Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

There is no doubt that factory farming practices are inhumane and dangerous to environmental as well as human health. The issue of food is not merely an ideological problem though, as Foer imagines it, even if it is seductive to become righteous about it in that way. Biology is, for better or worse, stronger than ideology in the long run (dead in the name of an ideal is still dead, not to mention that it represents an ideological extremism that we really should learn to become more critical about, as it's done, historically, and continues to do, so much damage to humanity). I was a vegetarian for years and now have spent years repairing the damage I did to my body because of it. The best ethical solution isn't righteousness, but balance. People tend to become very passionate when their thinking is locked in extremes, but in fact the issue of healthy eating and healthy ethics is about balancing priorities in a way that doesn't sacrifice the organism (including the human organism) at the alter of an ideal, whether pro- or anti- animal-eating. The human organism evolved in and through or at least alongside eating animals, and for better or worse our bodies have evolved to require them to function properly and optimally. I realize it's difficult and painful for some people to face this fact, it was very difficult for me, until my health demanded that I begin to take off the ideological, and far too idealistic, glasses I was wearing. Studying and applying holistic nutrition was a wake up call for me. The reductive model of nutrition that vegetarians use to defend and justify their ideals just doesn't hold up (especially in practice as opposed to theory) to the scope and complexity of holistic nutrition. Reductive nutrition is similar to the seemingly logical and practical, and yet ultimately reductive, "science" of factory farming. Weston Price and Francis Pottenger are the historical founders of a holistic view of nutrition, and I highly encourage anyone interested in health to look into their groundbreaking work (plenty of contemporary holistically-minded nutritionists follow in their path, too). Their interest was not to search out the origins of disease, but to search out the origins of health on a global scale, and the answer, they found, was a holistic nutrition that they discovered depended on a variety of animal meats and products. A truly balanced and healthy (nutritionally, ecologically and ethically) view would eliminate traditional factory farming (which exists only for profit, not health), and implement ways we can take care of our nutritional and ethical needs together. We don't need to eat massive quantities of meat to be healthy, and the moderate amounts that health requires should be grass-fed/pasture-raised/healthy-ocean-raised. If there are simply too many people in the world to allow for that, the issue of over-population as a problem and unsustainable health-risk needs more serious attention. Extremism, especially ideological extremism, is seductive, but it's a dangerous solution. History and our present global political situation make that very clear. It's a form of thinking and reasoning that is problematic even when it comes to "eating animals."