A few months ago I was out for dinner with Matthew at a restaurant and he ordered a big steak. When he only managed to eat about half of it so I suggested he should try to finish it out of respect for the poor cow. He got a little grumpy and said he would not be able to finish it for sure now because me pointing out how a cow had lost its life for his meal had grossed him out. Maybe I had crossed a line, but when I thought about it after it struck me as strange that we have become that far removed from what we eat that we don't even want to think about what it is that we are eating half the time.
It then started to occur to me that I know very little about the food I eat, where it comes from, how it is produced, and the impact my food choices have on the animals involved, the people producing it, my health, and the impact on the environment. It was surprising to me that I know so little about the food I eat because eating is such a big part of my life and something I have to do every day. So I did some searching and found this book. It is really good and looks at the implications of our food choices from a number of different perspectives.
I feel that I am just at the very beginning of what will now be a long process for us to improve upon our diet for the sake of our own health, and because of the impact our choices have on the environment etc. We have already started to cut back on our meat consumption, buy more "free range" products, and have started to pick up more organic items. One of the best tips in the movie is not to forget the power we have as consumers and to think of every item that gets scanned at the grocery store as your opportunity to place a vote.
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