The way we eat: why our food choices matter

The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter, by Peter Singer and Jim Mason, was the Book Babe selection this month.

If you are looking to become vegan and just waiting to be converted, then this book is for you!

If you want to feel guilty buying bacon, chicken, eggs, or beef, then don't hesitate to pick it up as you will get all the sordid details about factory farming and the deplorable conditions in which animals are raised and slaughtered. If you are thinking eating fish would be an ethical source of protein, think again.

It seems the only ethical choice is to become a vegan locovore. Or a dumpster diver.

Not sure whether I can fully commit to either lifestyle but the book makes me feel as though it is the right thing to do, however unpalatable it may be (pardon the pun).

I'd like to say the book offers a self-righteous diatribe but it is actually a cogent and rational argument for avoiding factory-farmed meat. Even if you choose to turn a blind eye to the horrible conditions the animals face, consider the threat to your own health that the use of hormones and antibiotics pose. The threat and possibility of disease that is endemic/systemic to the current market economy approach to raising and selling livestock (why is it that only after people die do problems get noticed, with regard to mad cow disease or listeria?). Or the idea of eating sick, stressed out, mutilated livestock.

I may not be ready to turn vegan but I don't know if I can stomach the idea of eating anything other than organically raised, humanely treated animals after reading this book.

Must pull out those vegetarian recipes again.