Customer Reviews

Meat: A Love Story: Pasture to Plate, A Search for the Perfect Meal

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I enjoyed this immensely. Like the author, I tried a vegetarian diet as an act of conscience several times but I have to admit I never felt worse ... even when I tried to follow the guidelines. Bourette's Meat puts meat-eating in North America in a cultural and historical context. It's not a screed against meat-eating though it's critical of the corporate meat industry. (The author's experiences working in a meat plant might have you skipping pork loins for some time.) Bourette's Meat: A Love Story is a call out to meat-eaters--a challenge not to give up meat but rather to eat better meats, to understand and value the origins of the meat on their tables. Bourette goes from cattle ranch and the Rockefellers' organic farm to the shop of a Manhattan celeb-butcher and a trendy butchering class. The raw-meat-eating cult has to be read to be believed--in Aspen of all places. The author went to end of the earth--on an ice floe for a whale hunt in Barrow, Alaska is just about the end of the earth--to find out why we eat meat, what meat means to us, and how we should eat it. It's pretty filling. It will stick to your ribs and stick in your mind long after you read it.

For people who adore low-carb living, this book sounds like a dream come true with a "love story" about one of the very staples of a low-carb diet. But investigative journalist Susan Bourette wanted to use this book to give people more of a reality check about the meat they are putting in their mouths so they can better appreciate not just the nourishment they are getting from it, but also the process it took to get it on your plate to begin with.

Going undercover and making the rounds through the meat industry over the course of a year, Bourette shines the light on many of the problems associated with meat-making that are well-documented in the many news headlines about Mad Cow Disease, E. Coli, and just about everything from those animal rights wacko groups. But she also grew to have a greater appreciation for how healthy meat can be in your diet when the animals are treated well, given the proper diet of grass in the case of cows, and not tampered with artificially.

In the end, she grew a deep appreciation for meat that she never thought about before and departed those lessons for all of us to enjoy. Whether you are a devout vegetarian and meat-eating maniac, you'll find something in this book that will give you an even greater appreciation for this basic of all foods.

The book begins with Toronto-based journalist Susan Bourette working undercover in a slaughterhouse. Not surprisingly, Bourette finds this to be an unpleasant experience. The purpose of sharing her experience is not really to incite policy change, like Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, but more to explain why she's written a book about meat.

The slaughterhouse experience makes Bourette become a vegetarian like her boyfriend, Gare. (His saintly vegetarianism is pointed out every few pages, and it was a little annoying to me.) However, Bourette can't cut it as a vegetarian, and she continues to crave cheeseburgers. So, the book details her attempt to determine how to enjoy meat without guilt and visions of the slaughterhouse. I've read other takes on this concept, but was willing to hear her out and give this book a chance. Problem is - I don't think she really accomplished this.

Besides the fact that the guilt-free-meat-eating thing has already been done by other authors, Bourette doesn't really do anything. She takes all these trips to a fancy New York City butcher, a hunting camp, Alaska for whale blubber, a conference of raw meat fanatics, a South Texas ranch, the farm for Blue Hill Restaurant, and a top-line steakhouse. Even though she lists her goals for each journey, Bourette is unsuccessful at butchering; she can't manage to shoot a deer; she spits out the sacred whale blubber in front of her hosts (offensive!); she doesn't like the beef in South Texas; and she refuses to eat any raw meat. She does, however, eat the expensive Berkshire pork at Blue Hill (although she doesn't think it is good enough to justify the focus on animal welfare), and she manages to eat three (!) steaks at the steakhouse.

If I were her, I would have felt some guilt or embarrassment about my lack of success, but perhaps Bourette's editor believed that the author-going-outside-her-comfort-zone-and-failing thing hasn't been done enough. Combining that concept with carnivore chic and you've got a sale! Guess there is still hope for any of us to get our own food adventures published...

[...]

I have dear friends (in Kansas City, of all places...home of great steaks) who have been vegetarians for 30 years, partly due to the horrors of how our society turns animals into table fare. Susan, the author of this unusual memoir, served a week in a pork plant (I have another friend who works in one of those, but who still eats meat) and became a vegetarian for a month, but couldn't make it stick. I did vegetarian during a five-day visit to my KC friends, but before I even got to my home from the airport I was eating a burger. So I identified with Susan...a lot. This book tries to describe two things: why most humans crave and indulge in meat, despite health risks, and how we might keep it on our menus and yet not enrich the corporations who treat livestock and fowl inhumanely. The answer is obvious: eat meat less often, but indulge in higher quality when we do, purchasing our entrees from those who raise the animals on a small scale, in pastures, and who feed them without filling them full of fattening chemicals. A fuller explanation of how this can be done by those of us not living in large cities or on large budgets must wait until someone writes a sequel to "Meat...a love story" but Susan's work is the necessary background to that effort. If you want to continue eating beef, pork and chicken dishes, but desire to feel less guilty about it, this is the book for you.

