch a "real" ethicist evaluate food choices and to see the process behind which Singer organizes his ethical hierarchy. Of course, as is obligatory, Singer ends his book with a chapter on what we should eat. (At this point, yawn.)
The Ethics of What We Eat is another good entry into the canon of intellectual food writing, and I recommend it for anyone interested in an ethicist's perspective on the whole food movement. (You get the added benefit that it's by Peter Singer, for crissakes - the man's a legend.) So if you're making a list of foodie books, add this one to it.
No comments:
Post a Comment