Eating Conscience

About three years ago, this movie turned me, once and for all, into a vegetarian - Baraka

And, now this author is educating me as to why - Michael Pollan

Oddly enough, Baraka is not a film about vegetarianism, the treatment of animals, or health, or eating. In fact it is not a film about food, necessarily, at all. It is a documentary of sorts, completely nonverbal, about daily life in a variety of different cultures, countries, and continents. It is about, in so many words, the interconnectedness of people.

Three scenes from this film always stand out in my mind.

The first is of the Kecak Dance in Bali. The rhythmic sounds and movements; the apparent trance like state of many of the men involved; the seemingly perfect understanding of every one of them; and the mystery, the meaning - it is so fascinating to me. How many peoples must have witnessed this or even been involved with it over how many centuries?
The second scene is from a factory (?) that 'processes' chicks. They ride conveyor belts through a dirty, metal factory, dropping from machine to machine where they are sorted, picked over, beak tips burned off, and then, finally, dropped to cages of some kind; I believe they are to be used to lay eggs.
The third is also a factory scene, from Indonesia, of a cigarette factory. It is so machine like and yet employs probably thousands of people. They roll, cut, count. It's such a different feeling then the sight of a simple, neat pack of cigarettes in a store somewhere.

So these three scenes, somehow combined in my mind, pushed me to stop eating meat. The interconnectedness of cultures... perhaps I felt that if I ate those chickens when they grew up I would be ruining traditions like the Kecak Dance and forcing most of south east Asia to work in cigarette factories. No. OK, I wasn't really sure why. I just felt like it was the right time.

I've just recently started reading Michael Pollan's books. I'm reading The Omnivore's Dilemma first, even though I believe it was written second. He has been able to identify and explain all these difficult, confusing food concerns so simply and thoroughly. The blurb on one of the books said something like 'Eat food. Not too much. Mostly vegetables.' So simple. So now, after over three years of changing my eating habits, I will finally find out why.