Vegetarian Star

Credit David Shankbone on Wikimedia Commons

How do you embarrass an anti factory farm, pro plant based diet guru?

Remind him of his past transgressions.

Jonathan Safran Foer was at a book festival in London discussing his Eating Animals book, when British author Hephzibah Anderson mentioned something to Foer about sharing a bacon cheeseburger with him several years ago.

How did Foer respond?

The New York Post described his reaction as “sheepish.”

Gotta wonder what this Anderson guy’s intentions were, bringing up Foer’s “past” in front of everyone like that.

Was he hoping Foer would say something along the lines of, “Yeah, that was the best tasting burger I ever had–before I went vegetarian.”

Or was he waiting for Foer to deny it, then whip out the big photo taken back then for memories?

If you’ve taken to spreading the good news about how a vegetarian diet is better for yourself, animals and the planet, be aware that what happened in carnivorous days doesn’t stay there.

If you get reminded of  how you used to eat the double double with fried egg on top in the most annoying and inconvenient situations, politely say that was before you realized how crowded the conditions in factory farms are or the amount of antibiotics wasted in animal agriculture.

Then ask him why he is still going to the steakhouse twice a week–with two different girls who think they’re “exclusive.”

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Jonathan Safran Foer. Credit: David Shankbone on Wikimedia Commons

“In high school I became a vegetarian more times than I can now remember. Many dinners of those years began with my father asking, ‘any dietary restrictions I need to know about tonight?”‘

—-Jonathan Safran Foer, as quoted in the New Zealand Herald.

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Jonathan Safran Foer. Credit: David Shankbone on Wikimedia Commons

Eating Animals author Jonathan Safran Foer is vegetarian, but you won’t find him eating in vegetarian restaurants.

Instead, he chooses to patronize businesses that make non-meat options available, like several of his favorite spots in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

So where can you find Foer in between him writing drafts of his next bestseller?

Well, for one, Bonnie’s Grill has veggie burgers so good you’ll curse.

“Their veggie burger is f—king great! I remember what hamburgers were like, but, believe it or not, I would choose their veggie burger over a hamburger. I know that sounds just like what a vegetarian would say, but they are maddeningly good.”

Will there be a hoard of meat eaters flocking to Bonnie’s in the New Year and talking like sailors once they take a bite?

Learn where Jonathan grabs the best veggie burrito and falafel at nypost.com.

via treehugger.com

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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

Jonathan Safran Foer was the guest of honor at this year’s Farm Sanctuary Celebration for Turkeys.

Jonathan read some parts from his latest book, Eating Animals, and took the time to talk to green gossip website Ecorazzi.

Here are a few thoughts Jonathan gave to Ecorazzi:

On Farm Sanctuary:
Farm Sanctuary was the first place I went when I did my research for this book. I had a really wonderful day. In many ways it established a tone for the rest of my research, which was that these issues all depend on how you tell them—how you present them. It’s not the case that the world needs new values, it just needs a new story—a story that more accurately reflects what’s going on in the world and more directly connects it to who we already are, not who we want to be, just who we already are.

On what famous person he’d like to see go veg this Thanksgiving:
I don’t know if I think of it in quite those terms. Like I was saying, there’s something that seems dichotomist about that—turkey or no turkey. Look, someone like Glenn Beck could not have a turkey and that’s fine, but what I would so strongly prefer is that he had a week-long series about animal agriculture in America. I have no interest in prying a turkey from his hands. Frankly, he could do so much more good in the world then his individual choice.

Read the entire interview with Jonathan at Ecorazzi.com.

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Jonathan Safran Foer "Eating Animals" Interview

Eating Animals author Jonathan Safran Foer was interviewed by Kerry Trueman of the Huffington Post recently.

Jonathan did extensive research before writing Eating Animals, primarily investigating factory farms and the conditions that animals raised for food endure.

As expected, some farms wouldn’t let Jonathan past the front door.

A few excerpts:

KT: Did you have any real expectation that Tyson–the world’s largest processor and marketer of chicken, beef, and pork, as you note in your book–would agree to give you a tour of any of its farms?

JSF: To be honest, I did, because I know that they have “show farms”. All these companies have show farms. I thought I would at least get a response–you know, “Unfortunately, we won’t be able to show you the farms because of biosecurity, but we’d be happy to give you these brochures.”

The thing that really surprised me was the total lack of a response. I didn’t get anywhere with anybody.

KT: And now, of course, after the fact, the industrial livestock industry’s accusing you of not doing your homework, which is really funny, because when they had the opportunity to throw open the doors–

JSF: –Yeah, so let’s do it! Let’s do the homework now, it’s not too late! Seriously, I would be so happy to revise my book if they showed me something else. But they’re not going to show me anything.

You can at least do your homework on Jonathan by reading the entire interview at Huffingtonpost.com.

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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

“I spent the first 26 years of my life disliking animals. I thought of them as bothersome, dirty, unapproachably foreign, frighteningly unpredictable, and plain old unnecessary. I had a particular lack of enthusiasm for dogs—inspired, in large part, by a related fear that I inherited from my mother, which she inherited from my grandmother. As a child I would agree to go over to friends’ houses only if they confined their dogs in some other room. If a dog approached in the park, I’d become hysterical until my father hoisted me onto his shoulders. I didn’t like watching television shows that featured dogs. I didn’t understand—I disliked—people who got excited about dogs. It’s possible that I even developed a subtle prejudice against the blind. And then one day I became a person who loved dogs. I became a dog person.”

“The first full chapter of my book explores our divergent attitudes toward dogs and fish—fish being at the far end of the spectrum of our regard. I write about a simple trick that backyard astronomers use: If you are having trouble seeing something, look slightly away from it. The most light-sensitive parts of our eyes (those we need to see dim objects) are on the edges of the region we normally use for focusing. Eating animals has an invisible quality. Thinking about dogs and their relationship to the animals we eat is one way of looking askance and making something invisible visible.”

—-author Jonathan Safran Foer, during an interview about his latest book, Eating Animals.

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