Every day between now and his slaughter in six months, 534 [Pollan's steer] will convert 32 pounds of feed into four pounds of gain- new muscle, fat, and bone.

Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent, literally or even figuratively, we would not long continue to raise, kill, and eat animals the way we do.

But that's the challenge -- to change the system more than it changes you.

we ask for too much salvation by legislation. All we need to do is empower individuals with the right philosophy and the right information to opt out en masse. (quoting Joel Salatin)

When chickens get to live like chickens, they'll taste like chickens, too.

Curiously, the one bodily fluid of other people that doesn't disgust us is the one produced by the human alone: tears. Consider the sole type of used tissue you'd be willing to share.

Suffering... is not just lots of pain but pain amplified by distinctly human emotions such as regret, self-pity, shame, humiliation, and dread.

A growing body of research suggests that many of the health problems associated with eating beef are really problems with corn-fed beef.

The true socialist utopia turns out to be a field of F-1 hybrid plants.

Since 1985 our [American's] consumption of all added sugars- cane, beet, HFCS, glucose, honey, maple syrup, whatever- has climbed from 128 pounds to 159 pounds per person.

Americans today spend less on food, as a percentage of disposable income (10%), than any other industrialized nation... meaning that we could afford to spend more on food if we chose to.

A blessed thing it is for any man or woman to have a friend, one human soul whom we can trust utterly, who knows the best and worst of us, and who loves us in spite of all our faults.

California as a nation or part of a larger West Coast nation, should other states join with California, would be a good influence on the rest of the United States.

I do like Christmas on the whole.... In its clumsy way, it does approach Peace and Goodwill. But it is clumsier every year.

There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness.

When trouble haunts me, need I sigh?No, rather smile away despair

The administration does not agree with those who suggest we should deploy hundreds of thousands of American troops to engage militarily in a ground war in Iraq.

When Lady Gaga says I am her inspiration, you reach kids between 12 and 18. Now I am like a brand - jeans, Coca-Cola.

One of the things that's fun about that is that sometimes you grow up knowing about someone because they were famous, but you don't really know what they were like before they were famous.

Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memories.

I will be my undoing If I become my obsession.