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What's on Your Plate, and Why?

Two people can eat the same dinner for opposite reasons, and two people who agree about the reasons can still despise each other's shopping. That is because three separate questions are hiding inside one plate: what a meal is for, whether it carries a verdict, and whether the best version of a food is the one that grew or the one somebody designed.

Thirty-six statements, about six minutes, and a point inside a cube. Answer for the food you choose, not the food you end up with.

36 questions

Answered 0 of 36

  1. 1 A meal is a meal, and hanging a moral argument on it is a mistake.
  2. 2 A meal that is only nutrition has missed most of what a meal is for.
  3. 3 Adding vitamins to a food makes it better than it was.
  4. 4 What an animal went through to become a meal is my business when I eat it.
  5. 5 Deciding what to eat is a practical question before it is a moral one.
  6. 6 Eating something is not the same as endorsing how it was made.
  7. 7 The longer the list of things in a food, the less I want it.
  8. 8 Eating much the same thing most days would suit me.
  9. 9 Choosing what to eat is one of the small pleasures of my day.
  10. 10 I have paid more for a food because I liked it better, not because of how it was made.
  11. 11 Food is one of the things I would happily spend less attention on.
  12. 12 I think about what a meal is doing for me more than about how it tastes.
  13. 13 Simple food, made the way it has been made for a long time, is what I trust.
  14. 14 Some foods are off my plate for reasons that have nothing to do with me.
  15. 15 How the people who grew and picked my food were treated is part of what I am eating.
  16. 16 I would rather have a food improved on than left as it was found.
  17. 17 I would rather a meal be quick and adequate than slow and memorable.
  18. 18 I would rather eat a little less well and know the story behind it.
  19. 19 New ways of making food are more likely to be an improvement than a loss.
  20. 20 A food designed in a laboratory can be better than one that grew.
  21. 21 What I eat is one of the few places my choices land on somebody else.
  22. 22 Food that has been taken apart and put back together is not really food any more.
  23. 23 There is nothing wrong with a food that was assembled rather than cooked.
  24. 24 Something that keeps for a year has had things done to it I would rather it had not.
  25. 25 What I ate at a good dinner stays with me longer than the rest of the evening does.
  26. 26 If something covered what my body needed, I would be glad to have it again tomorrow.
  27. 27 Meat grown in a tank is meat.
  28. 28 I would rather have less of something good than more of something ordinary.
  29. 29 I have made a meal from scratch when I could have bought one ready to eat.
  30. 30 I have kept a record of what I ate in order to hit a target.
  31. 31 The pleasure of eating is a reason in itself rather than a bonus.
  32. 32 The things that decide whether food is produced well are settled long before it reaches my plate.
  33. 33 A meal is worth taking time over even when I am not especially hungry.
  34. 34 Whether a food was produced decently is a question about the producer rather than about me.
  35. 35 I would rather eat something my great-grandparents would have recognized as food.
  36. 36 What the way we produce food does to the climate is a reason to change what I eat.