Check Out "Hard to Swallow" in the September issue of The Atlantic Monthly

"[I]f it is so natural to kill and eat animals, and so sentimental to think otherwise, why is the vegetarian the only one who can stomach the details?" -B.R Myers, "Hard to Swallow"

The September issue of The Atlantic Monthly - now on the newsstands - has a terrific article by B. R. Myers. "Hard to Swallow: The gourmet's ongoing failure to think in moral terms" looks at society's "idolatry of food" and why food writers are "hostile to the very language of moral values."

Myers's critique of New York Times magazine writer, Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, takes a nice bite out of the omnivore. For instance: "Pollan thinks that taking a hard look at human nature is more a matter of leaning over the museum rail at the caveman exhibit. Seeing only the painted mammoth on the horizon, so to speak, he derives the rightness of meat eating from the fact that humans are physically suited to it, they enjoy it, and they have engaged in it until modern times without feeling much 'ethical heartburn.' (Only a food writer would use such an appalling phrase.) According to Pollan, this 'reality' demands our respect. The same reasoning could be used to defend our mistreatment of children: In body and instinct, we are marvelously well-equipped for making their lives hell. If many cultures now object to abusing them, it is thanks to new values, to people who refused to respect the time-honored 'reality.'"

And much more! Yum!