Okay, I have a serious food-related thought - or request, as the case may be:

Folks, please try to buy eggs from free-range chickens.

Yes, they’re a bit more expensive. But if you’ve ever actually seen the battery hens that lay all the cheap eggs, you might realize that the extra money is really a small price to pay for good eggs from happy chickens.

You might find it hard to sympathize with a chicken. I understand that. I personally find chickens truly hilarious creatures. Chickens make me laugh, but I’ll admit that they’re not particularly cuddly or sympathetic. Nonetheless, it’s pretty sick that these animals are kept in cages smaller than their own bodies, kept alive as egg machines until they lose their usefulness and are killed. It’s not particularly…humane.

And even if you don’t care about the chickens, I can’t imagine that anyone in their right mind would actually want to eat the eggs that come from sick, filthy, mangy battery hens. Such eggs cannot be really good. Nothing that comes from something like that can be really good.

I’m not a super-rich earthy-crunchy yuppie who can afford to buy all her organic vegetables and eco-yogurt at big, expensive natural food stores. I’m not an animal rights activist or a vegan (I’m not even really a vegetarian, though I do my best to be as veggie as possible). I have to shop for bargains in completely normal grocery stores, and I’m sure that I wind up buying food that has dubious origins.

I’m not happy about that, but I’ve realized that unless I live on a commune and grow all my own food, I will undoubtedly wind up consuming something or another that has caused some person or animal to suffer in some way that could have been avoided (and please don’t tell me that I shouldn’t be eating meat at all if I don’t want animals to suffer - I refuse to have that conversation anymore).

However, I do what I can. I try to eat consciously. And I figure that, if I have the money to buy sun-dried tomatoes or nice bottles of red wine, I must have the money to buy more expensive eggs from happy free-range chickens. It’s the least I can do. Maybe you could try it too.

Food sermon is over. Go cook something yummy.

Further reading…