Eating Animals

Jonathan Safran Foer spent much of his life oscillating between enthusiastic carnivore and occasional vegetarian. Once he started a family, the moral dimensions of food became increasingly important. Faced with the prospect of being unable to explain why we eat some animals and not others, Foer set out to explore the origins of many eating traditions by traveling to the darkest corners of our dining habits. He writes in part memoir and part investigative report about how certain animals have become so closely linked to certain human populations, that it is difficult for individuals in those populations to accept the humane eating practices of people within other cultures who hold different views about which animals can be eaten. The book covers a lot of ground, from the treatment of food animals by modern factory farming to ancient taboos against eating horses and dogs.