When did people start replacing Campbell's soup with organic chicken stock and supermarket iceberg lettuce with locally grown arugula? Everyone cares about their food all of a sudden. It's partly a fad, sure, but many expected it to burn out when our nation's recession became official and the typical upper-middle-class locavore found herself with a lot less pocket money than she was used to in those carefree, pre-bailout heydays. And yet the trend persists, fueled in part by tainted spinach, peanut butter, beef, and our government's inability to trace and control these outbreaks. Food safety is certainly part of the equation, but it doesn't entirely explain why we still bum rush Whole Foods on the weekends.
Two new books might help explain the persistence of this phenomenon. First, Catherine Friend's Compassionate Carnivore is perfectly timed oasis of moderation while we weather the furor over the Obamas' White House garden and Alice Waters' campaign for organic school lunches. As a sustainable sheep farmer for 15 years, Friend is smarter than the average bear when it comes to fixing what's wrong with America's dysfunctional food system. She makes it clear, early and often, that she does not see anything wrong with eating animals, and in fact she's not much of a vegetable eater. I braced myself for the usual defensive claptrap about human sovereignty over animals that vegetarians hear all too often, but I am pleased to report that I was wrong. Instead, Compassionate Carnivore speaks in the most appealing terms of gratitude, moderation, and sustainability. As an ex-vegetarian and a veteran of food propaganda, it was intriguing to hear this language applied to the politics of eating meat.
