Exploding Chickens
One day, a chicken—let’s call him Simeon—was chosen from among the rest to be blessed with the fastest growth cycle in the flock. While the others pecked lazily at grain and fluttered about in the dust, Simeon soared ahead in size and stature, his body swelling day by day with a glorious weave. At first, the others admired him. He was radiant, wise-seeming, touched by some divine hand—or so it seemed. But his legs buckled under the weight. His breath grew ragged. He had become too much, too quickly, artificially so, for a body not made to carry such enlightenment. The very essence of his being had begun to destabilize the order around him—an anomaly the world could not hold. And then, one morning, he was found in some dim underground cage, burst open in the straw before his paymaster. The master had pumped him full of drugs until he split, swollen on speed and simulated enlightenment. And now, seated before the ruin, the master watched quietly, as if feeding off the radiance of the collapse—hoping, perhaps, to extend his own life just a little longer.
Photo by Angela Newman on Unsplash.
This unsettling image (with my own flare for imagination) haunts Julian Baggini’s How the World Eats, as reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement by Clarissa Hyman. The so-called “exploded chicken” is not a typical metaphor invented by philosophers, but a grim reality of industrial farming. These broiler chickens are bred to grow unnaturally fast, as if the chicken coop were children in underground vaults, too large for their own skeletons. But in Baggini’s hands—and if we’re willing to see through the lens of the soul—they become metaphors for something greater: mass-produced humans, fed on speed, abstraction, and the illusion of progress, who spiritually combust before ever understanding what it means to be fed.
Baggini is a philosopher by trade, but in this book he becomes a kind of wandering theologian, tracing a world that has lost its sense of reverence for bread. His subject may be food systems, but his real concern is what it means to eat—how we feed our bodies, yes, but also how we feed our lives. In the Christian tradition, “daily bread” is not a slab of toast—it is divine presence, a sacrament, the body of Christ made edible. So when Baggini critiques modern food as “the hidden wiring of the modern, industrialized lifestyle… that nobody even notices unless it breaks down,” one can’t help but feel he’s also talking about grace.
Because food—like grace—has been mechanized by the elite few. It’s no longer something we gather or give thanks for. It is pumped, processed, shipped, branded without us ever knowing it. Like many spiritual practices, it has become unconscious. And when something that once required prayer and patience becomes a click or a wrapper, we don’t just lose nutrition—we lose meaning. Unless you control the cage.
Those grotesque chickens—those “plofkips”—are symbols of what happens when growth is pursued without wisdom. They exist due to our collective ignorance to process, fed on hyper-efficiency, ambition, and the cult of progress. They are a warning. The modern soul, like the average chicken, is starving of nutrients, while the elite nurture those they seek to consume—prolonging their own lives by feeding off the synthetic light of others. Baggini doesn’t draw that parallel directly, but Hyman’s review--and my creativity--lets the imagery speak for itself.
Still, this is not a pessimistic book. Hyman praises Baggini’s sweeping desire for global balance. He’s not offering a single gospel diet or manifesto. Instead, he proposes a kind of “global food philosophy,” rooted in flexibility, sustainability, and a humility that feels almost monastic. He’s wary of reductionist trends like nutritionism—the fixation on isolated nutrients and miracle cures—arguing instead that there is no universally ideal food, only the shared need for essential nourishment. In theological terms: no single rite for all, but one shared hunger for the Good.
Baggini’s journey takes him from the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania to NASA scientists, from Pampas cattle ranches to Arctic Inuit kitchens. In each place, he observes not just what people eat, but how they eat—how their food rituals reflect their values, their sense of the land, and their place in the cosmos. It is a journey through food, but also through culture, ecology, and conscience.
What emerges, through Hyman’s clear and respectful reading, is a vision of eating that approaches the sacramental. Baggini celebrates values like plurality, cooperation, and interdependence—virtues that resonate not only in ecological circles, but in ancient religious traditions as well. When he writes that we can save debates about perfect systems for later and focus now on moving in a “fairer” direction, one hears the echo of Christ’s parables about small beginnings—mustard seeds, leaven in the dough.
In the end, How the World Eats is, well, soul food. It’s about the soul’s digestion of the world. It’s a reminder that every meal is either an act of communion or an act of consumption. The choice is ours. We can be Simeon the chicken—swollen on unearned knowledge and split from the inside out by the elite. Or we can be the ones who break bread slowly, with reverence, with others. And in that slowness, we might remember that the table—any table—is a holy place.
