Vegetarian Star

Jonathan Safran Foer. Credit: David Shankbone on Wikimedia Commons

Best selling author Jonathan Safran Foer recently interviewed with Grist.

Foer discussed his latest book, Eating Animals, and touched on the hypocrisy of meat eating environmentalists, his own struggles of vegetarianism and the fact that he probably didn’t have Tofurky this past Thanksgiving.

A few highlights:

Will there always be a Tofurky on the Foer table during the holidays?
I don’t really get into the whole tofurky business.

On Environmentalists Who Don’t Push Going Veg:
No, they obviously haven’t [done enough], and they know it’s the elephant in the room. They haven’t because they fear that addressing it is going to risk losing people…This is the number one cause of global warming—and not by a little bit but by a lot. The most recently revised estimate was that animal agriculture is responsible for 51 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, so that’s more than everything else put together. If we’re going to seriously think about this stuff we might have to risk the discomfort.

On Fear Of Going Completely Vegetarian:
I would say don’t think about it as becoming a vegetarian. Think about it as a process of eating less meat. And maybe the process will end with eating no meat. But if Americans lose one serving of meat a week from their diet it would be like taking about 5 million cars off the road. That’s a really impressive statistic that I think might motivate a lot of people who feel they can’t become vegetarians to remove one serving of meat.

Read the entire interview with Jonathan at grist.org.

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Jonathan Safran Foer "Eating Animals" Interview

Author Jonathan Safran Foer says that for people, including himself, going vegetarian is a lot like Mark Twain described quitting smoking.

“Mark Twain said that quitting smoking is among the easiest things one can do; he did it all the time. I would add vegetarianism to the list of easy things. In high school I became a vegetarian more times than I can now remember…”

Whether you’re trying to go vegetarian, vegan, or flex the process can result in multiple attempts to “get it right” whether the failings are brought on by cravings, environment, financial issues or pure convenience.

The strictest of vegetarians would like to call anyone who even ingests the occasional animal byproduct no longer vegetarian, but is that the best approach to take?

Jonathan gives his take on alternet.org:

“But I wonder if more of the difficulty doesn’t come from the ways that we talk and think about change. When it comes to meat, change is almost always cast as an absolute. You are a vegetarian or you are not. It’s a strange formulation, and it’s distracting. (Those who profit from animal suffering and environmental destruction want us to think in dichotomies, rather than practical realities.) Imagine someone asking you, “Are you an environmentalist or not?” For most of us, caring about the environment isn’t an on-off switch, but a set of daily choices that we try to respond to as best we can. I buy energy-efficient products, and turn off lights when leaving a room, and recycle and so on. But I also fly on airplanes. Does my occasional flying completely undermine my identity as someone who cares and tries? Should I, faced with my inability to live consistently, make no efforts to live better?”

Is being a vegetarian a continuous “process” that none of us should expect to get 100% correct?

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Jonathan Safran Foer "Eating Animals" Interview

Best selling author Jonathan Safran Foer has a new book out, Eating Animals.

Foer had been an on again/off again vegetarian for years, but never really took the time to learn about the rational reasons for doing so. When his wife became pregnant, he decided it was time to educate himself so he could teach his child why going vegetarian is the best diet for humans, animals, and the planet.

In a recent interview with Vegnews, Jonathan elaborates on why people still find no fault in eating meat, especially factory farmed meat.

“Peoples’ responses to food, the reason they take it so emotionally and so many smart, informed people continue to eat this stuff—it’s not because they’re ignorant, it’s not because they’re evil. It’s because there’s a large component of our decision-making that isn’t reasonable. The challenge is to persuade people, or show people, even those parts that aren’t reasonable, things like cravings, are actually better satisfied by not eating them.”

“I think the better way to talk about it is like a series of these choices. Like how can one try to make the best choice as often as possible? The “best” meaning the choice that is in line with their values. Despite the array of values that Americans have, if everyone ate his values, nobody would eat factory farmed meat. And I think, frankly, very few people would eat any kind of meat. Nobody’s values lead them there. It’s only forgetfulness.”

Read Jonathan’s entire interview at vegnews.com.

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• Ellie Goulding Creates Protein Bar “Everlasting Joy” With GoMacro