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Out of all the books that deals with food, this is the must have book to read! I have been trying to find some chapters or segments that I can use to teach to my class about animal rights, food politics, and the environmental concerns dealing with food. I was expecting to only find a chapter or perhaps a segment to use. To my surprise, the whole book is worthy to be taught in class.Peter Singer is well-known in philosophical circles as an ethicist and utilitarian. He has written many books about...
In his recent work, The Ethics of What We Eat (March 2007), Singer and farmer Jim Mason investigate the shopping choices of three families with diets exemplary of our current culture: Standard American Diet (SAD), Organic, and vegan. The Hiller-Neirstheimer family lives in Mabelville, Arkansas, shops at Wal-Mart and eats the SAD. They choose their groceries based on convenience and cost, and are unaware of ethical values concerning food. The Masarech-Motavalli family lives in Fairfield, Connecti...
Very good book. Dense on information, data, statistics. Difficult to read in some parts due to high information density. The arguments and stories presented on the book led me to try tge vegan lifestyle from now on, let's see how that goes.
This is a very easy read that outlines the ethics of our food choices, from the standard American diet, to veganism, all the way to dumpster diving! The book is a little dated, and I’m sure some things have changed since its publication, but most of the information is still very relevant to the current conditions of factory farming. Singer & Mason bring up very unbiased points from all sides of the story. I specifically liked their view on how imported produce can be more ethical than local prod...
I knew going into this book that I wasn't likely to get an objective, unbiased view of the food system from the author of "Animal Liberation" but I tried to keep an open mind. Most of the book is really well done -- informative, factual, thought-provoking, and well-researched. I read this shortly after reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma" so a lot of the information was familiar to me, but I appreciated the reinforcement of ideas I've already read about.My biggest problem with this book is that Sing...
Follows three families and trails the source of each of their food choices. Informative.
Highly informative, made me reflect on the ethics behind my personal food choices.
I'm not sure I would have liked this book so much if I wasn't already mostly-converted. On the other hand, if I had read it during my still-omnivorous years it may well have been the kick in the pants that I needed to actually make a change, much earlier than I actually did.Far from taking a hardline approach and condemning all non-vegans out of hand, the authors take a compassionate look at the food choices made by three different families, and from that launch a discussion of the impact that t...
Only read this book if you are ready to change the way you eat. Because once you read it you cannot go back to the way things were before. The authors explain what it is your actually eating and how it is produced. Once you know all the details it changes everything, especially about meat and dairy. It's easy to be ignorant, as we lead busy lives and the media represents everything so nicely. It's always the big companies that have the best ads and are the cheapest so we buy their products the m...
A balanced exploration of how what we eat matters regarding the health of our planet and for animal welfare. Peter Singer has long been an ethicist I've admired and enjoyed reading his works. This book looks at the diet of three American families --real people who are profiled as case studies. The authors go to the grocery store with each family, and then trace everything in their cart and explain where each of those food items comes from. Factory farming is discussed , organic farming is discus...
Worth a read/recommendation for anyone curious about the ethical implications of their eating habits, but doesn't want to be condemned for sometimes choosing convenience over ethical considerations. If you've already decided being vegan isn't for you, then at the very least, this book will debunk some common labeling misconceptions as well as assist you in opting out of factory farmed meat and fish that has been caught in a completely unsustainable manner.There's also an interesting look into wh...
really informative and interesting. This book convicted Jeff almost into vegegarianism... I suppose for me it is just making me think a lot about paying more money for lest crualty and waste. Even if you aren't a greenie hippy you should read this. If nothing else we should all know what it takes for our easy and cheap foods.
(Disclaimer: don't take my review too seriously because I don't feel qualified to judge the quality of the book. It's definitely a good book, but I'm just rating based on my personal enjoyment) Really eye-opening but after like the first half I felt like I got the point. Learned a lot about how to make better choices (and how Whole Foods is actually a super cool and awesome concept until it got eaten up by Amazon!!!). But also learned that literally almost EVERYTHING will have some sort of negat...
This is a fantastic book, written in a non-academic style, covering issues such an animal welfare, organic foods, locally grown foods (with a surprising twist on that choice!), and fair trade items. I found this book incredibly well researched, and open to empirical facts rather than demonstrating any blind allegiance to any one particular view point. After reading this book, I've entered into several conversations with vegan/animal rights friends of mine who generally criticize Singer, who was
Ethics is hard. If I've learnt something all these years, it is this universal maxim. Everybody wishes they'd make ethically sound choices in their lives, but more often than not, ethical choices are in contrast with cost and convenience. Nowhere is this more apparent than the way we consume food. There are a lot of similarities between food and religion. Both are deeply personal choices which are erroneously thought of as having a clear, set winning answer. Both divide people into disjoint sets...
Excellent, but wish it was less US-centric (Why not, Peter Singer, have more about Aus food production? Or even a different edition in which the food production of Australia is explored?)
Complete, overwhelming, disturbing, liberating. As strange as it sounds.You should probably read this book too. And not because I became a vegan evangelist, but because you just need to know how commercial animal husbandry works. If not else, it's super interesting. Ignorance is bliss - they say and that's probably the most true when it comes to consuming animal products. It's shocking how much we don't know about the world and how a piece of information can transfer the way we look at things. K...
So thought-provoking. Amazing.
I really like the way the authors balanced all sides of the conversation. Shopping local may mean supporting a farmer who uses more fuel to make rice (out of season when customers want it) than a farmer in Bangladesh who grows it in season with natural resources and then flies it to the US. Plus, that Bangladeshi farmer may not make as much as the local farmer, so ethically, it's better to support the farmer in Bangladesh who is poorer. The author also looks at factory farming, and says that eve...
Excellent and well-researched, this look inside our food choices in the West is worth reading. "Eating is a political act," as the authors say. 'The Way We Eat' goes in depth into modern agriculture practices as affecting land animals and sea creatures, as well as interviews families who follow the SAD, conscious omnivorism, and veganism. The book gives philosophical advice on the ethics of food choices, which I found to be helpful and not at all judgemental. I was already a vegetarian but the a...