I was at Barnes and Noble today reading Johnathan Safran Foer's new Omnivore's Dilemma-like book, Eating Animals. With multiple book reviews in the New York Times, The Huffington Post and other sites, I thought it was worth a read. Omnivore's Dilemma taught me a lot about how our modern society thinks about food, and Foer's new book questions whether we think about it at all. He argues most of us tend to have an uneasy relationship with the meat on our plates, realizing that it is somehow inherently wrong but not digging deep enough into the issue to parse out the reasons why. Factory farming and the industrialization of our food supply are the likely answers, but it seems he will go even farther to say that meat in itself should not be part of our diets, and "locally farmed" animals are no better than the factory farmed versions.

I'm not sure how I feel about "no meat for everyone." I obviously don't want meat on my plate, but many people do, and I'm not in the business of telling others how to eat since I certainly don't want them telling me. Perhaps by the end of the book I'll feel differently, but today I take the approach of sharing my veganism with others through the food I cook and the things I buy. It's a part of my life, so, naturally, it's a part of all my relationships.

Is that an easy way out of this difficult, societal conversation? Should the debate on the ethics of eating be debated on the Senate floor in much the same way as health care is today? Foer argues that what we need is "a way that brings meat to the center of the public discussion in much the same way it is often at teh center of our plates." Importantly, "this doesn't require that we pretend we are going to have collective agreement." We will not agree, he says, so what do we do with this "inevitable reality? Drop the conversation, or find a way to reframe it?"

I need to read more. I need to finish this book and others to present a well-rounded, informed view. But I have been thinking about it now more than ever before.

Ironically, when I was at the bookstore I happened to sit in the vegetarian cook book section because the cafe was full. A couple, perhaps parents of a teen or 20-something, were browsing. The mother picked up a vegetarian cook book, saying, "Maybe we should get this for her?" Father: "No, don't encourage her! I'd like to see some meat on my plate every once in awhile." Right, wrong, odd? At a minimum just a reminder of the role vegetarianism occupies for many people. It's more of a "why?" than an "ok." Still more of a catalyst for questions rather than an easy acceptance. I guess we're all still trying to figure this one out.