Blog Post 6

Honestly this is the chapter that had the biggest impact on me. After reading and reflecting, I found myself again considering becoming vegetarian. Earlier in life I had come to the thought on my own without the scare tactics involved, but ended up not following through. This time around it was the scare tactics that got me thinking. Although it added to it all as another reason, it wasn’t even the theory of impending microbial doom that got me. In this chapter, I related very strongly to the most graphic, disgusting thing I have ever heard about food. Even typing out the phrase “fecal soup” now makes my stomach turn. When Safran Foer described the process of water-immersion-based chilling, I started making judgments in my head over my eating habits. Chicken has been one of my biggest sources of meat, over my entire life, and I have always eaten a lot of it. Whenever it was prepared for me (whether at a restaurant or at home) it was juicy and salty in taste, and I always preferred it that way. I can’t honestly say that I prefer it that way with a whole heart anymore. I always considered it to be the healthy alternative to red meat. I always considered the juicy, not-breaded, not-fried form to be the healthiest. Now, however, when I think of ‘fecal soup’ I think of the burst of broth juices that comes from a bite into the chicken. I have this sensation even though I know that the chicken I’m eating is completely fine and wholesome. My uncle is an organic farmer, and we’re able to get a lot of really good meat from him. This doesn’t stop my mind from linking the imagery from Eating Animals to eating my food. I’ve curbed my eating habits; stopped eating as much fast food, started eating more vegetables, etc. I find myself eating more hamburger and steak, because cows are the animal that Safran Foer had mentioned the least. My reasoning there is that he seemed to take every single stab that he could at everything that was wrong with the raising and processing of every meat that he could mention. It must, then, be safer to eat beef, right? Thankfully my uncle raises cows and chickens. As a pacifist and conscious mind that considered vegetarianism before, I came into this book knowing that it’d be trying to convince me to convert, and I’ve been resistant. This chapter, however, broke through that. Well played, Safran Foer.