Omivore's Dilemma: Chap 16 & 17

Eating animals. It sounds like a subject you would think you would hear on the Discovery Channel or something of that nature, but eating animals is habit for us as humans. The thought of killing a living thing in order to satisfy hunger, to me, is disturbing. This feeling, I believe was created by this weeks readings, especially chapter 17 of The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Though I may never stop eating animal products, I still have a lingering uneasiness about doing such a thing. What gives me this uneasiness about eating animals is the idea that the animals are suffering throughout the process. Michael Pollan writes that he believes that there is a difference between pain and suffering, but to me it seems awfully relative. My understanding of suffering is that if someone is ending another living thing’s life, against it’s will, there will be some aspect of suffering involved. Human nature and evolution seems to have changed and altered the part of our minds that gives us the idea that we have the right to take the life of another living organism and use it for nourishment. Despite the reality that I may never stop eating food from animals, I still feel unease in regard to eating animals.

Omnivore's Dilemma Reading: Chap. 12 &13

In chapter twelve of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan visits a slaughterhouse in hopes to learn more about how animals go from the farm to the consumer. During this experience Pollan receives the opportunity to kill chickens to see what it is like to do such a thing. While slitting the throats of many chickens Pollan discovers that it is more of a senseless murder, and this is what caught my attention most from the reading. What bothers me is that how we live in such a society that can so easily and senselessly kill living things for their own satisfaction. I mean, I’m not one to claim that I’m not going to eat a hamburger because a cow had to suffer, but I do think that it is something that we as a society have taken for granted. It is sad to me that our own selfish hunger can drive us to eat animals that have been killed by the thousands without even a thought or conscious awareness of what actually happened. It is as if there is a curtain between the slaughterhouse and our plate, and we were never meant to look or even want to look in order to know the truth. I just feel like it is our responsibility to reflect, understand, and be grateful for what goes into nourishing our bodies.

Reading #2, 2-1-10

What I connected to most from this week’s reading from chapter 9 of The Omnivore’s Dilemma was Pollan’s very interesting ideas about the organic food market and how not all of it is ever completely honest. Pollan spoke about how labels on foods can trick you into buying one thing and believing another, and I know this is true from my own life. When trying to make the most conscious choice nutritionally, whether it be organic or not, you must be very careful when reading labels because they were not written with the intentions that we as the consumer will be able to understand what they say. The fact that the people who are selling us what we eat, are not telling the real truth about it infuriates me. Another topic that resonated in my mind as I read was about how organic food is becoming “produced”. I think it is so sad that something such as “organic” food, which people look for in order to nourish their bodies, is being turned into more of a company interested in the monetary value versus the health status of its consumers. What I mean from all of this is, is that you cannot produce food that is “organic”; we must leave that solely up to nature.