I don't know whether it was the hormones or the fact that I started running more consistently, but this past month I have consumed more food than I remember consuming at any other period in my life. Work has been pretty tiring and stressful at times, so food became a simple pleasure that I indulged in. It served as a reward for making it through the next deadline and a source of sustenance through long hours of constant expenditures of brain power.
Which is why I am so disturbed by what I just watched. It's a documentary called Food, Inc. I'd been meaning to watch it for a while and only got to it recently, but the timing couldn't have been more perfect. You know how sometimes things just coincide, as if someone's trying to give you the same message over and over through various means until you pay attention? Well it's pretty clear to me after watching this documentary that I'm supposed to pay even more attention to the food I eat (I say "even more" because I made a decision to become mostly vegetarian just three months ago) and, more generally, to be a better informed consumer and citizen.
Food, Inc. reveals insights into the industrial food production industry. It addresses issues like why it's cheaper to buy soda and chips than fresh fruits and vegetables and how it came to be this way, focuses on a mother's struggle to lobby for stricter food safety regulation following the death of her son after eating hamburger meat infected with
E. coli, shows scenes from overcrowded and unsanitary chicken coops, pig farms, and concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO), describes the way large multi-national corporations have come to dictate the way much of our food is produced, and all in all makes you feel sick to your stomach.
I had been exposed to these issues before, but I had never seen, all in one sitting, so many images of animals being slaughtered or kept in these conditions. In addition to my desire to live a healthier life, part of my reasons for becoming vegetarian were environmental. Now I can add animal cruelty to that list. I don't feel the need to take it to the level of being vegan or even strictly vegetarian. I believe animals can be a major source of food for humans. In fact, I call myself only mostly vegetarian because I've eaten chicken or pork a few times since converting to mostly non-meat food. However, the next time I think about eating chicken, you can bet I'm going to have that image in my mind of birds being artificially fattened to the point where their bodies get so big so fast that their bones can't even support their own weight enough to walk a few steps. Even watching the act of killing chickens and cows made me cringe and for a moment I wondered whether I was adding the title "animal rights activist" to my resume, especially in light of the fact that I have recently been nicknamed "The Green Nazi" in my office for trying to get people to turn off their lights, conserve energy, and recycle.
http://www.fanpop.com/spots/animal-rights/images/5325271/title/hamburger-cow
But then I considered a discrepancy -- I'm against slaughtering dogs to eat as food even if I'm still kinda okay with it for cows, chickens, and pigs in certain circumstances, and I don't feel too bad when I swat a cockroach or fly -- which I think means I don't really believe in all animal rights; I'm just emphathetic toward some animals. My empathy is based on social conditioning, anthropomorphism, animal cuteness, the size of the animal, or maybe all of these, but not on a belief that all animals have rights anywhere near the rights to which humans are entitled. Animals are lesser creatures than humans. I know that animals and microorganisms are all intertwined into finely tuned ecosystems, of which humans are a part, but it still seems morally right to me that if we had to wipe out an entire species of animal in order to save one human, it'd be the right decision. So it turns out animal rights aren't the main reason why I'd like to try to do my fair share to "vote with my fork," as they say in the documentary. But I am concerned that some of the foods we eat can actually make us sick instead of nurturing us, large corporations have so much control over smaller businesses and policy makers, and consumers don't demand enough to remedy these situations. Which takes me to Part Two of this blog saga...
I had been exposed to these issues before, but I had never seen, all in one sitting, so many images of animals being slaughtered or kept in these conditions. In addition to my desire to live a healthier life, part of my reasons for becoming vegetarian were environmental. Now I can add animal cruelty to that list. I don't feel the need to take it to the level of being vegan or even strictly vegetarian. I believe animals can be a major source of food for humans. In fact, I call myself only mostly vegetarian because I've eaten chicken or pork a few times since converting to mostly non-meat food. However, the next time I think about eating chicken, you can bet I'm going to have that image in my mind of birds being artificially fattened to the point where their bodies get so big so fast that their bones can't even support their own weight enough to walk a few steps. Even watching the act of killing chickens and cows made me cringe and for a moment I wondered whether I was adding the title "animal rights activist" to my resume, especially in light of the fact that I have recently been nicknamed "The Green Nazi" in my office for trying to get people to turn off their lights, conserve energy, and recycle.
