Eating Animals facts for kids
Jonathan Safran Foer at Barnes & Noble Union Square to discuss his book Eating Animals
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| Author | Jonathan Safran Foer |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Nonfiction |
| Publisher | Little, Brown and Company |
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Publication date
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2009 |
| Pages | 352 pages (hardcover) |
| ISBN | 0316069906 |
| LC Class | TX392 .F58 2009 |
Eating Animals is a famous book written by American author Jonathan Safran Foer. It was published in 2009 and quickly became a New York Times best-seller. The book explores what it means to eat animals in today's world, especially with modern farming methods.
Foer worked closely with Farm Forward, a US nonprofit organization that supports veganism and sustainable agriculture. In 2018, the book was made into a documentary film. The film has the same name and was narrated by Foer and actress Natalie Portman.
Contents
What Eating Animals is About
Jonathan Safran Foer wrote Eating Animals to help him decide if his newborn son should eat meat. He realized that in our modern world, choosing to eat meat has many big effects. It's not just about taste anymore.
Often, eating meat today can cause problems for animals, the environment, and even our own health. Animals might suffer, the environment can get damaged, and our health could be at risk. Foer decided that the problems with factory farming are much bigger than the enjoyment of eating meat. Because of this, he chose to raise his son as a vegetarian.
The Importance of Stories
Throughout the book, Foer highlights how important stories are when it comes to food. He even named the first and last chapters "storytelling." Foer believes that "stories about food are stories about us." They show our history and what we value.
Storytelling helps us understand how complex eating animals can be. It also connects to who we are. The food on our plates tells a story about our relationship with the world. This includes the people we eat with and how our food gets to our table. Foer thinks that humans understand difficult things by turning them into stories.
Eating Meat: Then and Now
The book mainly focuses on eating meat. Foer discusses what eating meat meant in the past compared to what it means today. He doesn't say that eating meat is always bad. Instead, he argues that it's bad when it causes animals to suffer. It's also bad when it harms the environment or risks human health.
Foer explains that today, eating meat often leads to these problems. This is especially true for meat from industrial methods like factory farming and industrial fishing. His main point is that eating animals from these large-scale, industrial farms is harmful.
Why We Forget
Foer suggests that most people know there's something wrong with how animals are raised for food. But, he says, people often try to forget this. When we forget about animals, we also forget parts of ourselves. We ignore that animals can feel pain, just like us.
Foer believes that forgetting this makes us feel a bit ashamed. It's a feeling that comes when we remember something we tried to ignore.
Hidden Farms and Misleading Labels
The book also points out that the meat industry often hides how it operates. Farms are usually closed to the public. It's so hard to see inside that Foer actually snuck into a typical factory farm himself. He saw the terrible conditions the animals lived in. This helped him understand why the industry wants to keep things secret.
Foer describes how this is very different from the marketing used by factory farms. To help people understand, he dedicates a chapter to defining words related to food. He explains many labels and certifications on animal products, showing that some of them can be misleading.
Your Food Choices Matter
Ultimately, Eating Animals discusses the ethics of food. It suggests that the food choices we make show our values. Foer argues that when people eat meat from factory farms, they are saying their desire for meat is more important than an animal's well-being or even its life.
This can happen whether we realize it or not. If someone supports factory farming, they might be ignoring the importance of treating animals well. Foer connects how we treat animals to how we treat humans. He says we might start to divide living beings into those who matter and those who don't. So, every food choice we make has a big impact on both humans and animals.
The Documentary Film
In 2018, director Christopher Quinn and actress Natalie Portman created a documentary film based on Eating Animals. Like the book, the film explores the ethical questions around modern animal farming. The creators hoped the film would help more people think differently about the meat they eat.
The movie was released in cinemas on June 15, 2018. It received good reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, 91% of critics gave it a positive review. At Metacritic, it scored 69 out of 100, which means "generally favorable reviews."
See also
In Spanish: Eating animals para niños
