i was reading Eat Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer around thanksgiving. i was quite tempted to go to kroger and start reading my favorite parts of the book out loud in the meat section. i really wanted to play the part of the batty traveling religious zealot that you see screaming at people in the middle of college campuses. don’t get the idea that i’m one of those paint throwing, non-leather-wearing vegetarian crazies but i almost became one while reading this book. i’ll spare you the truly gory bits that i so wanted to share with grocery shoppers but i do want to share a few little tid bits.
“Americans choose to eat less than .25% of the known edible food on the planet.”
“Modern industrial fishing lines can be as long as 75 miles-the same distance as from sea level to space.”
“Animal agriculture makes a 40% greater contribution to global warming than all transportation in the world combined; it is the number one cause of climate change.”
“In the typical cage for egg-laying hens, each bird has 67 square inches of space…Nearly all cage-free birds have approximately the same amount of space.”
“On average, Americans eat the equivalent of 21,000 entire animals in a lifetime.”
“Nearly one-third of the land surface of the planet is dedicated to livestock.”
“Less than 1% of the animals killed for meat in America come from family farms.”
i’ve been a vegetarian since my sophomore year in college (about six years) and some of the stuff in this book made me gag from just knowing that i once ate animals. as much as i wanted to share some of the totally bizarre facts i learned, my boyfriend wouldn’t let me. he eats meat and i don’t blame him for not wanting to know the nasty stuff. if you’re not already a vegetarian, seriously considering vegetarianism or have a stomach made of steel and be very careful with this book.
by Zita
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