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Jonathan Safran Foer, author of the book Eating Animals, talks with Ellen DeGeneres about vegetarianism. I love the points that he makes.  Watch for yourself:

My favorite things about this interview:

1) Foer mentions a lady who, while reading the book, is constantly saying to her husband, “I can’t believe this!  You have got to read this. And we’ve got to start eating differently.”  Foer himself says that as he was researching the book, he thought, “This is insane. This is crazy.”  That is exactly how I felt when I started reading about our food system.

2) Foer says, “When we are exposed to the facts, we really all agree,” to which Ellen replies, “And that’s the hard part; getting people to look at the facts and look at things they really don’t want to look at.” This is the reason I started this blog: to expose people to the facts and make them look at things they really don’t want to look at because I believe that if people just knew what was happening, they would demand a change.

3) He mentions the environmental destruction caused by our farming industry and he talks about the health benefits of vegetarianism, such as the proven fact that on average, vegetarians live longer than omnivores.

4) Ellen notes that not one factory farm or anyone from the food industry has contacted Foer about the book.  Foer attributes this to, “either every fact in the book [which has about 70 pages of footnotes] is correct and unassailable, or they don’t want this conversation to expand because the more people talk about this and think about this, the less likely they will be to eat factory-farmed products.”  

5) Ellen asks Foer why he thinks that non-vegetarians become defensive when vegetarians starts talking about the reasons not to eat meat (a  question I’ve pondered many times myself: here and here, for example).  Foer replies that we need to realize that there are not just 2 extremes: strict vegetarian vs. strict carnivore (who only and always eats meat).  I love his comparison to the environment: just because you fly on an airplane (about the worst thing for the environment in terms of transporation) doesn’t mean that you should now also leave all your lights on and your car idling in the driveway. There is an in-between and every step in the good direction is a very powerful thing.

6) Foer says that if every American removed 1 serving of meat from their diet every week (that’s like 1/3 of a Meatless Monday), it would be the equivalent of taking 5 million cars off the road. “I believe people, I respect people, I understand people who say ‘I’m not going to become a vegetarian tomorrow.’  Somone who says, ‘I can’t remove 1 serving of meat a week, I have a very hard time understanding.”

This is not the first time Foer was on Ellen’s show.  See what he had to say on his first visit:

And watch Foer address questions from the audience:

____________________
Breakfast: Bagel with jelly
Lunch: Chipotle veggie burrito bowl (no meat = free guac!)
Dinner: Vegan chicken ranch wrap (with gardein “chicken” and non-dairy ranch) from Sticky Fingers vegan bakery

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