The premise of this book is interesting: Follow along as the author goes on a moose hunt, eats whale blubber, works on the kill floor of a pig-processing plant, visit a cattle ranch, and more.

However, it seems to me if you really love meat you don't try to put people off of it or play the guilt card by describing in detail how chickens are debeaked or how sheep are castrated--not much of a love story there. What she can't seem to keep from doing is lavishing praise on PETA terrorists (and they ARE terrorists) or talking about her vegetarian boyfriend (who tells her she stinks when she eats meat). The writing is conversational if a bit overwrought, and the best quotes are from the people she meets, not from her own voice.

Regardless, the book made me want to eat steak night and day. If you do read the book, skip the epilogue--it seems to negate everything positive she says about the whole cultural, communal experience of hunting for, preparing and eating meat.

I received this book as a gift and was kind of excited after reading the dust cover. Unfortunately that excitement didn't last long into the reading. Instead of being this magical journey of meat it was more like 10 short stories loosely woven together. I think this would have been a great book with the right author. Susan traveled to some fabulous places with nothing but a closed mind towards the food she was going to investigate. Not only the disdain that she brought along but the inability to do anything but sit on the sidelines and observe. She comes across as one of those feel good types that has never done an honest days work but feels a bond and sympathy for the working stiff. Even though she is Canadian she travels with the "ugly American" persona. Traveling to the whale hunt she is totally mortified to even try most of the food offered and even has to spit out the one SMALL piece muktuk that she tried. It came as no surprise that her favorite meals were from a high end steakhouse and an boutique farm outside of New York. To me this book came about as a way to excuse her awful meat eating life to her vegan partner and to give her some street cred among her highbrow friends. If you have the money and want to have an excuse to eat $25/lb organic grass fed steaks in front of your vegan elitist friends this is probably a book for you. However if you love meat and all that it can be taste-wise spend your money on a charcuterie book where the author loves the meat not the fuzzy cow.

I raise grass fed beef cattle along with pastured chickens and hogs to supply my family and a network of friends with meat and eggs so nothing in this book surprised me. Five years ago when I lived in the suburbs I ate my share of McD's BK and packaged meat from the supermarket. The difference between the meat I eat now and the stuff I used to put into my system are like day and night. I've seen my family become healthier, more energetic and become skeptical of any meat they do not personally "know" while it is still on the hoof.

I never would have chosen this book for leisure reading. However, since I have been on a quest to understand the raw fruits and vegetables way of life, I decided to read what Susan Bourette had to say about meat. Susan Bourette is a freelance writer lives in Toronto, begins her journey to discover why we as a nation should not eat meat, by going undercover in a slaughterhouse. Along with other recruits, Susan Bourette is disgusted with what she sees there. Her disgust is not with people who have a daily desire to consume meat, it is with Corporate America, and how it trains cheap labor to kill, gut, and clean animals for human consumption. All that is left behind is grounded together and given names like hot dogs, chicken nuggets, and fish sticks.
"Meat: A Love Story," is in no way a book about giving up meat; it is about understanding meat, making better choices, and coming face-to-face the vicious practices used to enhance the quantity and quality of meat. These practices, along with the slaughterhouse experience and of comments from her boyfriend Gare, challenge Susan Bourette to think about becoming a vegetarian. After several failed attempts to become a vegetarian, she concludes that it is boring. To erase the vision of the slaughterhouse and ease her way back into being a guilt- free meat eater, she sets her sights on learning about organic meats. For people who do not eat meat, and for people who enjoy a life of eating low-carbs, this book gives justification to their final decision.
The author never suggests that one should give up meat altogether; she just wants people to understand what they are consuming, and the possible effect it could have on their lives. One should take notice of a pork chop, especially if it is half the size of a dinner plate. Noticing the difference in size from ten years ago, should have one believing that in some way the pork chop was altered. Steroids and other unknown or unpronounceable substances can be injected into animals to speed up, not only the growth of the animal but also the number of animals being born at one time. I remember when comments emerged about how big the chicken legs from Church's Chicken had gotten, and that was the same time people began to suspect that something was being "done" to the chicken.
Susan Bourette's journey turns the spotlight on Corporate America and how these meat packers are more concerned about making a profit verses healthy eating. I liked how Susan Bourette allows us to see her struggling with choosing to be a vegetarian, but in the book, she also shows that, if being a vegetarian is not for you, learn that there are "better" choices that can be made.

As a wavering Vegetarian I found "Meat A Love Story" by Susan Bourette to be a very educational look behind the scenes!
Bourette pulls us in right away by describing a mass production meat factory and takes us on a journey to farms, ranches and others.
During parts of her book I found myself feeling uneasy in the stomach and wanting to run to the nearest restroom. By the end of the book I had found Bourette leaving me with options.
There might be a meat out there for me!
This was a great read that I would recommend to others.

Easy read and thought provoking but needs to be taken with a grain of salt. The science in some areas a little weak.