The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter by Peter Singer, Jim Mason Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter
Book Review: Informative but a little too preacy toward veganism
Summary: 3 Stars
I found this book to be enlightening, and it contains a thorough analysis of the ethics of our modern industrial food production methods. By understanding how our food is produced and the harm these intensive, commercial methods cause to both the animals and the environment, one can make informed choices about one's diet. This book is a great tool for helping us get to that point.
However, I personally thought this book comes off as a little too preachy and pro-vegan especially toward the end. Overall, worth reading... but definitely a slanted point of veiw. It has enforced my beliefs about only eating ethical meats - humane, sustainable and preferably organic. It has not convinced me to go vegan or even vegetarian... so perhaps it fails in its core argument.
The information contained within is, however, worth the time to read it. I commend the authors for doing the investigative work and putting the thought into this subject. It is an important subject for citizens of industrialized nations (especially we Americans) to learn more about.
Book Review: A pretty informative, balanced book
Summary: 5 Stars
I got this book to be fair - I knew Peter Singer had a reputation as being on the fringe philosophy-wise, but not much more than that. I was intrigued by the title and had already read Fast Food Nation. So I read the book because I felt it was important to do so even if I disagreed with the writer. Well, I am glad I read the book and I plan to make changes based on the information I received from it. I plan to investigate for myself more. I was always happy with Wal-Mart's low food prices but I can see where much of the true cost is passed on to employees, the community, and the environment. If that sentence doesn't make sense to you - READ THE BOOK. Singer is evidently a vegetarian, but this book does not tell you to become one. Instead, he lays out several different types of consumers and shows you how to decide where YOU fall in the spectrum. The aim is to get you to THINK AND ASK QUESTIONS. And hey, if you want a big ole burger on a bun - he says it's your business. But he wants us to really understand what that burger MEANS. Book Review: a must-read for anyone who eats
Summary: 5 Stars
If you read one book on food ethics in your life, it should be this book.
Singer and Mason's book is an excellently researched and foot-noted exploration of three different American diets, tracing these diets back to their sources and showing the many hidden affects that our food choices have on our environment, our neighbors, the animals that many of us eat, and ultimately ourselves. This book shows how these seemingly innocuous choices really do make a difference in our world, and then guides the reader towards resources which might help them make different choices, if they so choose.
This book is not only full of an amazing depth and breadth of information on everything from organics, to local food, to intensive factory farms, to fair trade products, it also is immensely readable. The meetings with the three different families are very vivid and help to humanize these issues further.
I highly recommend this book to every thinking person who eats. Which is, really, all of us. Please read this book! Do yourself, your neighbors and your planet a favor!
(:,
Jennifer
Book Review: Being Ethical, Without Being Fanatical
Summary: 5 Stars
I paraphrased a sub-heading within one of the book's last chapters in the title of this review: it is a concise and accurate assessment of the entire work.This book presents a comprehensive and even handed overview of a plethora of ethical issues concerning the way we eat. Considering ethical and practical issues: what constitutes ethical treatment of animals; how one may effectively influence farm practices; to the trade off between eating locally and supporting developing world farmers. This book gives practical advice on how to create a more ethical and environmentally sustainable agricultural practices. Book Review: It's a start....
Summary: 3 Stars
The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter offers the reader an elementary introduction to the ethics of eating. The authors employ an engaging method for exploring food ethics by tracing the eating habits of three families with divergent lifestyles, and their research is sound. Peter Singer's years of experience in ethical debate are evident, and both he and Jim Mason approach the issues (the focus of much of the book is on animal welfare in the meat and dairy/egg industries) in a solid manner. Any reader not previously exposed to the facts of agribusiness or the meat/dairy/egg industry will be well equipped to begin their own examination of the issues and wrestle with their own conscience.
For the reader with a longer history of interest in these issues, however, the book suffers some flaws. While Singer and Mason do present good facts and research, their ethical analysis seems shallow in places, particularly their glaring lack of any discussion whatsoever pertaining to the deep correlations between patriarchy and the handling of female animals. As a previous reviewer mentions, Singer and Mason describe in vulgar detail a day they spent inseminating turkeys. While I do not object necessarily to the shocking terminology they employ when describing their actions (not nearly as much as I object to their actions themselves....why would they need to visit violence on the turkeys themselves in order to write about it??), as I believe it is purposefully violent and crass in order to expose the horror of the work, the authors do not present any analysis on their chosen terminology that might illuminate the deeper connections between our systematic disregard for animals and our callous treatment of a host of Others (most notably in this instance, that of women). Indeed, I am only making an assumption that they are even aware that the language that they used in that passage closely parallels descriptions of violence against women - without any acknowledgement of this, the reader may also assume that the authors are ignorant of this obvious correlation. A serious disconnect there. There is a general feeling over much of the book that in attempting to remain fact-based and "rational" (a tactic often employed to avoid accusations of the hysterical radicalism attributed to animal rights activists), the authors have sacrificed their own emotional response and any ability to see the links between injustices.
In addition, Singer and Mason consistently operate under a pro-globalization worldview, offering the opinion that supporting global free trade (albeit under organic, fair trade guidelines) will increase the living standards of the global poor - an opinion that is highly problematic for a number of reasons posited by those of an anti-globalizational orientation. Readers of Singer's previous work will not be surprised at this perspective, however, as Singer has written in this vein before, and many welcome an analysis of animal welfare within the system. It merely stands to note that there are other ethical perspectives on this and many other points made throughout the book, which generally assumes that agribusiness is a mainstay of life that merely needs reform. A more radical idea - varied alternatives to industrial mass agriculture (!!!) and a critical look at the way our city/country culture operates - is not even on the map.
Overall, I do believe that the book has merit, particularly as an introduction into the serious ethical considerations due the food we choose to consume, and specifically to an audience unmoved by more impassioned treatises on animal welfare. In order to truly consider the deeper implications of our choices as a culture/civilization however, it would benefit the reader to supplement this book with other texts on animal welfare and human rights associated with the business of food production. "The Feminist Politics of Meat" by Carol Adams comes to mind.