Usually, when I go to a fast food restaurant the only thing I'm thinking getting a bit of a delicious burger. Most of the time I'm not really thinking about what kind of life the cow must have lead before coming to it's tragic ending. Whether this cow had a preference to chewing his cud facing the sun or other having bizarre cow-ish habits have never occur to me when I'm about to bit into that greasy beef patty. However, after reading the section in Shishir Kurup's monologue about the Fat Family, I came to the realization that maybe we as Americans have twisted our own perceptions about what food really is. In the monologue, Kurup describes how a family had to see a chicken be killed, boiled, plucked, skinned, and gutted before actually taking it home to eat. This same family goes to America and is so amazed with the quick presentation of "fun food"(Kurup 342) that they end up becoming obese.
How many of us, after seeing the whole process of a live cow being brutally transformed in a small patty, would still eat that patty? For me personally, my appetite would be long gone far before I would ever get to see the end result. American culture has so influenced us that food has gone from being a sacrificial gift from a past living organism, to simply becoming satisfaction for our taste buds' desires.
It's just so intriguing by how in viewing the way other cultures live, we can realize certain influences of our own.
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