Category Archives: food

Expanding the Golden Rule (Are We Taking Animals “Foie Gras-ted?”)

I don’t eat liver.  Doesn’t matter what animal it came from, it is literally the body’s filter, and I’m not putting that in my mouth.  Unsurprisingly, a large portion of humanity does not share my distaste for consuming fleshy contaminant processors.  Take foie gras, for example.  It’s a special kind of gross, prepared organ, which Wikipedia describes as “the liver of a duck or goose that has been specially fattened.”  Thing is, “specially fattened” is a euphemism for “force fed with a metal tube.”

This was brought to my attention recently, as a student from my school was recently arrested for secretly recording video from inside a foie gras farm, and, allegedly, stealing some ducks.  She’s facing up to seven years in prison for this.

Now, I am a meat eater.  I love meat, hell, I evolved to eat meat, as did the rest of you (assuming all of our dear readers are human).  That being said, I don’t like meaty foods that require inhumane treatment of the animal that material’s coming from.  It’s why I don’t touch veal.  I think an animal should get to live its life like an animal, with its own kind, moving around, eating, sleeping, having sex… If the meal in question requires that an animal be pumped full of chemicals and locked in a box to restrict its movement to keep it tender, I will have none of that.

In general, the issue of “animal rights” is a tricky one, for a variety of reasons.  Mainly, because our use of animals is almost ubiquitous across every area of our lives.  We eat their meat, we ride on their backs, we drink their milk, we feed them to our other animal friends…  It’s hard to step back and reconsider something so inextricably incorporated into our lives.  And of course, there are other things that make the topic a sour one for many…

Go home, PETA.

Go home, PETA.

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Québec Part V: Saying Goodbye (5 Things I’ll Miss about the French Province)

I’m a pretty sentimental person, so as I think about the 5 weeks I’ve spend here in Quebec it’s easy to think of lots of things that I will miss. Since I’ve promised to try to write all my posts about Quebec in French, however, I’ve narrowed it down to one for each week.

The Food

Everyone knows that the French know what is up it comes to food. This past Sunday, for our last weekend together, several of us biked to a waterfall close-by for a little picnic. We stopped by an outdoor market on the way to pick up some bread. We bought a loaf of sun-dried tomato and chocolate cranberry bread. Afterwards we went to the fromagerie and bought several types of cheese. A couple of us also picked up a bottle of wine from the corner store (yes, there is wine available everywhere here). Then we sat in front of a waterfall feasting on bread and cheese and the grapes we packed along.

cheeseandbread

Then, of course, there were the restaurant-style meals we are fed each and everyday by our hosts.

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Culture War Correspondence: Healthy Living

EVAN: Tired of getting sand kicked in your face and being humiliated in front of your significant other? Well now’s the time to put down that Twinkie hambuger you’re eating [it’s just a Twinkie sandwiched in between two other Twinkies, you animal] and tune in to our discussion for today: being healthy.

Now Gordon and yours truly are both men in their early twenties, and we’re here to talk to each other and you about what it means to stay in relatively good shape, and if we’re even doing that to begin with.

GORDON: This certainly isn’t the first time we’ve covered the general topic of health- smoking, drinking, and obesity are all issues we’ve covered in the past. What really makes this one interesting, I think, is that we’re approaching it more from the angle of health, rather than health hazards. Continue reading

Farmed and Dangerous, S1E4 “Ends Meat”: A Web Show Review

endsmeat

We open up with the last Buck Marshall ad we’ll ever see, the IFIB rep. letting us know that shows like the one we’re about to see “worry the public about the dangers of industrial food production.” The issue with this, of course, is that “[their] research shows that worry leads to stress and depression, which is detrimental to your health.” That’s actually great to know, since I was worried going into the season finale.

Last week’s installment was extremely shaky, scoring points for being informative and funny at the same time but ultimately failing when it came to raising the stakes [ironic given the episode title]. Things ended with Chip in jail believing that Sophie had stabbed him in the back, and so things start with him sitting in an interrogation room. A promising enough beginning, I suppose. Continue reading

Farmed and Dangerous, S1E3 “Raising the Steaks”: A Web Show Review

sophiawhatabeauty

This week we have an ad courtesy of Chip Randolph, who states that although this show is poking fun those involved hope that it “helps to start an important conversation about industrial agriculture.” Then Buck Marshall and Mick Mitcherson throw tomatoes at him that are rock hard, because “that’s how [they] engineer them.” A pretty funny start to a lacklustre twenty-two minutes.

It is with a heavy heart that I must break the news that Farmed and Dangerous‘s third episode is very easily its worst, and it’s heartbreaking if only because so much is riding on it. With a four episode season this is the installment where things were really supposed to ramp up, I mean, just look at the title. Unfortunately the poop doesn’t quite hit the propeller, or at least not with the gravity you’d expect.  Continue reading

Farmed and Dangerous, S1E2 “Passing the Buck”: A Web Show Review

passingthebuck

“-a satire about industrial agriculture. Making fun of serious issues is destructive and hurtful; ask any fat kid. Not to mention that making people laugh around food can cause choking. Perhaps the people behind Farmed and Dangerous could have taken the high road and tried a more appropriate genre, like horror.”

And so the second episode of Farmed and Dangerous begins, with yet another 30-second warning from Ray Wise’s Buck Marshall. With such a short series this marks the halfway point, and I fully expected there to be a ramping up of the stakes. I suppose this does happen, given the episode’s events, but I think the reason they didn’t feel raised is because they decided on comedy. Continue reading