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10
entries in the feed.
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James McWilliams is "a historian and writer who's books include Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong, How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly and A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America. My writing on food, agriculture, and animals has appeared in the New York Times, Harper’s, The Washington Post, Slate, Forbes, Travel and Leisure, The Los Angeles Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Texas Observer."
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The Hard Reality of Agricultural Chemistry
Advocacy of synthetic fungicides is typically not a position one finds coexisting with diehard vegan activism. The desire to eat a plant-based diet evokes, however illogically, an image of agricultural purity that stands in sharp contrast to the destructive connotations surrounding agricultural chemistry. It is for this reason, in part, that many people
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Eating Animals in the Evening
Mark Bittman’s new book, Vegan Before 6:00, deserves considerable credit for advocating a substantial reduction in the consumption of animal products. That’s good. It also earns praise for its trenchant condemnation of the standard American diet. Although this is a target fatter than the average American, enough darts cannot impale its expanding
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Grass Backwards
You hear defenders of pastured beef say it all the time: cows were meant to eat grass. They typically make this claim to justify their choice of pastured beef over industrial, grain-fed beef—the stuff that hogs all the media attention for causing grave ecological damage with total disregard for animal welfare. These claims might indeed be [...]
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Ham I Am
Some philosophers argue that the evolution of language grants humans exclusive rights above and beyond non-human animals. This controversial position has been effectively debunked, but the claim provides a nice opportunity to examine precisely how we use formal language to convey meaning about eating animals that some philosophers think, on the
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The Oyster Considered
The outpouring of intelligent thoughtfulness in response to yesterday's oyster post has my wheels spinning more than ever, even if I'm not yet convinced that, from any animal rights perspective, it's wrong to eat an oyster. But here's something to chew on: maybe being convinced is overrated. Creatively speaking, I found myself wandering
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Consider the Oyster
I’ll admit that oysters give me a case of the fits. When I ate them, I liked them. A lot. I don’t eat them anymore, but when people ask me why I forgo the oyster I have a harder time justifying my choice than I do for pigs, cows, chickens, and other obviously sentient animals. [...]
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Orwellian (the good kind)
If you are a committed vegan you have likely thought to yourself that you cannot believe you ate how you once ate, much less lived how you once lived. In a way, this is an excellent emotion to experience. It provides honest affirmation of your new, healthier, and more compassionate way of life. It validates [...]
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Steve King Has a Dream
You have to give the Humane Society of the United States credit for scaring the snot out of Big Agriculture. For those who persist in thinking that HSUS and other welfare organizations are in some sort of dark conspiratorial cahoots with our nation's most powerful producers of animal products, I would urge you to [...]
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Interview with a Nine-Year Old Vegetarian
I did the following interview with my daughter, Cecile. JM: Why did you become a vegetarian? CM: Because I love animals and I don’t like how they kill them for food. JM: What do your friends think about you being vegetarian? CM: Sometimes they ask why I became a vegetarian, but one of my friends [...]
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Beware Nation: Vegan Bullies on the Loose!
There's a whole cottage industry dedicated to declaring disdain for vegans. You can, if you're such a person, buy a t-shirt or bumper sticker or lapel pin that says “I hate vegans,” “vegans are evil,” or (however illogically) “save a cow, eat a vegan.” You can, if it fuels your warped sense of justice, [...]
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