The term that Safran Foer used that hit home for me was "Discomfort Food." In this section, he discussed the nature of vegetarianism (whether all of the time or selectively) in relation to being a guest at a dinner. He describes how it is often sort of awkward when a vegetarian has to decline eating food that was cooked for them or request alternatives from the start--even though it's something they believe to be right.
Being vegetarian myself, this is something I can certainly relate to. I've been that guest before--the one that can't eat what everyone else is eating. Sometimes it feels like I can't even share the same experience as everyone else at the table, as if the food was the determinant of a social group. But I'm not vegetarian for the animal ethics reasons (although I do love animals, who doesn't?). I'm vegetarian because of health reasons, for research I had done on the subject. So Safran Foer makes another good point that now, it's even more awkward to have someone who is not vegetarian decline eating meat that is not ethically raised and treated. Ethical treatment of animals is something that nearly everyone would like to see practiced, yet we still find it off-putting to have someone decline eating one of your average cuts of meat.
Safran Foer really got me thinking in this section--trying to seriously figure out why we have such negative reactions to things that should make so much sense to us. Vegetarian or not, it's hard to argue that Safran Foer isn't making intriguing points here.
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