The Ezra Klein Show

What accounts for the way most of us eat? What’s the ideology, the theory, behind our diets? And what happens when you stop believing in it? Over the past decade, I’ve been on a fitful journey toward veganism. At least, that’s the way I normally say it. That’s the polite way to say it. The truth is I’ve been on a fitful journey away from the idea that unnecessarily inflicting suffering and death on literally billions of beings that can feel pain is moral. And it’s been one of the most disorienting, radicalizing experiences of my life. It’s the belief I hold most strongly that I’m most uncomfortable talking about. I find myself, out to dinner with friends, apologizing for it, avoiding it, gently mocking it. I didn’t really understand why I felt all this until I read Dr. Melanie Joy’s Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism. In it, she does something both obvious and brilliant: She names the ideology that governs the way we eat, investigates its beliefs and demands, and explores ho