You begin to look at life in a different way when you’re waiting in line for food stamps.
For me, that point in life has come sooner than expected.
I was made aware of the fact that I would soon be dependent on social services after learning how little a salary I will earn next year while working with City Year (part of AmeriCorps).
Not to suggest that I was surprised or even disappointed — obviously nobody applies to these positions for their 401(k)s — I knew I would be making as much as the lowest income bracket in the U.S.
But after learning so much in college about the benefits of paying a higher price for fair, local and organic foods (thank you, FLO Food), I’m concerned about the types of cheap, saturated, partially hydrogenated and monosodium glutamated goods that will inevitably fill my belly on the reg.
But to touch on the moral implications of eating mass-produced meats is to open a can of worms that my $200-a-month food stipend would not be able to acknowledge with a proper protein supply.
Sorry Peter Singer, but I must plug my ears to your “Animal Liberation.” Your undeniably correct point about the immorality of industrially killing animals must be ignored.
So must novelist Jonathan Safran Foer’s more illustrated stance on the morals of industrial food in his recent work “Eating Animals.”
“Imagine being served a plate of sushi. But this plate also holds all of the animals that were killed for your serving of sushi,” Foer wrote. “The plate might have to be five feet across.”