An eater's manifesto - Essay Example

We don’t realize that in the sizzle of our steaks there is the suffering of animals, the mining of our topsoil, the slashing of our forests, the harming of our economy, and the eroding of our health. We don’t hear in the sizzle the cry of the hungry millions who might otherwise be fed. We don’t see the toxic poisons accumulating in the food chains, poisoning our children and our earth for generations to come. But once we become aware of the impact of our food choices, we can never really forget (Robbins, 57).

There are a lot of things to consider when it comes to making our food choices. One of the biggest nutritional problems plaguing America today is the issue of obesity. One of the factors is a high intake of food that is high in saturated fat. Our bodies can make all the saturated fat we need, so we don't need to eat any of it. That's why saturated fat can be in the bad category—because we don't need to eat any of it, and it has undesirable effects in cardiovascular disease. In the United States and other developed countries, saturated fats come mainly from meat, seafood, poultry with skin, and whole-milk dairy products (cheese, milk, and ice cream).

A few plant foods are also high in saturated fats, including coconut and coconut oil, palm oil, and palm kernel oil. Saturated fats boost total cholesterol by elevating harmful Low Density Lipoprotein. Like all dietary fat, saturated fat also raises the protective High Density Lipoprotein. Unsaturated fat is much preferable since it lowers the bad cholesterol and raises the good. When picking what to eat, take into consideration the amount of cholesterol and saturated fat you are putting into your body.

Another thing to consider may be, for meat eaters, where the meat is coming from. There is the issue of the morality of eating meat. Animals have rights, and no matter how humanely an animal is treated in the process, raising it and killing it for food remains morally wrong. There is yet the issue of animal cruelty. More than 16 billion are killed for food every year in the US alone. They are neglected, mutilated, genetically manipulated, put on drug regimens that cause chronic pain and crippling, transported through all weather extremes, and killed in gruesome and violent ways.

Even so called “free-range” animals are often mutilated without the benefits of painkillers; kept in filthy, disease-ridden sheds; forced to endure long trips to the animal slaughterhouse without food or water; and killed in the same way as animals from factory farms. It’s important to know whether the meat you are eating is from a reliable source. In addition to this, the world’s meat addiction is poisoning and depleting our drinking water, arable land, and clean air. More than half of the water used in the U.S. goes to animal agriculture, and since farmed animals produce 130 times more excrement that humans do, the runoff from their waste greatly pollutes our waterways.

Not only does raising animals for food gobble up precious resources and produce tons of waste, it also steals food from hungry people. Raising animals for food is extremely inefficient.  For every pound of food that they eat, only a fraction of the calories are returned in the form of edible flesh. The problem comes in when people stop caring about all these issues and just eat for the sake of pleasing themselves. While eating one day, I found myself wondering about the people who had grown the vegetables on my plate.

What were their lives like?