A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Vegetarianism/veganism

  • Animals, killing, and veg(etari)anism

    There was a surprisingly pro-vegetarian (even pro-vegan) review (which I’m only getting around to blogging about now) in last Sunday’s Washington Post of two books: Mark Caro’s The Foie Gras Wars (previously mentioned here) and Jeffrey Moussaieff Mason’s The Face on Your Plate. The reviewer, Jennifer Howard, is a confessed vegetarian, but is willing to Read more

  • Veggie kids

    A conscientious omnivore on raising vegetarian kids. Read more

  • Michael Pollan interviewed in Mother Jones

    Here. I do take issue with this, though: MJ: When you first wrote the mantra “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” did you have any idea what kind of reaction you’d get? MP: Well, I studied my poetry in school, and I knew there was something about the way it sounded that made it Read more

  • How Ira Glass went veggie

    Here’s the host of NPR’s “This American Life” explaining to David Letterman. The funny thing is that throughout the clip Letterman and the audience are chuckling at the wacky “poultry activist”* who protested Glass’s show because of some feature they had called “Poultry Slam” (full disclosure: I’ve never listened to the show). The audience is Read more

  • Tasty, well-seasoned carrots are better than sticks

    The city of Cincinnati, as part of its “Green City” initiative, is suggesting that residents eat less meat (via). While this topic’s been getting more press lately, it still seems to get relatively little discussion in environmental circles. Is this because greens are afraid of looking like lifestyle nannies? (See here for more on that.) Read more

  • Just say nein!

    The president of the German government’s advisory body on environmental issues has suggested that, for environmental reasons, Germans should cut back their meat consumption to “prewar” levels and strive for a diet more like the Italians. Predictable attacks from industry about trying to deny consumers “freedom of choice” follow. (Via the–somewhat unfortunately named, given the Read more

  • All creatures great and small

    I just noticed that the Humane Society has put together a rather nice page on Animals and Religion and produced a 25-minute documentary called “Eating Mercifully.” The HSUS’s approach to religion is similar to its approach to the public at large: it assumes that principles of compassion and merciful treatment are already embedded in our Read more

  • “Sea kittens”?

    Stentor at debitage has some worthwhile thoughts on PeTA’s latest campaign, which he aptly describes as “merely silly, not offensive and progressive-coalition-fracturing,” in contrast to some of their others. Seems PeTA wants people to start calling fish “sea kittens” in order to create more empathy for them. Recognizing that fish are sentient creatures with their Read more

  • Cooking with ATR

    Jennifer’s post here makes me think that this sort of thing might actually be interesting or useful to some folks. One of the most common questions I get as a vegetarian is “What do you eat?” I chalk this up to a couple of things. One is that, for many people, the standard American meal, Read more

  • Bittman on our meat-guzzling way of life

    Readers of the previous post might be interested in this talk from Mark Bittman: “What’s wrong with what we eat.” His story will be familiar to people who follow these issues, but it’s a good primer. Bittman makes a big deal out of the meat issue (rightly, IMO) and the impact that our levels of Read more