Quotes from ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ keep beef off my plate

I should take a few steps back from the line re meatloaf in my last post because, I’m not kidding, I have been eating a lot less meat for quite some time.

Though I do eat meat on occasion (yup, I’m a flexitarian) it is hardly ever beef - due to the influence of several books I’ve read, movies I’ve seen and informative comments from friends.

Good ideas in some books and great ideas in others usually find a home inside my little round head.

For example, I will never forget the sardonic Scaramouche (from the book of the same name by Rafael Sabatini) who was "born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."

I read the book twice while in my teens (all the way through too) and feel I am still much like him, though rather than mad I think the world is just a bit out of whack, slightly off kilter and in need of an extensive tune up. Now.

One of the three books I have on the go right now is affecting how I look at every meal I eat, and I eat a lot of them.


In The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan I am learning about the unsettling connections between oil, fertilizer, dead land, cheap corn, unnaturally fat cows, tons of antibiotics, truck loads of fat and doctors on factory farms who say things like:

“Hell, if you gave them (cattle) lots of grass and space, I wouldn’t have a job.”

It’s enough to make me take several more steps back from meatloaf.