The Shameless Carnivore: A Manifesto for Meat Lovers

by Scott Gold
Broadway Books, 368 pp., $24.95

Scott Gold works in publishing, blogs from Brooklyn, and simply loves meat. His book is the lighthearted result of a year spent indulging and documenting a passion for animal protein. In a breezy, anecdotal style (rife with groan-worthy puns), he relates a very personal tale of his relationship to meat – thinking about it, seeking out-of-the-way purveyors and restaurants, trying recipes and feeding friends, hanging with butchers and cooks, doctors and nutritionists, hunters and vegetarians. He spent one month consuming 31 different kinds of meat, from the mundane (chicken, hamburger) to the less so (llama, alligator, snails).

But it’s not solely about a hungry young guy recounting his huge enjoyment of all things fleshly. Gold posits three principles of carnivorism: Be discerning; don’t be a glutton; be conscientious. In other words, think about what you’re eating, where it comes from, and what it means; opt for quality instead of quantity; and work with a knowledgeable butcher.

Sunday, 3:30-4:30pm, Cooking Tent

This article appears in John McCain.

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MM Pack is a food writer/historian and private chef who divides her time between Austin and San Francisco. A regular contributor to The Austin Chronicle and Edible Austin, she’s been published in Gastronomica, The San Francisco Chronicle, Oxford Encyclopedia of Food & Drink in America, Nation’s Restaurant News, Scribner's Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, The Dictionary of Culinary Biography, and Southern Foodways Alliance’s Cornbread Nation 1.