And so the vegetarian family expands.  Prince Fielder, first baseman for the Milwaukee Brewers, announced to his team this week that he is no longer a meat and fish eater and is now a vegetarian.

According to this story on Yahoo Sports, Fielder’s wife Chanel gave him a book describing the treatment and murder of animals for food.

He is quoted as saying, “”After reading that, (meat) just didn’t sound good to me anymore. It grossed me out a little bit. It’s not a diet thing or anything like that. I don’t miss it at all.”

Coincidentally, my meat loving sister has recently proclaimed herself a vegetarian after reading a book that I recommended: Skinny Bitch by  Rory Freedman and Kim Barnounin.  My sister, like Fielder, said that once she learned about the sanitation and slaughtering practices of meat suppliers, she could not longer lift a fork of chicken or beef to her mouth.  I pretty much felt the same way after I read the book, although I became a vegetarian about six years ago.   Animal mistreatment is a foul reality in our food industry and is largely ignored by so many in our society.  We consumers are so separated from the processes involved in dairy farming and the killing of animals.  The optimist in me doubts that people are simply turning their heads from the truth though.

I wonder whether Fielder’s wife Chanel gave him this same book.  While the language of Skinny Bitch is in-your-face as though the narrator were a girlfriend with a foul mouth, the book is certainly a worthwhile read for at least raising questions (if not eyebrows) about what goes on behind the scenes of the bright and shiny grocery store where consumers innocently purchase food.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, February 23rd, 2008 at 1:43 pm and is filed under Vegetarian. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.