Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

I really wanted to like "Animal, Vegetable, Mineral." I am very sympathetic to idea of localization and growing your own food. And I applaud the experiment and enjoyed following Kingsolver and her family on their journey to eat only what they grow or get locally for one year. The book is a good book that talks about a lot of issues around food, agriculture, localism, and self-sufficiency. The book is entertaining in places and has numerous resources from recipes to organizations and websites to get more involved. As I've reflected on the book more, I feel that book occasionally crosses the line into being self-righteousness and pedantic. The best example of this is the author's defense of meat eating. On one hand, I wholeheartedly agree that if one is going to eat meat, one should try to get it their meat from local farms where animals are treated well. But I felt the author goes just one step further to seemingly look down upon people who are vegetarian or vegan. It is not enough to say we should eat meat but that if you don't, you are being silly and unhealthy. Kingsolver's older daughter makes the argument that in India, even vegetarians would inadvertently eat insect larvae in their food to get enough protein. As a person who lived in India for five years and who knows the lengths that many vegetarians there will go to clean their food, I found this a pretty weak argument. There were a few other places where this kind of self-righteous tone comes out of the book and takes away from the force of the arguments Kingsolver and her family are trying to make. It saddens me because I think so many of the messages are worth reading and learning more about.

(Full disclosure: I am a vegetarian primarily for environmental reasons. But I am generally not too preachy or militant about it).