How does Diet for a Small Planet relate to Diet for a New America? I enjoyed it but it actually put me off non-organic milk more than meat. We used to go through several gallons of milk every week at home. So many hormones.I eat meat but I have thought about stopping on and off for a long time for environmental reasons. Check out Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe.
I think our relation to food is an interesting facet of the "modern" condition. I don't think traditional societies ever question that to sustain their lives requires the sacrifice of other lives, usually animal, sometimes human. Nowadays, that becomes guilt, mostly over the methods of production rather than the actual life that has been taken.