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The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter
Books: CookBooks: Gourmet Foods: Item 7
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The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matterby Peter Singer and Jim Mason
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93 of 100 people found the following review helpful: A Superb Book on the Ethics of Eating, May 3, 2006 Reviewer:Erik Marcus "Author of _Meat Market: Animals, Ethics, and Money_" (Ithaca, NY USA) - Disclosure: Peter Singer and I corresponded extensively during his writing of _The Way We Eat_, and his new book favorably references both of my books. Right now, Michael Pollan's _The Omnivore's Dilemma_ is already well on its way to becoming the top-selling book on food politics released this decade. Peter Singer and Jim Mason's new book, _The Way We Eat_ has the profound misfortune of being released just three weeks later, and this new title finds itself the grape to Pollan's steamroller. This chance situation is a terrible shame, since _The Way We Eat_ is the better researched and more carefully thought-through book. Both of these titles are excellent, but if you're only going to read one I'd urge you to read Singer. For two books that trace the origins of our food, these titles have surprisingly little overlap. Read both of these books and you'll know more about food than 99 percent of Americans -- and if you grew up eating the standard American diet it's almost inconceivable that you'll continue eating in this fashion. If you decide to read both books, be sure to read Singer first. As I've noted in my Amazon.com review of _The Omnivore's Dilemma_, Pollan makes some ill-informed arguments in favor of including animal products in the diet. The trouble is that Pollan is such a gifted writer that he ends up being highly persuasive even when he's on very thin ice with his facts. Reading _The Way We Eat_ is a wonderful way to prepare for _The Omnivore's Dilemma_ --- you'll be in a prime position to critically analyze both the strengths and weaknesses of Pollan's flawed but vitally important book. It's a shame that I can't write a review of _The Way We Eat_ without mentioning Pollan in the same breath, because Singer and Mason's book more than stands on its own. It's marvelously researched, and has a quality of critical thinking that few food writers could even aspire to. What's more, the writing flows beautifully. If you want to advance your knowledge of where our food comes from, and understand more about the ethical implications of different diets, there's no better place to start than by reading _The Way We Eat._
From Publishers Weekly
Ethicist Singer and co-author Mason (Animal Factories) document corporate deception, widespread waste and desensitization to inhumane practices in this consideration of ethical eating. The authors examine three families' grocery-buying habits and the motivations behind those choices. One woman says she's "absorbed in my life and my familyand I don't think very much about the welfare of the meat I'm eating," while a wealthier husband and wife mull the virtues of "triple certified" coffee, buying local and avoiding chocolate harvested by child slave labor, though "no one seems to be pondering that as they eat." In investigating food production conditions, the authors' first-hand experiences alternate between horror and comedy, from slaughterhouses to artificial turkey-insemination ("the hardest, fastest, dirtiest, most disgusting, worst-paid work"). This sometimes-graphic exposé is not myopic: profitability and animal welfare are given equal consideration, though the reader finishes the book agreeing with the authors' conclusion that "America's food industry seeks to keep Americans in the dark about the ethical components of their food choices." A no-holds-barred treatise on ethical consumption, this is an important read for those concerned with the long, frightening trip between farm and plate.
Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Less concerned with what people choose to eat per se, Singer and Mason make a case for how people's everyday food choices affect others' lives. They describe in vivid detail how applying industrial processing principles to animal husbandry has led to cheap foods whose cost savings occur at the expense of animals raised for profit and for product. Using Wal-Mart as an example, they lay out how huge retailers wield enormous power over prices and compel those far up the chain of food production and distribution to make unhelpful decisions. They hold up for admiration a Kansas family that has turned vegan so as not to participate in this particular destructive cycle of animal and human exploitation. They also thoughtfully and critically examine the ethical pros and cons of eating meat in any form. Urban dwellers far removed from the source of the foods they eat will find Singer and Mason's descriptions of food production more disturbing and violent than the quiet, attractive, plastic-wrapped displays in the local supermarket's pristine meat case. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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