food, incorporated

“The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.” - Alice Walker

We should make every effort to break bad cultural habits... namely, that of eating animals. When people say “but we’ve been eating meat for thousands of years” tell them that just because we’ve been doing something bad or oppressive for a long time doesn’t justify our continuing to do it. Slave ownership was something that was present for years too...

I've been thinking a lot more about food...how toxic most food is in the U.S. Coincidentally, a new movie just came out, Food, Inc., which shows where most of the foods that wind up in supermarkets really come from. For years, I have done my own investigating, watching and reading horrible accounts of slaughterhouse practices, how pretty much everything we see in the markets is presented in such a way that we grow up thinking that this is normal and good for us. What if we had to pick up our meat at the slaughterhouse? Would people think twice about that ground beef or pork chop? How about the honey baked ham or rotisserie chicken that is smothered in BBQ sauce? Would you still eat it if you saw its feathers being ripped out, its head chopped off?

When I was little, I never knew the pink stuff that got all over the shelves and shopping cart was actual blood...how sticky and smelly it was, but thought that it was just "juice" or "drippings". How good I thought milk tasted...only to find out it is loaded with pus and mucous and that the cows that it came from are injected with hormones so they keep producing. I'm injected with hormone supressing drugs every month and I know how crappy it makes ME feel...but its MY choice to be on this clinical trial.

So many people tell me that meat just tastes too good to give up...and I used to think they were right.