Hw # 7d

Chapter 17:

Precis: In this chapter I venture into the word vegan and why this has become a food trend and the moral/reasons people become vegetarian.

Gems: " Eating meat has become morally problematic, at least for people who take the trouble to think about it. Vegetarianism is more popular than it has ever been, and animal rights, the fringiest of fringe movements until few years ago, is rapidly finding its way into the cultural mainstream." - pg. 303

" That's not because slaughter is necessarily inhumane, but because most of us would simply rather not be reminded of exactly what meat is or what it takes to bring it to our plates." - pg. 302

Questions/Thoughts: Most people learn to see "we" eating animals as cycle of life, but some people see it as morally wrong. Who knows what the right way is? The one our ancestors ate or this new modern way of seeing foo and animals?

Chapter 18:

Precis: To understand how before existence of supermarket I needed experience another way of feeding oneself besides food shopping, the method people used long go. Hunting. With help of a friend, I was able to learn how to hunt and one day I tried out these skills. On the second outing was finally able to shoot my first pig and when I did I had a feeling, i never would've thought i would have after, happiness. Instead of guilt or disgust, I was excited that I had killed this animal. But this didn't feeling didn't last, it ended when it came time to carry its carcass and cook it.

Gems: " Nothing in my experience (with the possible exception of certain intoxicants) has prepared me for the quality of this attention." - pg. 334

" The one emotion I expected to feel but did not, inexplicably, was remorse, or even ambivalence. All that would come later, but now, I'm slightly embarrassed to admit, I felt absolutely terrific - unambiguously happy." - pg. 353

" But I realized that here in this single picture you could actually observe this food chain in its totality, the entire circuit of energy and matter that had created the pig we were turning into meat for our meal." - pg. 362

Question/Thoughts: I enjoyed this chapter, was able to take peek in how it feels like to hunt and what goes into hunting.

Chapter 19:

Precis:Nature doesn't entirely make every plant we see as edible (i.e. chanterelle mushrooms) and throughout history we have learned what we can and cannot eat.

Gems: " Gardening is a way of being in nature steeped in assumptions of which the gardener is seldom more than vaguely aware - if at all. To work exclusively with domesticated species, for example, is bound to color your view of nature as being a fairly benign place, one that answers to human desires ( for beauty, for tastiness). " - pg. 365

" I wonder if books fail us here because the teaching transaction - this one is good to eat, that one not - is so fundamental, even primordial, that we're instinctively reluctant to trust it to any communication medium save the oldest: that is, direct personal testimony from, to put it bluntly, survivors." - pg. 372

Questions/Thoughts:

Chapter 20:

Precis: At the end of hard work of hunting, foraging and gathering, had a cooked meal surrounded by friends. Cooking and sitting at table, not necessarily the food, made it the best meal.

Gems: "Another thing cooking is, or can be, is a way to honor the things we're eating, the animal and plants and fungi that have been sacrificed to gratify our needs and desires, as well as the place and the people that produced them." - pg. 404

“Putting a great dish on the table is our way of celebrating the wonders of form we humans can create from this matter-this quality of sacrificed life-just before the body takes its first destructive bite.” - Pg. 405

" For we would no longer need any reminding that however we choose to feed ourselves, we eat by the grace of nature, not industry, and what we're eating is never anything more or less than the body of the world."

Questions/Thoughts: We have reached the end of the book, but I feel OK now that I know all this information how can I or people do to stop these deep dark secrets of food industry? Or as Ally put it " How do we avoid eating this shit?" Do we just accept it?