🎧 We need to talk about meat

Episode summary: Meat is once again a central topic in nutrition, sustainability, health and capitalism. Points pro and con fly back and forth with no resolution in sight, not surprising given the doctrinaire nature of the discussion. I know where I personally stand, but I also want to try and understand why it is that people feel so much more strongly about meat than about any other element of the diet. That’s why I was very glad to meet Francesco Buscemi last year, and to persuade him to talk to me about his research on the many meanings of meat. Some chicken … Francesco’s aside about Winston Churchill was sufficiently intriguing to send me searching. What Churchill wrote was We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium. The quotation is apparently well-loved by anti-meat campaigners, but was unknown to me. It appears in an essay called Fifty years hence that was published first in Maclean’s magazine in November 1931…