Wedded to the flesh

The more politically conservative the man, the less likely he is to abstain from eating meat.

- Marc Wilson

This week, I’ve been doing one of those relatively hidden academic citizenship chores – examining a PhD thesis for an Australian university. You can’t just pick anyone to examine a thesis. The “right” examiner has to have a demonstrated expertise in the subject matter of the research. My suitability for this particular thesis comes from a strand of work that I’ve come back to, on and off, since I was a wee PhD student myself: why people eat the things they do.