High School Library

Eating Animals

by Jonathan Safran Foer

First and foremost, in spite of whatever prejudice may bubble up after reading the title, this is not a book that advocates for vegetarianism. In fact, the author does not care what you eat. He just wants you to understand what happens so that a living, breathing chicken, pig, cow, or fish ends up on you dinner plate. Safran Foer raises the issue not of killing a living thing to eat it, but of turning living, breathing beings into commodities. When profit is all that counts, how do the animals that we eat actually live? How do our food’s lifestyles impact directly on our health (both, individually and collectively)? What is the industry’s impact on the environment and global warming?

This book is not for the faint hearted. It is also not intentionally gory or over the top. It simply tells the story of how our food lives. With a degree in Philosophy, but working as a novelist, Jonathan Safran Foer writes easy, quick, and compelling prose. As hard and complex as the subject is, the author tackled it as a novel, and you will have finished reading before you realize how dense it could be. This book acts as an advocate for awareness. Each of us chooses what we eat every day, and believe it or not, these choices do have a direct impact on other beings as well as the planet. The author, far from wanting us all to go vegan, wants to enable us to make an educated choice, whatever those end up being.

Francisca Alsúa - Middle Library