INQ-300 | What Should We Eat?

Full Title: What Should We Eat?

Topic Description:

What should we eat? The question is unavoidable. It must be answered, yet a little reflection shows that answering the question involves us in a whole host of economic, moral, ethical, political, nutritional, cultural, religious, aesthetic, and environmental concerns. Furthermore, these concerns are often in tension with one another. The fact of the matter is, though, that we rarely engage in such reflection. Our food choices are the result of habit and inertia. Using the work of Aristotle and Spinoza we will analyze the role of habit in human experience. Then we will turn to recent work by Michael Pollan to see how wide-ranging factors limit our food choices and thus the type of habits we can develop.

Counts as Global? No

Topic Approved: April 2013