Day 15 (one day late)

Ooo, the halfway point! Funfunfun. ^_^

I just finished a really interesting book by Michael Pollan called The Omnivore's Dilemma. This isn't really a review of the book or a discussion, both of which can be found elsewhere (most notably here), but more of what it's made me ponder in a roundabout way.

Rough draft, as usual, and a rather rambling one at that. I expect it stretches the "creative" guideline, but I'm not picky. ;)

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I don't often think about food. Oh, I like it all right, and sometimes my mum or dad will ask me what I'd like to eat for dinner, forcing me to contemplate it for a short while. And I suppose that when I remember events in my life, like trips abroad or Christmas's spent with family, I, like many people, inevitably think about the foods that accompanied them. But where our food actually comes from, well, that's something that doesn't usually cross my mind when chewing on a ham sandwich.

Of course, this is partly because I have a fairly good idea of our foods' origins, a better idea, I'd like to think, than some people out there. I've read the articles about the factory farms, the toxic retention ponds of full shit, the chickens forced to live so close together they eat each other, the algae blooms caused by agricultural runoff, the perils of monocultures, and the death of the small farm.

Thinking about these things while eating would put anyone off their dinner, so instead, when my thoughts do stray to my food, I comfort myself with flimsy reassurances that my mum buys organic, so it must be okay.

Reading Pollan's book, among other things, forced my to examine my ideas and conceptions about food. What I discovered made a lot of sense based on my general world-view, but there were some surprises in there, too. It's interesting to see what you learn about yourself when forced to ponder something relatively new.

I now know that I don't want to be a vegetarian, and I don't think I ever will. I had recently considered whether I should try it, and reading this book help me sort things out. For me, eating other animals is part of life, and not something of which we should be ashamed. Any moral qualms I have are not about killing innocent animals, but their quality of life, the environmental impact of how they're raised, and how they are killed. So instead of eschewing meat entirely, I've decided to make sure I know where it comes from and to eat less of it. It's a grayer position, but then not everything is black and white.

Then there's hunting—Pollan's descriptions of hunting actually made me want to try it. Which was sort of disturbing, until I realized my views on hunting hadn't suddenly morphed into that of the stereotypical sport hunter who owns more guns than seems entirely necessary. I still don't think hunting for sport is right; if you hunt an animal you should do so with the intent of eating it. But the idea that I might actually want to experience hunting once or twice, well, that's certainly new.

Finally, there's that flimsy reasoning that I don't have to think about my food because a lot of it's organic. Turns out that organic food isn't synonymous with small family farms and happy little animals. I suppose if I weren't so naive I would've figured this out sooner; organic agriculture has had to become more and more industrial to meet growing demand.

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Okay, not sure how to end it. Since it isn't anything special, I think that'll do. Rambles don't need conclusions. ^_^