The Ethics of Eating

By Julie Madsen
Published on July 1, 2002

The Ethics of Eating, Rich Heffern,
National Catholic Reporter
The way we produce food not only affects the earth and the quality
of what we eat, it also affects our souls. According to Rich
Heffern in National Catholic Reporter, harmful
farming methods such as the use of Confined Animal Feeding
Operations (CAFOs,) pesticides and more recently genetic
modification have without a doubt been the cause of bland,
nutritionless food. But consumers and producers may not realize how
such methods have desensitized them to the spiritual aspects of the
food they grow and eat. Says Heffern: ‘If our food has lacked
flavor, that may be because it was treated as dead even while it
was being grown. And perhaps we have tolerated such food–and the
way its production has affected our society and
environment–because our senses, our hearts and our minds have been
in some sense deadened, too.’ According to the writer, the state of
our food will improve only when we rediscover the reverence for
life that we have lost.
–Julie Madsen
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